Day 3 of work in New Orleans

Today was our third day of work here. My team (six of us, plus a staff project manager) is working on a smallish three-bedroom house near the camp (the camp is here), owned by a single mom who works at a bank. I'm not sure how many kids she has--at least two, I think. They are living in a FEMA trailer in their front yard right now. I haven't been able to meet them, since she is at work all day.

I haven't taken any pictures (stupid--should have done the before/after thing, but I wasn't thinking on Monday), but basically the house had been gutted, like almost everything has to be if it's going to be repaired. Apart from just plain old destruction, the mold is the problem--most of the homes sat in water for 2-3 weeks, in the heat, and so everything had to be thrown out. Everything--walls, furniture, floors, etc. From the water markings on her door, it looks like the water here was 3-4 feet deep at its worst point.

When we came in, there was a concrete floor and walls that had been freshly painted (probably the week before), but no appliances, no lights, and no water. We have spent most of our time on the floors--laying new tile in the two bathrooms and the laundry room, and new wood laminate in the kitchen, dining room, and living room. The project manager is a plumber, so he has put in all the fixtures and toilets and things for the bathrooms. It's clearly almost time for them to move back in, maybe next week, depending on how finished they want things to be when they move in.

I have been mostly brute labor, since I've never done any of this stuff before. I've helped to scrape the bathroom floors (they had some old glue or something on them, probably from previous flooring), cut the tile, grout around the tiles, caulk around a new back door and in the new bathtub walls, and paint. Very practical skills, compared to my normal daily activities!

Tomorrow we might finish laying the wood laminate floors, and we'll definitely finish most everything in the bathrooms.

Yesterday we had to stop work early because of big thunderstorms in the area, which caused both our worksite and the camp to lose power for a few hours. There was a tornado maybe 10-15 miles away, but we just had a lot of rain and wind. And then the internet at camp was out, probably because none of us knew how to reset it after a power outage. Tragedy! But today all is back to normal.

And yes, I am thrilled because Uno won the Westminster Dog Show, the first beagle to do so. Thanks to all of you who emailed me about this important news. :)