Habitat for Humanity

My first experience with Habitat for Humanity was a fun one. I had never done it before, so I didn't know exactly what to expect. I assumed we would get there with huge stacks of wood, plans and people to tell us what to do. My construction experience consists of the houses I have built in Mexico, which I just do what I'm told, so I don't "really" know what I'm doing. Then there is my basement, which my brother-in-law did most of the measuring and a lot of the actual building, again, I just did what I was told. Then the rest of the framing was led by my friend Chris, who had me do a lot of the work, but I was really just doing what I was told. So I show up at the HFH build expecting the same thing, but come to find out, all of the wood is pre-cut, pre-numbered and pre-marked. Man is that a time saver and perfect for a bunch of volunteers. When we got there, I went to my friend and traveling missionary buddy, Chad's tent, he was a leader. I figured, I know how he works, so it would be a lot easier to understand what we were to do, plus, we have a lot of fun no matter what we are doing. You would get a page out of a plan book with a number on it. The number on the plans corresponds with the numbers on the wood. For example, if you were building wall 112, you would find all of the wood with the number 112 stamped on it, bring it to the assembly area, lay it all out, then start nailing. It was really easy, as long as the wood could be found and was cut correctly. For the most part, it was, so we flew through, but the last house was a bit of a mess. We had to custom build a few walls, but finished most of them before we ran out of wood and time. I don't know if HFH uses this same method all of the time, but man it sure made building walls in a mass production situation easier. I hope when they go to set them up, they fit well and are constructed to meet the standards. When you count on volunteers, not professionals, you don't always get the quality. I watched as several people nailed their boards almost on the marks they were supposed to. I'm anal, (shut up Marcy, I admitted it) so I want to do everything as perfect as possible. Maybe everything doesn't need to be 100% square, but why not do it anyway. As every where you go, there are always people who make things, well, interesting. On my first shift, we were told to decide which end of your work area was going to be the top and bottom of the wall, and keep it like that for every wall so everyone knew what was going on. This worked my first and second shift, we tried to be organized, do everything the same way and get all of the volunteers involved. The first shift built a bunch of walls, I think 35. We were moving like a well oiled machine. My second shift, Chad asked me to run the table while he went in-between the table and the group working on the ground to be sure we were doing everything correctly. I had a bunch of people who hadn't built with us yet, so I explained the number situation, we started laying out the wall, I asked for a second opinion, once confirmed, we nailed it together. We were working even better than the first shift. I was really proud of the number of walls we built and the quality of them. Then we came to my third shift. Chad asked me to run the table again, which I started to do, until a guy with a leader shirt showed up. I figured, since he had a leader shirt, I'm going to let him lead and we'll fly again. Few problems with this. One, I don't think he had volunteered any other time during the weekend, because I had to explain to him a few things that he would have known if he had been there earlier. Two, he wasn't interested in your opinion, comments or ideas. There were several walls that had to be modified, but he wasn't listening to me, no biggie, I figured he knew what he was doing. He also decided that the top of the building area was this way this time and the opposite way the next time, a little confusing if you walk up to the wall late. I thought they had really screwd up, until he explained that he was making things more difficult for everyone. (OK, he didn't say that, but he was) We got down to our last wall and we were missing some of the wood. I told him that two of the boards that he was looking for didn't exist, they were trim and we hadn't had any all weekend, they put them on when they assemble the house. He wasn't hearing it. He decided that we didn't have enough wood to finish they wall, but we did if you didn't try to add the trim boards, which weren't supposed to be on. I mentioned it a second time to his wife. I told her the boards weren't there and we could just do the rest and we would be good. She wasn't hearing it. She turned the sheet into Chad and said we were done. Chad asked if we could go ahead and finish the wall on the table, she claimed we didn't have enough wood, which I again said we did, you didn't need the trim boards. She said I should have told her sooner. Two things with that, one, I did, two, you are the leader, shouldn't you know that? They finally decided to try and finish it after Chad took them over and showed them enough wood to finish up, I went to talk to our mission Juarez leaders that had stopped by. I checked out the wall after they had finished it and they had found enough wood to finish, and add the trim boards. So even after I had told them three times and Chad had told them once, they still did it there way. Like I said, there are always people who make things interesting. That was a minor incident, the experience was great and I'd do it again. The only side effect, my 40 year old wrist is killing. It's nice to have a friend who is a physical therapist, she is here now and volunteered to fix me up. I think I'll take her up on that.