We ended up spending most of our time in three houses within a block of each other (and 2 houses were side by side). There was a little work outside of these three houses, none of which I was involved in (I did all of my work in the three main houses). The outside work included:
– a little drywall work in a house that was mostly finished
– picking up shingles off of the ground at a house that was being re-shingled
– moving a very heavy “play house” that was something like 12′ x 12′
– loading up several storage sheds on to trailers to be moved to sites

As far as work that I was involved in:

Monday: The work site was about 3 miles from the Habitat headquarters, so a very short drive right through downtown Battle Creek. The group was split into three groups: one made up of guys went to move the “playhouse,” one went to a house on Jericho Street, and I went with Mrs. Dubbs’ group to a house about a block from Jericho. It turned out that I was the only guy on the group. The primary focus of the work in this house was to finish interior demolition – some had been done already. We had to clear all plaster and laths that were still on the walls and ceilings, we had to remove all baseboards, we had to shovel and clear out the powder insulation that was all through the house, and we had to pull out every nail on the walls and ceilings. For those who have never dealt with laths, there are many many nails for every board, and so there is an endless-seeming supply of nails on a wall where laths have been torn down. I got to work pulling down the remains of a ceiling, and I pulled nails out of the ceiling boards. This was to take most of the day, and was largely overhead work (it was tough on my shoulder by the end of the day).

The rest of the team attacked the chimney, tearing it down from the roof line to the basement in about 5 hours or so – they cranked on it. The bricks were thrown out the window, and then were picked up by a team on the ground, and then thrown in the almost-full dumpster. By the end of the day, the dumpster was full, and we had to start piling trash on the lawn. Other students went to work on the baseboard, which did not come up easily. This led to shouts of “Oh, yeah!” and such when a board let loose. There were also multiple people who were trying to keep the job site clear of junk, with only some success – we were making messes faster than they could be cleared, especially on the second floor where we were mostly concerned with teardown instead of cleaning up.

We did join the rest of the group for lunch over on Jericho Street. That group had walked into a house that had not been touched, and were just doing demolition on it. To make things more fun, they had no dumpster, so they were trying to work around piles of debris.

Tuesday: I went back to the same house as on Monday, but with a slightly different group of students. The students are encouraged to switch around sites to get to work with different students and to work on different houses.

I puttered around a bit, and then talked with a Habitat guy (Dirk) who wanted me to take a student with me next door and tear down a ceiling. The house next door was mostly stripped inside, but there was one room that still had a drywall ceiling on it. Habitat had hoped to keep it since it was in good shape, but the heating crews needed it removed. So, I got a student, and we went at the ceiling with a hammer and a crowbar. It made a huge mess, but we managed to plow through all of the sheet rock in about two hours. Unfortunately, tearing down the drywall left all of the drywall screws in the ceiling, which (you guessed it) had to come out. But that would have to wait – I had to make a trip to Lowe’s to get more dust masks; we were going through 20 or so a day (it was messy work), and I had only brought 40. I got back from Lowe’s just in time for lunch, which was over at Jericho again. Right at the end of lunch, a dumpster was delivered to the Jericho site. It is an odd thing to be so glad to see a giant trash can, but now the Jericho house could be cleared out of all the piles of debris that were lying around everywhere.

After lunch, four students and I used two drills to take out the drywall screws. It was all overhead work, and the drills got heavy fast, so we took turn spelling each other. Sometime during the afternoon, a truck delivered our replacement dumpster (the full one had been taken away right after lunch). I helped clean up our drywall mess, and the crew in the other house cleared their trash up. I wrapped the day up by going back to the original house and I pulled nails for another half hour.

Wednesday: We (the group) started the day by loading some siding on to a trailer. The siding was in cardboard that had sat out for some time, and the cardboard was quite slimy. I did not load – I just watched and took pictures.

I then went back to the house where we had taken down the drywall ceiling (I called it the “new” house – in the sense it was new to me on Tuesday as opposed to the original house from Monday). I worked with one of the chaperons who is very handy (he does construction). We set to work doing framing. The chaperon (Nate) and a Habitat worker (Mike) did the actual framing. We had two students cut the boards using a circular saw. They were a little nervous at first, but they did a nice job. I kept an eye on things while I pulled nails out of framing studs that we had taken down so that we could reuse them. We spent the entire day (except lunch over at Jericho) doing framing. It was a pretty easy day for me, and I felt a little under-utilized. It was probably okay so that I could recover from all of the overhead work of the last two days, but I still felt as if I did not do too much.

Thursday: We started the day loading siding again. Again, I just took pictures. I then headed over to the original house, where I finally got my hand slimy by unloading the siding with the help of four other students. That took probably about 30-45 minutes. I saw that I was not really needed at the new house, so I headed over to Jericho to see if I could be useful.

I started by going into the kitchen to help remove a ceiling in there. It actually turned out to be three ceilings – the original plaster-and-lath ceiling, and two more ceilings installed over it (I think one was plaster and one was drywall). The ceiling came down in cascades of plaster – so much so that I actually found chunks of plaster in my underwear later in the day.

I did that for awhile, and then I left it (in a volunteer’s (Dave’s) good hands) for a water break. I saw part of the group cleaning out the garage around the side of the house. I was tired of plaster and dust, so I leant a hand at hauling the junk. On one trip to the dumpster, I found a DVD of the movie Mean Girls, which I gave to Craig since it was a point of pride that he had never seen a Lindsay Lohan film.

I then went back inside and pulled out the old electrical wire (it was not up to code), and then pulled more nails. Now that I was over at Jericho, lunch was served over at the new house. I spent the rest of the day on pulling wire and nails. One interesting thing about Jericho – it had gas pipes in the ceiling for gas lighting! Pretty cool – that must have been from around 1890 or so.

Friday: Friday was the last day we had on the job sites. I went back to Jericho, where I had the satisfying job of getting to go in the basement and tear out the furnace and all the ductwork. I got to do this with my boss, who was a chaperon on the trip. We were saving the duct work for scrap, but we could still hammer on the stuff in order to get it down. With some help, we got the furnace and hot water heater removed. We also had some students attack the cast iron sewage pipes with sledge hammers. We yanked out all of the small iron and copper piping that was used for water (to faucets).
 
At lunch (at the new house), Habitat brought us brownies, ice cream, and hot fudge as a thank you. That was very nice of them (and quite good to eat after a week of low chocolate availability!).

After lunch, I went back to Jericho to finish cleaning up the basement. The group as a whole finished up the house about 3:00. Not too bad – a whole interior demolished in five days. We all went back to the new house, where the group spent time cleaning up while the group that was already there continued to do framing. I helped Craig and a couple of students yank one-inch staples out of the old kitchen floor, which is harder than it sounds. We wrapped up around 4:00 or so, and called it a week.

I am very proud of the students – they worked very hard, and I never heard any complaining. As a matter of fact, one day the crew on dumpster duty spent most of the day singing songs ranging from  The Lion King to Sunday School songs. I get to be involved with some very quality students – one the best benefits of working at CVCA.

Post script – I do not know how long the link will be active, but here is a short video the local paper made:
http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070330/VIDEO/70330012

This was my second year to go on the Diakonos Spring Break trip. Every year, CVCA sends some students and adults to go help Habitat for Humanity in a city within a few hours of NE Ohio. This year we went to Battle Creek, Michigan, with 25 students and 8 adults.

We could not have asked for a nicer day to travel on. We met at the school last  Sunday around 12:30, and we got on the road around 1:15 or so. We loaded into 4 vans, 1 pickup truck, and my car (a Ford Focus hatchback). Last year, we used my car to haul stuff, but this year it was not needed for that. My car was going along mostly as a around-town vehicle to run errands in, which it is very handy for.

The weather was fine, and we took route 80 West into Indiana, where we headed north on route 69. A short trip west on I-94 took us to Battle Creek. We had two short stops along the way – once in western Ohio, at the only non-renovated why-did-we-stop-at-THIS-rest-stop stop along the highway. Folks used the bathroom and bought some food if they wanted to, and we got back on the road fairly efficiently (about 15 minutes). We then stopped about an hour later in Michigan to gas up some of the vans. All in all, I think the trip took about 4.5 hours.

Once we got to the Habitat for Humanity building we would be staying in, we unloaded the vans, and we got set up in our rooms where we would be staying for the week. The facility was fairly nice; the girls had two smaller rooms to keep their stuff in and sleep in, and the guys had one small room to stash our stuff in; we slept in the big common room. Habitat provided small mattresses for everyone – they were thin (about 3″ thick), narrow and long, and most people just threw their sleeping bags on the mattresses. I have back problems, so I brought an air mattress to sleep on – I was spoiled, but it kept my back in fairly good working order for the trip.

The facility had 4 bathrooms – 2 guys’ bathrooms and 2 girls’ bathrooms. During the week, after we got back from the job sites, the girls got to “convert” one of the bathrooms into a girls’ bathroom so they could have 3 showers (there were 19 girls to 14 guys on the trip). The kitchen was fully equipped and could seat all 33 of us, albeit a little cosily.

So, the trip got off to a very good start. I’ll try to blog more over the next few days. I’ll break down the trip into categories: the working day, the spiritual life, and entertainment.