This has been a very busy week for us here in Minot, ND, and our last week for this project period.  We were privileged to have the United Methodist Bishop for the Dakotas and the District Superintendent for the Minot area, visit with us on the job site on Wednesday.  The bishop is the gentleman in the middle of the picture, and the super in the gentleman on the right.  The gentleman in the blue shirt is the UMCOR representative in the Minot area.

As a I mentioned, this was the last week that Sharon and I had here at Minot.  We will be leaving on Saturday morning headed for our next project in Rathdrum, Idaho.  We will be going to a UMC camp to do what ever work we will be assigned.  From the posting of the job it looks like a lot of repairs, landscaping, and painting.  Church camps are always needing maintenance and repairs.

The team really worked hard this week on trying to get two houses ready for the families to get back into their homes.  We had new leaders come in last week and increase our team to 10 people.  We were able to split the team up and work on two houses at the same time.  Some of the team went to Jeff's house and started installing the new flooring, the rest to Magdalina's house to continue work on finishing the wall board and starting work on the outside to get ready for the siding.  Both houses are rapidly starting to look like a real home again.

At Jeff's house there is still a lot of finish work to do, but due to supply of materials it came to a halt for a short time.  On Monday, Gary, Pat, and new team members Bill and Cheryl went to Jeff's to start installing the hard wood flooring in the living room, kitchen, dining room, hall, and bedrooms.  Tom and Evelyn, another new couple, swapped out with Bill and Cheryl on Wednesday, as helpers with Gary and Pat.  The floor is looking great.

Still haven't figured out how to change the date and time on this new little camera.  Anyway,  here are Gary and Pat installing the hard wood flooring in Jeff's house.  Gary makes it look easy.  As you can see the floor looks great.

The finished hallway in Jeff's house.

Pat looking at their handy work.  Really nice.

The rest of the team worked hard at Madelina's house getting ready for the siding.  We were hoping that the windows would be delivered during the week also.  We could not go too far with the siding without the windows.

We still had some preparations to do prior to the siding going up.  We needed to replace some wood that had rotted over the years, and scrape and sand some of the trim work so we could get it painted prior to installing the siding.  We sure don't want to get paint all over the nice pretty new siding do we.

I had to cut out a piece of the trim along the roof here that had rotted from water running off the roof.  Mel, I am using my oscillating saw to cut it out with, worked great.

Proudly displaying out home church t-shirt from Fairview United Methodist Church in Dawson, Alabama.

Jim is scraping old paint prior to painting the trim and overhang.

Tom is using a wire brush to break some of the flaking paint off of the trim.

There was still a little finish work to be done on the wall board mudding.  The ladies tackled that job.

Liz is putting on a smooth finish coat of mud just above the door to a closet.

Evelyn is working on the corners of the wall board to make the sure the finish is smooth.

Pat is lighting up the room with her florescent carpenter's apron.  She had to wear her laser protection glasses to protect her eyes from the bright light.

Pat protected her eyes, but forgot about the rest of her face.  She really likes to put herself into her work.

Now onto the siding.

Just to let you know, none of the team had ever installed vinyl siding before.  Gary, being a retired home builder, gave us a quick lesson on how to get started to make sure that the siding went up level and straight.  He did a good job as you can see by the progress we have made.  You can see by the following pictures what the house looked like on Thursday morning.  We had installed the starter row, a metal strip that the first row of siding would attach too, on Wednesday.  Jim and Tom spent a lot of time measuring where that first row would start and marking it with a chalk line to make sure that's where we put the starter strip.  They did a wonderful job because the siding is going up very level.

We got started first thing on Thursday morning with the installation of the siding.  The first couple of rows were the hardest.  Not only were we learning how to install it, but we had to make several cuts around wires, dryer vents, electrical connections, and other things attached to the house.  You can see that we did pretty good.  We had to stop just below where the windows will be installed.  It will be hard to work around the window openings and keep the siding straight.

 

 

Sharon and I have had a great time here in Minot, but it is time for us to take a break and go onto our next project.  We are headed for Twin-Lo Camp in Rathdrum, Idaho.  But, before we get there we are going to take a week and let out bodies get some rest.  I don't know how much real rest we will get because we are going to stop at the Glacier National Park on our way.  We have never been this far west so we plan on trying to see as much of it we can.  I will take you all on our journey as we progress on out way to Twin-Lo Camp.  I may wait until next weekend before I post again, but don't worry you won't miss a thing.

 

I hope you have enjoyed your stay with us here in Minot, if you did, you will like it when we come back in August to do another four week work period. 

 

You all have been great traveling companions, so let's load up the RV and get started for the next leg of the adventure.

 

And above all else, remember that

 

God Loves You

 

Gary