build a house for Habitat for Humanity

I mailed in a volunteer form yesterday and I can’t wait to get started. Not only will I be helping out the community, but I’ll also be learning construction skills, which is something I desperately need and want to know. I’ve always admired men and women who know their way around a building project.

It’s too bad that rachaeljean had a bad experience. Was the family there? did they thank you. I know that my family and I appreciate every little thing that all the volunteers did for us. I had to do a lot of things that didn’t feel so ‘rewarding’, but in the end, one must realize that before the house can go up, someone has to go out there and mow and get rid of weeds and perform tedious tasks. That’s part of the project. It’s really cool that you all tried this!

My family got a habitat house six or so years ago. We spent hours upon hours upon hours working with habitat. It’s a baddass organization. Helping others makes you feel good also. The way habitat works is that they help a family get a loan at 0% interest. that, with the volunteer labor, helps keep the cost of the home low.

I had a bad experience with Habitat the other week and I don’t want to do this anymore.

When you picture “helping Habitat build a house,” the image that comes to mind (at least for me) is something out of Extreme Makeover: House Edition. Tears of joy, a great ceremony, a day of hard work. Fun, gratifing stuff.

My Habitat experience consisted of painting a shed in the backyard of a house that was already completed, and actually had been lived in for 6 weeks or so already. It was hot, laborius, and tedius – I couldn’t help but wonder why we hadn’t painted the panels BEFORE nailing them up out of reach. And why didn’t they use pre-painted siding like the house, anyway? I’m sure it has to do with budget and things, but still… I felt like I was basically working on a throw-away project that didn’t really help the family out at all (the shed was being used to store Habitat’s equipment in it!)

I stil have 2 hours of volunteering to get in, so I’ll have to go out to another build in the next few weeks or so. Hopefully I get to do something a little more meaningful than stand on a ladder in arborvidae’s painting cracks in boards!

(I put “Worth Doing” because I still think in principle, H4H is a great organization and it’s worth it to help out. My personal experience just kind of sucked is all.)

Looks like I’ll be doing this on September 30th, awesome!!!

=D

Haha, this is an easy one. We’re doing this as a community service project at school. It’s in the can, baby!

Plus, how cool is this? I’ve always wanted to do this.

I must say that when I participated back in 1993, it was one of the most fufilling moments in my emotional history. I’ve never been one to be moved to tears by peoples’ reactions but we were able to be there when they handed the keys over a few months later.

One of the GREATEST things I’ve done.

Rockin experience. Nothin else like it. Do it. Again. and Again.

I actually joined the board of the local habitat – so I will at least be helping on some level, if not actually getting my hands dirty in the short term. As I understand the basics, there is some training to do before you can work on a house. Not sure how that works, but it will come with time.