And the Work Begins

Julie sends: Last night we were all pretty excited about the start of our work.
Monday began with a quick breakfast in the dark of morning, at 6:30 am (that's 4:30
am for you sleepy heads). By 7:30 am we were at the Mission for
orientation. There were folks from Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and
Pennsylvania. Thailand and Brazil are the home countries of two exchange
student workers. To round out the international interest, our construction
director is from South Africa.

Volunteer Coordinator Pam Small encouraged us to do three things this week:
1) Listen to people's stories; 2) Tell people that Biloxi is not well and
will not be well for many years; and, 3) Do a little work and be kind.

The Construction Director gave us some quick guidelines for the week. The
most important is to be safe. He then wanted to know if there were any
brick layers in the group. No one has that skill, so that work will wait
for next week. He then asked about framers and one fellow said he had
experience. (People standing around photo) We then split the group of 32 people into framing carpenters, insulation installers, painters, and trim carpenters. Georgia, Dominick and Noah went to do insulation and dry walling. Ken, Janie and Julie went off to do trim
carpentry.

The house Ken, Janie and Julie worked on is like a shot-gun house, only
sideways. It is designed for two families, with full facilities in each
half. The insulation and dry wall and basic painting have been completed.
The work done today was finish trim for doors and baseboards. Outside a group was finishing the exterior soffits. (Photo of ladder)

In this home there are twelve single doors and seven double doors, Some parts of the house are original and so reflect construction from another era. The walls are sometimes wider than the framed and hung doors, so we were cutting strips to stuff under the case trim and worrying about reveals. Ken and Janie were putting down baseboard in rooms with floors that dipped. It took us a long time to get up and running because there was no electricity to run the chop saws. Ken found a mitre box and it was looking grim for those scores of mitre cuts. Finally, we got current and folks started to fall into jobs.

For Georgia, Dominick and Noah, walking into the house they were to work on
was like walking into a house after they had mucked it out. For them it was
a natural progression from their experience in New Orleans. "The house
today looked like the houses in New Orleans after we finished mucking them
out. Today was like a continuation of that experience."