A Full Day of Work

The interesting problem of blogging about construction work is that I rarely have the time to take pictures of what I'm doing. So it's rarely a complete look at what I actually got up to. In this case, however, John was kind enough to take a break and actually shoot some photos. I also shot some photos yesterday of the site just as it looked when we got there, so that I'd have something to compare against at the end to really figure out how much progress we'd made. 

 A single day.

One of the beauties of this particular service work is that the YMCA feeds us. They provide the food and the kitchen for breakfast, and Frank, the cook for the whole of the YMCA of the Seven Council Fires, cooks for us for lunch and dinner. This is the man who, through COVID, fed thousands a day in the same tiny kitchen he uses to feed all the local kids takeaway dinners and then feed all third odd of us.

Frank is a fantastic man, moving back here because of family, although he'd qualified as a high end chef through culinary school and hard practice in the heat of commercial kitchens, last spring he'd made us this Linzer Torte to die for, and he always does his best for us with the budget and provisions he's given.

So breakfast was scrambled eggs and bacon with whatever toast we made ourselves and plenty of boxed cereal, milks, and coffee by the urn.

With thirty some odd people, there was a lot of milling about when we started this morning, especially with about a third of the folks without any build experience. But after breakfast they had split folks up into groups to do particular work, but then John had to go do a run for materials, and so our group kind of got derailed until David, John's brother, got us going pretty well. Phil and Sue were with me, and our main job was getting these black frames around windows and art boards that were going to contain murals by local artists.

There was one group doing plumbing, one prepping to lift the roof on house Four by Friday. Another group was running about finishing framing and adjusting the framing for the plumber (the trick with walls that are insulated without studs is that all the plumbing has to run inside the rooms that the walls make instead of in the walls. This also helps keeps heat from leaking through conduction through those pipes or the studs). They were building boxes to hide the plumbing

The great thing about having all four houses up was that everyone could be doing different things on all of them, so there wasn't any lack of possibilities for jobs.

With David's help, I started measuring and cutting framing boards, and using the drills to get them screwed into the concrete siding. Using old drywall skills to set the screw heads just under the surface so that the surface could be smoothed over with caulk or some other putty and make for a perfectly smooth face, eventually.

I got to use the miter saw, and it was a very nice thing for making completely square cuts.

We got the framing up pretty quickly, and that was really satisfying, but then David, John, and I talked through the fact that the tops of the frames had to be caulked, and the frames had to be caulked around the windows.

Last spring, I'd caulked and cut such a fine tip that the big gaps around some of the battens had been really difficult to fill completely, so this time I cut it significantly bigger. The problem was that we'd cut the boards exactly to fit, so there was actually very little gap with most of the boards.

So I ended up spending nearly three times the time it would have taken me if I'd cut the tip smaller. I'd just have to always spend the time to clean up all the extra caulk. Well, not always.

There were a few gaps that were extra large, and which the large tip worked beautifully to fill completely and seal as it was supposed to seal. THAT made the rest of it worth it as those bits take forever with a very fine tip. So it's all a tradeoff. As someone at dinner said, I really needed to have at least two tips, maybe three, that I could trade between as I needed for the job I was doing.

There had been an interior job I'd done, once, where I'd actually cut two tips, one wide, one fine, for finishing work, and it had been really good. Still, it was enough to just cut one tube today. We'd gotten all the framing done by lunch time, and I mostly did caulking all afternoon. My grip strength is going to be phenomenal if this keeps going as it has been. 

Dinner was a lovely grilled/baked chicken with brown rice, ratatouille, and the usual lovely mixed green salad (I always miss salads the most when I'm traveling, but Frank takes good care of us) with a whole board of dressings, then the three Brothers Rostykus (My John, his older brother Walt, and yet older brother David) all took the whole group on a walk about of the town. We headed up the street the Y is on to the High School, took a right, and then turned back at main street and then turned again at the Lakota Market. Lou, who was the leader of the folks who decided to do a national service project for the YMCA alumni cheerfully filled in a lot of information about the project while the brothers told what they knew about all we walked by.

I stopped there for some TopoChico, and a little black cat, which had followed us for much of the town tour, trying to trip whomever was in front of the group, marched right into the market! One lady in our crew kept saying, "The cat went into the market! The cat went into the supermarket!" A woman in there grabbed the cat by the scruff of the neck, and I went in and took it from her back out to our crew. A lady who had been a champ at keeping the tool shed completely organized all day, took the kitten from me.

Lysa, from our Bilioxi and Puerto Rico days stayed with me at the store so that I could get my fancy water. That was very nice of her, and after we bought it, we walked back the way to the Y, and found that the group hadn't gone that quickly away from us. We caught up pretty quickly and enjoyed the full moon on the way back to the dorms.

John and Amy (also of the Puerto Rico trips) were in the apartment's common area, and they then headed to the firepit while I showered, and I think they have a plan to see the Northern Lights tonight, as they're supposed to be visible even with the Super Moon out. I decided to just sit here in the room and type this up while I could. My right arm and grip are pretty sore... and the typing doesn't quite hurt as much as I thought it would, but I also have an ice pack, and plenty of ibuprofen for tonight. I'll hope I won't need all of it.