Christmas in October

Last Saturday we took part with 6,000 other metro volunteers and worked in the inner city for Christmas in October. It is an event that covered over 400 homes that are need of dire repair for those who met the organizations criteria. Criteria seemed to be based upon age, income, and highly needed improvements.

The home we worked on was a small bungalow that needed a ceiling to be replaced in a bedroom, stairs to be enforced with bracing, basement windows needed repair, mortar repaired in basement, fascia to be placed on sides of house, tree trimmed, some plumbing replaced, a replaced shower head, and lastly the placement of a handle and lock on a door.

My main contribution was the placement of a door handle and lock. If you look at the original photo, the owner only had a pad lock as her side door lock! A pad lock! So I had to bore a large hole for the handle, then use a drill to make room for the trigger lock (*which was tough since the door was old and thin-making sure not to do any damage to it), then we had to replace the side paneling from the dry rot that was originally oriented along the side of the door frame. When I gave the keys to the homeowner she was thrilled that she had a real lock and key to that door, I am uncertain at how many years she lived at the house with a padlock. The pad lock was kept on the door as extra security if she felt that it was necessary.

H painted the fascia a gray color and placed extra supports under the stairwell that led to the basement.

Much more work could of been done, but given the volunteer force of 20, we accomplished quite a bit of handy-work. The team was quite thrilled to check off all items on the to-do list.