Good To Be Back At Work

Sunday, April 3, 2022

Last Saturday we returned to Laurel, MS to assist with the Restore Jones County efforts to complete the rebuilding of homes from the December 2019 and April 2020 (Easter) tornadoes. As you may remember we have worked here twice before, Spring 2021 and Fall 2021. We joined the NOMADS team already in place, for our transition week. One other couple joined for this week as well – brand new NOMADS on their first project, Tami and Craig. It was great getting to know them and we look forward to working with them again soon! We also had Suzanne as leader, and Charley and Joe and Les on our team. We all worked on the house that we ended with last fall. On our last day last fall we did some demo on this house. Since then, there has a lot of work done by plumbers, electricians, and drywall people. Most of the flooring has also been installed. The team spent most of the week installing doors, trimming around the doors, installing baseboards, completing the installation of the vinyl plank flooring and caulking. The doors were the major challenge as there are no two doors the same and there are no standard door sizes in the house. Everything has been a custom build and very tedious.

This is how we left the Henry house last year.

And this is how we found the Henry house when we returned.

Max and Anne were pulled from that location for Wednesday and Thursday, to work on one of the houses the Mennonite’s built. Unfortunately, the person installing the stove scratched the flooring when moving the stove across the room. We had to remove damaged planks that spanned about two thirds of the room. The removal went fairly easily, but, reinstalling was considerably more difficult. By the end of the day Thursday, we were celebrating the completion of the flooring as well as the re-installing the base and caulking. All that remains is to touchup the paint on the lower walls just above the baseboard and the baseboard itself. It was a successful week with much accomplished.

To replace the flooring we had to remove the baseboards, pull the nails from it, remove all the old caulk and then re-install it after the flooring was replaced. Re-caulking it was lots of fun.

We had our traditional Thursday evening dinner with the team and then said our goodbyes because everyone was leaving Friday. Friday we made a quick trip back to Alabama to have Max’s sutures removed and check on Aunt Helen’s house and then back to Laurel. We left at 4:15am and were back in Laurel by 3:30pm.

Wednesday evening we went under a tornado watch and and gathered in the church for pizza. Later we went under a tornado warning.

Waiting out the tornado warning – bottom floor, central room with no windows. It just happened to be the nursery.

Saturday we welcomed Anne and Dale, Sandy and Steve, and Stel and Jodi to Laurel. Sunday the rest of our team, Jim and Dee, and Dave and Deb arrived. We are looking forward to another great week with this fun group of hard working NOMADS.