Day: September 12, 2016
Day 1 – Altagracia’s Home/School
This morning we were so excited to get started on repairing Altagracia’s home and school. It had rained a little last night, so her floor had several puddles scattered around on it.
Allen,Reuben and his work partner climbed up on the roof and started pulling nails and the old sheets of metal off.
As the sheets came down we hauled them off and made a pile.
As lumber was removed, the creatures pulled the old nails out of the good pieces of wood so we could reuse them.
All day long, nails, boards, posts, concrete and metal were pulled, cut and pounded.
After talking with Reuben we found out that this home has been standing for almost 300 years (obviously with several repairs through that time), and has had 6 generations live in it.
We made several trips over to the lumber yard and hardware store for nails and wood.
While pulling some beams down we realized that we will need to replace a wall separating Altagracia’s school room and kitchen. The wood was so rotten. So…that came down too!
Altagracia was so sweet to bring us water, making sure we rested and hydrated.
As the afternoon moved on, we began seeing some serious progress.
We noticed that Altagracia was gathering up every little splinter of wood to use as kindling when she cooks, so we kept a bag that we filled as we worked and cleaned. She also gathered all the old bent nails and wire and took some of them to a wall in her back yard when she was pushing them into the wall and securing the wire so her vegetable plants could climb them. Jude and I helped her with that. Waste not, want not…
The concrete mix was delivered so we can start on the floors soon as well.
This evening when we finally left, we were so tired, but feel good about the progress we made today.
The roof is framed in and tomorrow we should be done with it and will begin on painting walls and possibly pouring the concrete floor. We piled our dirty bodies into the dinghy, looking forward to showers, a bite to eat and climbing into bed.
Tomorrow morning we will meet at 8am and continue on. What a wonderful day we’ve had!
Adventures of a Tribe 