Day 1

We have had a great first day here in Appalachia, VA.  Our housing situation is stretching some of the folks, but we are all good and safe.  No A/C and outdoor shower trailer (with no hot water) is definitely new for several folks.  All in all, we have spirits are good and bodies and minds are tired.

Here are updates from the job site from the kid's perspective!  

Group 1:

Today we met our first home owner’s (we will likely visit other homes throughout the week). They were very friendly, and have had workers from ASP visit their home for the past few years. Our focus in this home is to help finish up their kitchen ceiling. Today, we spent the whole day sanding the mud used to seal in the dry wall (installed by a previous group), and enjoyed a very lovely dry wall dust shower. It was repetitive, and took a lot of work, but our group managed to sand down the ceiling to be mostly smooth and flat. We followed up by spending lots of time cleaning all of the dry wall dust off the floors and everywhere else the dust drifted off to. Tomorrow, we will visit the same house to finish the ceiling, including fixing small holes and painting to make the ceiling look as nice as possible.

Group 2:

We ate breakfast and helped clean up after, then we packed our lunches, and went to the Mrs.molly’s house, she was really nice. We cleaned up the place, and placed all of their furniture outside of the house, so it wasn’t in the way when we cleaned. Then we went to the gas station to use the bathroom and get some snacks, then we came back to their house to sit down, relax, and eat. When we finished lunch we went back to working, and put on protection to remove the ceiling tiles, then we got a trash bag to put the ceiling tiles in. We took several water breaks in between working, and we finished taking the tiles down. We put them on the side of the house for the people to take care of them. After we moved all the furniture back in, and plants, because there was supposed to be a storm coming soon, and we didn’t want anything to break or get knocked over, and that was our day, pretty productive.👍

Group 3:

We had so much fun rebuilding a porch for Sheila. They were so sweet to all of us and they were very patient. We ripped up the old boards off the front porch, drilled in new boards and added sister joists to the foundation to make it more sturdy. We got popsicles from Shelia’s sister, Rhonda and we got to play with two adorable kittens named Socks and Garfield. 

Sheila was very appreciative of all our hard work and looks forward to seeing us tomorrow.  

Note with pictures:  One of our job sites, the homeowners have requested to not post photos of their home.  So that team will just have photos of the team outside of the home.