Gorgeous day to be outside!

Hey Folks,

Here's one of the daffodils I took a photo last week, now open with it's face to the morning sun. The day started out cold but by noon it was thoroughly delightful outside. I felt very fortunate to have been able to spend the day working outdoors.

Insulation and drywall have been started in house 8, with kitchen and bath cabinets going in on house 7.

I spent the day framing interior walls for the second floor in house 5 with some of the super folks who are members of Oregon School Employees Association (OSEA) union from the Beaverton School District. There were no walls at the start of the day, but with hard work and good leadership from one of our site supervisors, we completed almost all of them. Good thing too, as roof trusses are due to arrive later in the week. One of our future homeowners, Mohammad, was also working with us as part of his family's 500 hours of sweat equity.

Here it is...the wonderful foundation hole that is the base of the future Women Build and Thrivent houses! :) This work is contracted out to Subcom Evacuation & Utilities, a company from right there in Hillsboro, where our build site currently is located. The gentlemen to the left worked very hard, with a little help from their backhoe, to get all the dimensions correct and connect the water and sewer pipes from the street to the outside of the foundation. We use gravel to cover the foundation floor to keep it from becoming a big mud pit while we are working laying out the forms for the concrete pour, which you can read about in the Jan 20th post.

By the end of the day, as I'd said earlier, most of the walls were framed in house 5 and house 6 was off to a good start as that group spent much of the day getting the rest of the sheathing done on the outside of the house. The instillation of the cabinets in house 7 were nearly complete as was most of the insulation and drywall in house 8. As always, it was another productive day with hardworking volunteers.

Some of the folks I work with:

Meet Hal, Terry & Cliff, Willamette West Habitat's Site Supervisors! Between them they have decades of experience building homes for hard working families. All have 'retired' but spend 3 days a week, and often more, volunteering their time to teach and lead volunteers like myself, as we learn and work building houses. Hal was a forester, Terry managed engineers and their projects at Intel and Cliff was an engineer with the Dept of Agriculture. At the time they were drawn to this service, I'm sure they didn't imagine it would become a life mission, but here they all still are, giving our volunteers and families their best each day. We are grateful to have such dedicated people to work alongside us.

That's all for now. Until next time, live your best life, however big or small it may be!

Nanette