Day 1

Today was an amazing day and we are so blessed to have the opportunity to be in service up here in Camden, NY. In effort to not make this the worlds longest post with tons a photos I decided to put a little slideshow together from Day 1 well actually it was Day 2 put it was our first day on the work sites so we are calling it Day 1. I thought that I would let some of our students help me out with today post so you could have the chance to hear how they thought today went.

Today was our first day of work. The weather was positively magnificent. After a delay to get more materials for our work, the day’s work finally began. Teddy, Chris, Andy, Joel, and I (Kevin Hull) started putting together scaffolding at a house to make our job (putting a metal, snow-proof roof over shingles) easier. After that feat was accomplished, we were able to stand at roof level safely. Then we had some real fun, nailing boards across the roof with a nail gun. After a scrumptious lunch, we locked into a groove: Chris and Tom (the world’s dumbest or strongest man) handled screwing the aluminum roof over the original roof; Teddy and I handled the important job of scaling the roof with wood planks and nail-gunning them down; Joel cut the wood precisely to our imprecise measurements, and Andy killed wasps. By the end of our work day we had finished putting the aluminum over half of the roof on the front side of the house.

The day according to Nick…

We went to this guy’s house, and he, like, told us about how he had prostate cancer and messed up his shoulder real bad and his bad knees too so he had troubles taking showers with his bathtub and that’s why he needs us to take it out and give him a shower. And also, his floor was kinda’ squishy, so that was a reason too. So, we (Conner and me – Nick), first we cut off some of the the trim molding and tear it back and unscrew a bunch of things so we didn’t mess up the bath tub and that kind of thing. Then we put down a tarp over the bathtub and kind of went to town on it – the bathtub – with sledge hammers. Then after we did about half the side, we had to take out the toilet so we could get a full swing and break that bath-tub up. That thing was big and heavy… made of cast iron, you know. Bring the power-house swing and all that. OK. So after we smashed up the tub and brought all the pieces outside, we had to salvage the trim so we could pull up the floor and check out what was under it. Find out why it was all squishy. After we (wait, I have to pick a scab… OK) got off the trim, we were all really hungry, you know, like starving, so we called Joel, and we were like, “Hey, man, it’s lunchtime, seriously” And we had lunch. And it was awesome. Um. During lunch I refilled my bottle with a little Gatorade and Connor did too (“No I didn’t”) so I refilled MY bottle with a little Gatorade and that was good because I definitely needed a little Gatorade later on. OK. Cool. Cool. So we came back to the bathroom and it was time to rip up the floor, so we ripped up the floor, like we were supposed to. And we checked under it and you know, it was bad. Yeah, it was bad. IN the one corner you could tell there had been a bunch of bugs. The floor was real bad, like a 4x4 area. Curt had to saw through it, break up some wood panels. Saw through it again. Break up some more wood panels. So we finally got to the bottom. And then we had to go to the bathroom, so we went to Dollar General (Wait, you were working in a bathroom and you had to go to a bathroom?) Yeah, because the bathroom wasn’t working. After we went to the bathroom at the Dollar General, I bought a water bottle and a little popsicle thing and I bought Connor a water bottle too. And that was good… refreshing water. We needed some nourishment. And I forgot to mention that with all the bugs and sawdust that was flying up when we were breaking it up, and porcelain chips from when we were breaking up the tub, iron chips potato chips you name it, we were sweeping it up. We had to pick our noses with all the dust in the air and eventually we got those, what do you call them – surgeon masks, medical masks, gas masks, whatever. Then we tore up a little more floor, cleaned up a little bit, tried to go home, then Curt found out his oil leaked in his toolbox and he had to clean that up and that took a few minutes, then we left.