Thrivent Builds

From Jeff, Americorp Volunteer: The Thrivent build at 2836 Maplewood, Ann Arbor is on the second week and moving progressively . The build is moving along smoothly due to the support of Thrivent Financial and the local Lutheran congregations. There has been a steadily follow of volunteers of 10+ at the job site each day.

Outside, the volunteers are on the final steps of finishing off the siding. They have started reinforcing the garage and siding is being cleaned as well as painted.

Inside the house the upstairs walls have been framed in and waiting to be dry-walled as long as the kitchen and bathroom. Once the rough electrical is passed, the upstairs wall, kitchen and bathroom can be dry-walled. In the coming builds the house will be getting prepared to be painted as the Thrivent build moves closer to finishing.

What a week! The house looks drastically different from this time last week. The windows were build out, aluminum soffits were built on, siding was installed (and uninstalled, and reinstalled).

Thank you to everyone who came out and please continue to come out this week!

What a great couple of days! We’ve seen lots of progress on the site despite a few hang-ups. Volunteers have been great and hard-working.

Here’s what we’ve been working on:

• Lots of landscaping has gotten done
• The windows were built out and are currently being covered with aluminum soffits
• The old asbestos siding was covered with plywood and blue foam board – proving to be a challenging task, but one our volunteers overcame with style!
• The beautiful grey siding is being installed right now
• Some internal work has been started, but right now the concentration has been on the exterior

Thank you for the wonderful and delicious lunches!

Photos:

Please come out and volunteer for a day!

Thank you to everyone who came out for our pre-build weekend!

This weekend was focused on demolition and preparing the site for the kickoff on June 5^th and the following blitz week.

The kitchen without cabinets, tiles, and the chimney.

On Friday a group of great volunteers including our two new Americorp summer interns Jeff and Jen, got lots of prep work done. They ripped out an obsolete chimney in the kitchen which will be replaced with a new heating unit and creates more cabinet space in the kitchen. Drywall was removed in part of the kitchen and in the bathroom, and the old inefficient furnace was pulled out of the basement. The kitchen tiles were ripped up and pitched, and the old cabinets and sink were pulled out. At the end of the day it looked like a completely different room! Thank you to Trinity Lutheran for providing lunch!

Saturday morning threatened to rain, but a large group arrived ready to work, and quickly started on a variety of tasks, from framing a safety wall and a closet in the large upstairs room to adjusting the windows out to enable the new siding to go on without a problem. While the kitchen tiles had been removed the day before, the underlying base still needed to be removed. Outside Rachelle led a few of our great volunteers in some initial yardwork and ended up with a pile of tulip bulbs that she’s planning on replanting in the fall.

Also, I’m super excited to let you know that Rachelle has been working very hard and has just about completed her 300 sweat equity (volunteer) hours! Don’t worry, she’ll be working on her house as much as possible, but it’s great that she’s been helping out other partner families for the last few months!

Once again we are incredibly grateful to Thrivent Financial for Lutherans and local Lutheran congregations for sponsoring this build!

Thank you to everyone who came out this weekend! You all rock!

-Maggie Porter

My pictures need some formating help, but here they are for now :

Don, Travis and Andy removed the shutters and will reinstall them later.

Prepping the garden...

The dumpster was full on Saturday morning, showing all of the hardwork from Friday!

Prepping the windows...

Front after gutters, etc. removed

Long-time Lutheran houseleader Andy Lakatos, Don Schoenberg, Mark Ritz, Don Stauffer, Gary Vogt, the McQuistons, and others too joined Rachelle Wilson at the 2836 Maplewood house for the first pre-build workday of 2010.  Roofers were scheduled for today (4.19.10 and came) so we had to get some tilted soffits and fascia and gutters off, replace all that wood working before new roof, installed nice Windsor I trim boards and built it all out to accommodate the insulated siding that will be installed on top of Dow blue board on top of new OSB on top of the existing siding.

Mark, Gary and Don Schoenberg ripping a board

The windows will likely be removed and reset in order to not have to build them out so much, but details of that are yet to be determined. The furnace is being replaced with a high efficiency unit so no need for the old chimney anymore. The roofers removed the existing shingles and tore down the chimney before reroofing.  So, the roof is on and we are basically ready for kick-off on June 5, at least from a construction perspective.

Don S. up on the ladder

We need 90 volunteers to “pledge” themselves and another bit of funding pledged too then we will have everything we need to meet our second Thrivent Milestone. WooWoo! We are way ahead of last year and it’s going to be great. We do, however need those 90 volunteers to actually sign up and we also need lunch providers to sign up THEN we’ll be ready to go.  June 5 will include gutting the bathroom and 2 walls in the kitchen and lots of siding work and likely a crew will dive right into the garage, which needs a lot of work.

Burrrr..., Rachelle and Andy Day 1

Example of work done all around the house

Burrrrr is all I can say about last Saturday.

Where is your coat girl?

Rachelle relocating her Peonies

Don Stauffer and sample of new trim

The wind was blowing and we had plenty of lawn bags but forgot the rakes for the morning volunteers.

By the afternoon, we had some on-site just about the time Rachelle found Peonies in the backyard along the back of house and decided to relocate them so they don’t get trampled when the siding goes on.  She LOVES them and doesn’t expect they will bloom the first year after being moved, but is crossing her fingers that next year they do well.  She’s a little worried because of the frost that came Sunday night right after they were moved.

Signing off from the first 2010 blog entry…

Lynne Punnett, Construction Project Manager