Mission: Tuscaloosa 2012
As we walk down the hill for our last work day, many of the exterior changes to the house are obvious: the roof purlins, the fascia, the house wrap, the windows.
The stack of HardiePlank siding that we've been using as a table and seat is now truly in the way (the scaffolding needs to go there), so we moved it next to the tool shed.
Caulking and then installing the front windows.
Lunch today was provided by Habitat for Humanity at an event back in Tuscaloosa proper to mark the one-year anniversary of the tornado. We drove back to an area near where we started on Monday morning, where several Habitat houses have been completed and others are under construction. Just across the street is an empty lot that used to contain College Hill Baptist Church but now contains only a cross and this sign.
We entered a house that's further along than ours on the exterior, but at about the same point on the interior. Nice looking house.
All the new Habitat houses in Tuscaloosa have a safe room. This one has been signed in multiple languages by the crews that worked on it.
This house is about ready for drywall.
Another house with the same paint colors.
We meet a higher-up in the Habitat for Humanity organization, and so does the media.
Ready for lunch.
The man in the light blue shirt is Dr Kelvin Croom. He's pastor of College Hill Baptist Church (see the photo of the sign and cross above), which he says is about ready to start rebuilding.
Having a catfish lunch.
Shade was at a premium. Pete and his family found some shade on the porch of one of the Habitat houses.
Back at the ranch, the house shows more progress.
The chain-link fence between this house and the next one has trapped things, mostly plastic grocery bags, that were blown into it during the tornado. There's not much here now; a year's worth of rain has washed much of it away. We were told that fences completely covered in grocery bags and other light debris were common just after the tornado.
The afternoon was spent finishing things up: the roof work, the fascia, the tie-downs that hold the framing to the slab, and the blocking that will support the kitchen cabinets.
Checking off our accomplishments for the last time.
It's the end of the day and end of our week; time for posing for some photos.
Our two clergy.
Our two husband-and-wife teams.
I think everyone has developed muscles this week.
Group photos.
Those of us who aren't professional builders adopted this as our motto considering all the instruction that we needed during the week:
Don't we clean up nice? We're waiting for our table at Chuck's, an excellent seafood restaurant just a few blocks from the church in Tuscaloosa.
What we accomplished
These photos show the exterior of the house when we started and when we finished. At the start, the house resembled a tobacco barn -- long, low, with no windows. At the end, it's a house well on the way to completion. What the photos don't show is all the work that we did inside, and what each team member took away with himself or herself.
