Austin Habitat for Humanity

Oct 29. I had the opportunity to join another group of volunteers for the Austin Habitat for Humanity. It was just one day of building whatever part of a particular house that was chosen for our group. There were 20 of us -- mostly IT people who have no previous homebuilding experience. It turned out that we were doing ceilings for the day. The house was in the Sendero Hills neighborhood, located off Sandshof Drive, 78724.

You can see my back in the picture. The drywall is stacked close to where I was standing in the picture.

So I learned that ceilings are made of 5/8" thick drywall (as opposed to 1/2" drywall for walls). The pieces were 4' x 12' and weighed 110lbs each piece. Kaya pala ang hirap buhatin e mabigat pala yun.

In the upper right corner of the picture we can see the ceiling in one of the rooms -- I was one of the 4 people who installed the ceiling in that room! {Pat on the back ahem}. After that room we had to do the hallway, which was difficult to do because the width was not the same all throughout. And on top of that, a lot of people were using the hallway to bring drywall into the back rooms. So we had to do starts and stops to accommodate them. Plus there were fire sprinklers, vents, and electrical sockets that needed small circular windows on the drywall in the correct place and with the correct diameter.

We were told that about 2 tons of sheetrock was installed that day. We started at about 8am in 45 deg F weather, and ended at 4pm in 75 deg F temp, sore to the core.

A very productive day.