Habitat for Humanity

The wife came home yesterday with application forms for Habitat for humanity. (As if we weren't spending enough time working on our own house [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] .) It is something she always wanted to do. They are doing a "Woman Build" project in the city next to us (Haverhill). A few of the ladies she works with have signed up. There are three houses to be built on land donated by the city. Their goal is to build one of the three by mostly women. She signed me up for one of the other houses [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img] .

I think it will be a great experience for her to see what is involved in building a house. Might come in handy if we ever build a barn or a house someday.

Anybody else here done this before? Care to share your experiences.

I've worked on a number of habitat homes in our area. It is very satisfying and I almost hate to say this but it is a great opportunity to learn some new building skills without having to try on your own house.

My first outing I fully intended to show up and be a slave to someone who knew what they were doing. I was looking forward to simply following directions rather than having to do the planning and organizing I have to do at work. I was quickly tapped out by one of the other leaders based on my skill level and ended up leading the truss crew. A bit intimidating as I had never set trusses before but there were plenty of others who had and I learned from them as we moved on.

Although I didn't get my mindless day of hammering it turned out to be one of my most satisfying experiences. We got the whole house framed in one day, met the future homeowner and I took away a new skill (which I have used since).

You won't regret doing it and the only thing keeping me away from it the last couple of years has been time. I will get back into it eventually and will take my boys along too [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

BTW, if you show up with a well worn toolbelt full of serious, well used tools expect to be tapped out as a crew leader [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

Habitat can be a lot of fun and a great learning tool for you.

hazmat,
I can't work on any Habitat houses here in town. It would be a conflict of interest they say. But if I could, I'd be there in a heartbeat. Most of these future homeowners are very decent people. I get to meet a lot of them inspecting the work the volunteer labor has done.