Our 7/10/2010 workday

For those of you in Maryland and the general area, you know that things have been a little hot lately. Our summer build week was during a major heat wave and following week included another heat wave with temperatures breaking 100 degrees for three days. Despite the heat and near 100% humidity in the air, we had no rain in the Baltimore area. We were actually approaching drought conditions, so it was with mixed feelings when we awoke to a rain storm on Saturday. On one hand, we really needed the rain, and it would keep the nasty temperatures down during our workday. But, with no roof on our house yet, we knew it was going to be a soggy day - wet floors, wet lumber, wet workers. After arriving at the warehouse, though, the Habitat staff informed us that they had a magical plan to keep us dry . . . move us into a house with a roof! So we left our roof-less house and headed over to 1412 Mount Street - another house in the Sandtown area sponsored by T Rowe Price. They were short on volunteers for the day, so our crew of 15 headed over there and found an interesting house. Here are a pictures of the house, with Dan and Jess posing in the front "window".



The house is so interesting because it is a row home, like so many others in Baltimore, but its neighboring row homes are missing. It's large window areas also are unique to the area - signifying that this house had a make-over since it was first built in the late 1800's. Unfortunately for us, it is also unique because some mistakes were made in the floor plan of this rehab. So a large portion of our crew spent the day ripping out a portion of the first floor and entrance landing to fix the entrance into the house, which was too steep. We had to make the entrance area larger in area, so more steps could be added to cover the vertical distance without each step being too steep. This meant cutting floor joists, removing the landing, and creating a potentially not-so-safe environment. So we whipped up a temporary wall for support for the joists, and were very careful and cautious in working on that part of the house. The rest of crew tackled laying new joists and subfloor on the second floor. The rain kept the temperature in the house in the mid 70's which made working much more pleasant, but we look forward to working on our own house again soon.

Here are some more pictures of us in action: