Monday

Been here so long, we’ve got to callin’ it home.

This is our nineteenth year down here as a group, and most iof us are veterans. This is my eleventh year, and I am somewhere in the middle in terms of seniority. We have one rookie this year. Andy brought his brother-in-law John R.

J.D. has been the project manager/contractor for all of the years we have been down here. It is always great to see him, and he looks forward to seeing us as well. We get more done than most groups, and do not require adult supervision, which is a good thing, because that sort of thing can be hard to find, especially by the end of the week.

Sherri has been the program manager for about five years now. She stepped in temporarily when her daughter left to go to school, proving once again that there is nothing more permanant than a temporary solution.

So here’s what we got done today!

Progress on houses is always inconsistent. Some houses get built relatively fast. Some take a long time. This year we find ourselves working on the same house we worked on two years ago. The pandemic slowed things down of course, and fewer groups have made it down since. We were the first group to come down after the pandemic. The pandemic slowed things up of course, and when we came down as the first post-Covid group, building supplies were not so easy to get. Dry wall was not available. Siding was. We put up the siding on three sides of the house.

This is how the house looked when we left in 2021.

Last year we returned and got most of the drywall up.

This year we are back to the same place. It is getting much closer to completion and we are putting flooring down.

This is the way the house looks as we get started in 2023.

We covered pretty much the whole house, and some of our number got very adept at putting up ceilings. So now we are back at the house above, and it is nearing completion.

This year we are putting in flooring. That required us to scrape the whole floor before we began.

Unlike previous years, this year that flooring comes in strips and locks together, finally being held down by the base boards. This requires a bit of care, as you have to tap it into place to get it to lock, and if you hit it too hard, it chips easily.