Johnson Controls has been an amazing partner this summer, providing countless employee volunteer crews to work on our homes and we are truly grateful. This is another day when Johnson Controls has sent 12 people to work alongside partner families and others to complete Dayo’s home.
This group is expected to spend a good bit of time in the beautiful weather building concrete forms for the sidewalk and driveway. This will take a crew many hours. There is plenty of trim work to do inside, but while the weather is good you do the outside work so that’s the priority today.
Johnson Controls employees
What a neat thing to do! Matthew Witt is getting married soon and decided to get his friends together to celebrate his bachelor party with Habitat for Humanity. They worked hard busting up concrete, finished the roof on the shed, worked on the back door and indoors they put complete more closet shelves. Even Matt’s dad was there and helped as a crew leader.
Here is a picture of Matt’s friends, most of whom flew in from out of state (and country) including Texas, California, Germany and Michiganians too!
Matthew Witt and Friends
Shed sans latch (Wil will finish on Sat.)
Shelving installers
It is Sunday afternoon and I stopped by the house on my way home from church today to see yesterday’s progress. I don’t know exactly where Friday’s crew left off and Saturday’s crew took over, but a lot was certainly accomplished this weekend. The kitchen cabinets are in, which helps in so many ways. Forgot to check, but the bathroom cabinet probably got set too. The porch siding work is nearly done, soffit and all, and it looks really good. The west siding looks much better now. I know that wasn’t easy, but Andy wanted it all to come down to determine why the siding appeared to wave in and out along the wall. The result is good. Thanks to Johnson Controls and Infor employees who I am guessing saw that task through to completion. Here are a few pictures taken this morning (Sun., 7/26.)
Hopefully Kayla got some pictures of Saturday people. If so, I’ll post them when she gets in on Tuesday.
Kitchen cabinets in
Another view of kitchen cabinets/pantry
Porch nearly done
Johnson Controls group Friday morning
Theresa and Sarah flooring
Floyd finished Dow board on porch
Lynne & Krystle Niemeyer (earning her sweat equity)
First-time vol. Rob & regular vol. Mark cutting basement floor
Andy eating Pot Belly's (no I didn't say Andy had a pot belly!)
Thursday was another great day with individuals from churches and others who had signed up via the internet and fun, fun, fun was had with 5 Habitat staff members joining the crew. E.D. Sarah Stanton, Theresa Dumais and Kayla Clement finish laying the laminate flooring in the living room while Lynne (yep, me) worked with partner family Krystle Niemeyer who was on-site earning sweat equity for her home on Garland Street (they only work Saturdays there.) Family Support Coordinator Floyd Robinson also worked on-site and joined a crew on the front porch getting ready for Friday’s crew who will hopefully complete porch soffit and siding. We had a lot of fun and we all learned a lot about this new flooring we are putting in our homes now.
Today (Friday) we have 8 people from Johnson Controls who are removing the wavy siding from the west side of the house so that we can assess the problem and correct it. Andy is a perfectionist and wavy siding is a no-go for him so despite the original installers working hard to eliminate the problem. It is all coming down today and furring strips or some other solution will be implemented to correct that problem. Saturday’s weather is expected to be really crummy so if we can get that done today, great. If not, we’re going to have a “full house” tomorrow with everyone being forced to work inside.
Here are some pictures of yesterday and today’s group from Johnson Controls. Thanks again to them for amazing groups of volunteers coming out to work with us on company time!
Scalloped siding going on porch gable end in the morning
Porch siding at the end of the day
Fun times in the hall Sat.
Hallway flooring underway
LR floor (whole house) almost done
Looking forward to Johnson Controls coming again on Friday and Infor joining other volunteers on Saturday, but here is the big fun… some of Habitat’s staff members will work on site Thursday and others of us will be out at sites working with volunteers on Friday. Friday staffers may work over on Congress at the Good News House since we have a pretty full crew on Watling Friday.
This weekend we will finish the living room floor and cover it with protective paper. We need to get the kitchen cabinets in place, the shed is mostly built in parts but needs to be assembled and roofed, lots of work to do on concrete forms for the driveway and sidewalks and now we turn to interior doors and trim. Baseboard trim needs to be painted before it is cut and installed. This was less important when we had a gap at the floor and carpet was going in, but now that the baseboard trim sits right on top of the laminate flooring, we can’t be painting after the fact or it will end up all over the beautiful floor. There is lots of work to do. Bill expects to extend the build 2 weekends at most, might wrap it up by August 8 but we will assess that and decide after this weekend.
