Week 2 Completed

Saturday, December 11, 2020

This has been a very busy week.  We have had a great team and accomplished so much.  The only downside of the week was that we were in two locations all week which meant some of us didn’t get to work with our new NOMAD Dave. All week, we had Max, Stel, Dave and Jim at the Wesley Foundation.  Anne, Jodi, Betty and Tom were at the house.  Really proud of the Wesley team for putting their heads together and developing a plan for diverting water from the Wesley building and hopefully solve the water incursion problem.  Jim and Dave did a great job implementing the plan and now we are forecast to get some rain tomorrow and Sunday so we will probably be making a trip to the Wesley to check on the diversion.  The door that Stel and Max built into the upstairs hallway at Wesley looks really nice.  It needs a little trim paint and it will be job complete.  After completing the “aqua duct” as the Wesley director has name it, Jim and Dave started on the removal of the carpet squares from the “The Big Room”.  With water stains and food stains they really needed to go away.  The squares were really stuck to the concrete and the work seemed somewhat overwhelming until a machine was rented and the Jim and Dave amazingly completed the job Thursday afternoon.  The very sticky glue remains on the concrete and that will be a project for next week.

Meanwhile back at the disaster house, it was also a busy week.  The front door repair was completed by Tom and the entry now looks so much more inviting.  Tom also installed all the threshold transition stripes.  As we are accustomed to seeing, there are several changes in the floor level throughout the house. It took some ingenuity to custom build some of the transitions.  Now things are much safer and less of a trip hazard.  After Jodi completed the painting of the bi-fold doors, a lot of base, and the priming and painting of the laundry room, Tom got the doors hung late Thursday and that room now just needs a couple pieces of base installed to be complete.  Betty and Anne have completed the work in the family room after repainting all the walls and trim.  It looks very good.  Betty is amazing with the fine work of trimming out the baseboard and ceilings. There was a lot more painting completed including priming and painting the living room and half bath and priming the main bath.  There were many more problems solved and smaller projects completed at the house and we think we will be able to finish the house this next week.

This morning we had to say goodbye to Betty and Tom and Dave.  The team accomplished so much this week with their help.  We will miss them and hope to work with them again in 2021.  Today we took the bikes to the Longleaf Trace, a rail trail in Hattiesburg, and rode for 15 miles.  The entire trail is about 40 miles but we were not that ambitious.   We rode a “wilderness” section that was beautifully wooded.  It was a quiet, peaceful ride with just a few others on the trail.  Of course, keeping with the rules and traditions, as established by our dear friend Donna, at the end of the ride, we had ice cream!  We stopped at The Hub City Creamery to have Hershey ice cream, something we don’t recall ever having before.  It was delicious! We will see what tomorrow brings.  Have a great weekend!