In Which Bekah Builds a House

Sort of.

Earlier this year, the station took on a partnership with Habitat for Humanity to help build a house for a family in Fort Wayne. We spent a few months fundraising for the house, and now, we're helping to actually BUILD the house. Each staff member takes a turn at the Habitat site for a day, and this last Friday was my day.

Terrified best describes how I felt about this assignment. I can {and will!} paint all day long. I have vision for furniture placement and picture hanging and all sorts of detail-oriented things. But hammers? Saws? Nails? TERRIFIED. Not my gift. I had been assured about a thousand times {from different people} before heading out to the site that it was okay that I was clueless, because they could train a person.

Well, perhaps they could train a person, but they had never taken on a Bekah.

The day BEFORE my visit to the site, Lynne and I talked about it on air and she joked that I would be kind of like Steve Urkel out there - "Did I do thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?" I bantered back that if only I had a pair of suspenders, I'd do it. Well, don't you just know that my dad is the king of suspenders. My mom lovingly dug through his supply and found me a pair of Crayola green suspenders with SNOWMEN on them and dropped them off at the house.

I was so intimidated by the whole thing that I was far too chicken to actually wear them to the work site, so I made Ryan take my Urkel-esque picture at home before I left.

I packed the suspenders and some snacks in the car and headed north for the day. I arrived on site and went to check in. I knew my day was full where volunteers were concerned. {I think 25 was the max they could have on one day.} What I did NOT know until I arrived and introduced myself to the coordinator was that NONE of them had volunteered through the station. It was a whole group from somewhere else. And Bekah.

OH MY WORD. How glad was I that I had not shown up in my Urkel get-up?? Can you imagine????????
 
I cried. I will not even lie about it. I cried. A normal person would have viewed this as a beautiful opportunity to make new friends, but all I could think was that now 25 strangers who had no idea who I was or what I was there...were about to find out just how bad at construction I actually am.

One thing I do love and appreciate about Habitat is that they're a faith-based organization, so they began the day with prayer and I gathered my wits about me during the prayer.

This particular house is being built as part of a subdivision made up entirely of Habitat homes. I think it's actually a pretty brilliant plan. They had nine houses underway - all in various stages of completion. One had its slab poured on Friday. A couple of others are almost done. Carpet and appliances are in, and only minor finishing touches remain. It's really great for them that they're able to have so many properties in one area, because it allows them to have all their equipment and tools in a central location!

Here I am in front of the WBCL house - the one our family will receive!

Yes. That is me in a hard hat and safety glasses, holding a hammer and wearing an apron full of nails. Let the record show that the hammer and nails never got used by this girl, and the only injury I sustained the entire day was when I poked my eye out with my safety glasses. Only me. {Can we say together...did I do thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?}

Here was the WBCL house in the morning:

They partnered me with a guy and girl from the other group, and together, our job was to wrap the lower level of the house in Tyvek. {For those of you who, like me, are construction-challenged, Tyvek is a waterproofing material.} It was in a roll somewhere between 8 and 10 feet tall, and my job was to hold the roll and guide it in a straight line around the house and hold it still while the other two used the staple guns. It was easy and it was hard. Easy because...duh...it's ROLLING. Hard because it was awkward and heavy!

We worked on the WBCL house all morning and then ate lunch together as a group. {Subway: yummy!} We got back to work in the afternoon and started doing this same thing to another house in the area, but about an hour into it, the other group had to leave FOR THE DAY.

So that left me as the only volunteer! I asked if they had anything a non-non-NON-skilled laborer could do, and they gave me a nifty little magnet on a pole and had me pick up staples, nails, screws and other metal, tire-impaling objects around the site. That was actually my most fun part of the day!

Before I left, I took another picture of the WBCL house, which had gotten not only wrapped, but also had some interior walls added on the second floor!

On my way home, I stopped at Starbucks, and ended up waiting in line so long, my frappe was FREE!! That was a nice bonus!


So that's the story of Bekah building a house. If you need some Tyvek installed, give me a call. I have mad skills.{Ryan said maybe maddening skills is a better description.} My only request is that you put my safety glasses on me.