Sweet Home Alabama

Mobile build day #1

Today was our first build day working with Mobile area Habitat for Humanity. The day started off on a wonderful note with a donated breakfast from Starbucks. They put out a delicious spread of breakfast scones, apple fritters and other breakfast goodies...AND the offered us any drink on the menu for free! That's huge when you are with a group of 34! I had a carmel frappachino and  it was great. We were able to sit at the coffee shop for about 30 minutes, reading the newspaper and chatting. We even found an article about RAAM in the New York Times. Race Across America is a cycling race that goes from the west coast to the east coast every year. The winner must average 350 miles a day and no more than an hour of sleep per night to be in contention for the prize. A woman had followed the 2009 tour and written a book about it but I can't remember the name :( going to the build sites we split up into two different groups. One group went across town and my group of 15 works on the other house. Our house was a foreclosure that had been sitting for 2 years. Habitat had bought the house and intended to fix it up for a new family to live in. Our supervisors were Gary and Marci and they were wonderful! I started off the day scraping paint off of the ceiling so that it could eventually be repainted. It was kind of fun to watch all of the paint flying down around us! Next I tackled my big project of the day...the closet floor. The original carper had been removed and the plan was to change it back to a painted surface. So, I had to pull all of the staples and paint it! It was the perfect job and I really enjoyed it. That took me through to the afternoon. Dave from Habitat hooked us up with sandwiches and sides from Sonny's BBQ. Yum! So delicious! I finished the day trying to match the stain on a piece of wood to two already installed pieces. Not easy! I didn't have the right color to match it to so I made my own. That little bit of trim was 20 coats of aged walnut and 4 coats of mahogany. And in the end it kinda looked like the other pieces of trims long lost cousin or something. Not quite the same, but you wouldn't notice until you really looked. And who stares at the pieces of trim in the corner? Not me! Well actually, I would probably notice, but not a normal person! We cleaned up and headed back to the church. Dinner was supposed to be burritos made by my chore group, but we were asked not to start cooking until after our meeting at 6:30. We assembled at the appointed time and discovered that the local Habitat chapter and some donation magic had come together to give us a free dinner at an oyster bar in downtown Mobile. We piled into the vehicles and followed Dave's car. He took us on a quick drive-by of a block that Habitat has rebuilt and showed us all of the houses. Before Katrina the Mobile chapter built 4 or 5 houses a year, but since then, they have averaged 60 houses/yr.  Wow! They are also partnering with other organizations to find housing for refugees. we went to the oyster bar and had a delicious buffet. No oysters, but they did have scallops, tilapia and shrimp. I kept my promise and tried a little of everything. If I liked seafood,  I think I would have liked it, but I'm not a fan of it which made me kind of prejudiced.   The visitors bureau gave us phone cleaners and pedometers. Next we visited the OK bicycle shop, a bar and restaurant.  I think we stopped mostly because of the name! They had a lovely little patio for us to enjoy the rest of the evening on. In comparison to the days it was really cold, but still much warmer than it would ever have been in Michigan at this time of the year.  I had a great evening with friends. I'm really excited to go back to the house tomorrow. They say we may be able to go from walking in for the first time this morning, to being able to hand over the keys tomorrow...wow!