Our two weeks are over and they were great! We highly recommend it to any of you looking for something different to do. Everyone in our group got along so well... it was sort of like VISTA but in a very shortened way, and we came away with a whole new set of friends. And we accomplished a lot more and a lot less than we expected but together we provided them with a 1,000 hours of extra labor which put them much closer to getting the houses completed. The last day was rainy so we mostly worked on inside projects except for the crazy Irishman and Polishman who were working on their PHD's (post hole drilling) in a light rain. They did manage to get their holes dug, concrete poured and posts set and filled in for one of the porches.
The VW did us proud and held it's head up high next to the big RV's. Patty, especially, is looking forward to staying with friends on the trip west this summer. The VW is comfortable and cozy but...
We just discovered that we hadn't set up this blog to allow for comments. I think we've got that corrected so you should be able to add your own comments in the future. We'll try this again when we start heading west on June 12th.

Dennis, our site supervisor, invited us all to his home last night. It is absolutely beautiful. He and his wife built it from a kit 23 years ago. It's like half of a grapefruit turned upside down and set into the ground with windows on the southeast and southwest sides and the rest covered with earth. It's 50 feet in diameter at the bottom providing the living space on the first level and bedroom space on the second level. All sorts of interesting angles and spaces. Attached in another earth structure for the workshop and garage. The temperature when unheated is the 52 degrees ground temperature and is very easy to heat in the winter and cool in the summer. They said it was very easy to build. Do John & I need another project???
Another day of door hanging, vinyl, roof and porch work.
Tonight is John's community chorus concert in Sherburne. All the work crew is going to either provide support or make cat calls... They said if they see me fall asleep that will be a good indication.

Some photos from today's build. Patti cutting the last strips of vinyl siding. Larry & Ted are working on completing the last side of house one. John, Sean & Dottie completed the gable end without getting electrocuted.
A field trip tonight to our project manager's earth house in Cooperstown.

A new week begins

We all came back refreshed and ready for another week at work. Red our dog went for a week's vacation at Bruce & Leigh's as the forecast this week calls for some rain and our social calendar is filling rapidly for evening activities.
We are within sight of finishing the siding on 3 sides of the third house which will complete the exterior fabric of two of the three buildings. The doors are all hung in house two thanks to the door crew. We took pictures to send then realized the disk was not in the camera. So much for good intentions.
A new heater in the VW has made the evening and mornings much more pleasant.

The door hanging team successfully completed all the single doors in one house and their first double doors! A mighty effort!!!

The porch team on house two and the siding team on the other house. John says "vinyl siding is the pits to install. Thank heavens for caulk!

This if Friday evening and we get time off the weekend. Our RV buddies have us lined up to go as a group to the Robin Williams movie "RV" or something like that. We had seen the previews and deemed it a must miss but going with this folks should still be fun.

Photo 1 is John at the end of yesterday. In case you can't tell there were snores coming from that body.

Picture 2 is our group this morning. The guy on the right is our construction manager, Dennis. He's an absolutely wonderful man to work for!

Photo 3 - The homeowner is the Melissa (sorry we weren't able to upload the photo yesterday) and the guy is Byron, one of our fellow workers. The kitchen cabinets for the 3 houses we are working on have just arrived.

The Work Begins

Days 2 & 3 - Our first day on the job, Monday, was varied and interesting. These folks are building 3 houses at the same time and they are all enclosed so we are doing finish work and exterior add-on tasks - i.e. - John & Larry dug three 4 ft. deep holes and mixed and poured concrete footers in those and two others. We also worked on cutting and attaching window jambs. Patty & Carol spent most of the day hanging interior doors w/jambs. We have several more to go so willl have plenty to keep us busy for a few days.
We've met the owner, Melissa, of one of the houses. Her kitchen cabinets are being delivered in the photo and we hope to help put them in while we're here.