7 posts tagged “gautier”

Today when I woke up, I could see I wasn't feeling any better, and possibly worse, so I just stayed in bed. Nikki brought me hot tea and toast from the dining hall, and more Vitamin C packets to drink. It was kind of sad watching everyone go off to their work days, and I felt bad about not getting to say good-bye to Miss Janie & Mister Bob. Our group was planning to only work till 2:00, so they could be back in time for a service at 4:30, and then get all packed up to leave right after dinner. I figured I'd best try to get as well as I could before a 21-hour bus ride...  So I just laid in bed on my top bunk all day, not really sleeping, but just going in and out of a fever-ish haze - at one point I completely couldn't catch my breath - it was really very scary, but a very nice staff woman got me some water and ice once I finally was able to breathe.

So Nikki was assigned the task of today's photodocumentation:

A final lunch in the boat house...

 

Nikki got a good shot of the grassy marshes I mentioned before...

 

 

Some final puppy-time was enjoyed...

 

 

 

 

Nikki missed the shot because he moved too fast, but apparently Eddie said he'd always wanted to kiss a Southern Belle, and he grabbed Miss Janie and laid one on her! I gather she enjoyed it! [I think he's lucky he didn't get slapped...] 

 

The crew all signed a piece of house siding for Miss Janie to keep as a memento of the week...

 

 

 

 

 

Miss Janie gave everyone bunches of Mardi Gras beads, and they all posed for a group photo in front of the house! I was sorry I missed all that!

Wow, when I woke up today I could barely move. Fever, chills, stabbing pains in my head. I was feeling perfectly fine even as late as 10:00 last night! I got up anyway and shuffled into the dining hall for some hot tea, which I drank in a semi-conscious state with my head in my hands. Breakfast was ready early this time, so I went up and got some "oatmeal bake" - it seemed like something I would probably like under different circumstances, but I was only able to take a few nibbles. I think lots of people were very solicitous of me during breakfast, but really I was pretty out of it. After taking an Advil and a cup of Vitamin C, I decided to still go to work though, figuring I would feel better if I got out and did something, and I could just choose something to do where I could take it easy.

 

I did help (slowly, with breaks) to start painting the living room walls a nice off-white shade. Miss Janie said she loved it!

After a bit, though, I took some more Advil and went and laid down in the van - I guess I napped because when Nikki woke me up it was lunchtime!

After lunch, I worked on painting and touching up the trim on the front porch, where Alex had caulked. That was something nice and slow and easy. At one point Miss Janie gave me a nice glass of iced tea, since she could see I wasn't feeling well. I must've done something else too, but I really can't recall what.

Here are some additional photos from today's work (others were busier than I was):

Also, Al & Alex got the whole rest of the bathroom mudded, and a decision was made to re-drywall the ceiling, which had been left a patchwork mess by someone previously.

 

Here are Brian, Alex, and TL trying to coordinate the lowering of the scaffold for the day... it was a little like riverdance...

Denise ended up having to leave during the afternoon - her aunt had passed away that morning, and she was able to arrange a flight home from Mobile Friday morning, which meant someone had to drive her to the airport this afternoon. :-(

It rained last night, so there were little gnats out today - the kind that bite really HARD! So those of us who could, spent as much time as possible working inside. It started out as a damp day, too, but then the rain held off yet again, and it turned into a pretty day, aside from the gnats (Mister Bob called them G-nats...).

Painting the "magnolia room" - Miss Janie says every Mississippi home must have a magnolia room. By that she means that the decor will involve lots of magnolias when it's done - it should be very pretty with this eggshell paint, and the cream-colored ceramic tile she chose.

The siding crew spent most of today working on trimming out the bow window - it was very complicated with all the odd angles and the number of individual windows. They also sided the little wall by the front porch that the Entry guys had had to take apart yesterday. So the front porch is all done, except for the plank that's planned for the floor - I think the next group will be doing that, because there's something else that goes down first.

 

Just to give you a feel for the rest of the neighborhood...

Mister Bob says everyone has an El Camino, haha.

I wish I had taken some photos of the houses we passed on the way to the jobsite every day. There were clearly quite a number of them that hadn't been cleaned out yet since the hurricane, and lots of others that were in progress.

 

 

 

A few more work photos:

At the end of the day today, I volunteered to be one of the ones on the 2nd van, so others could get back to camp earlier this time. It was actually pretty interesting... first we had to stop at Lowe's to pick up some pipe for this other jobsite we were going to, then when we arrived there, they were ready to pack up most of their tools - they figured they'd be done with their job mid-day tomorrow. They had just finished hanging a front door on the little house - that wasn't part of the original scope of work, because the owner hadn't requested it, but the crew saw it was needed, so they fixed it. I talked to the owner a little bit, a young woman living alone (I don't think there were kids). She said when she first came back after the hurricane, she thought her house was OK because it was still standing, but when she opened the door, water gushed out, and everything inside was all a jumble. She said she had to wade through hip-deep water to get to the house, and then found out later that the local alligator farm had lost a lot of its residents!

Dinner tonight was beef stew, not too bad - hearty anyway. Also more of the pasta salad we had last night, which is really very good. After dinner and cleaning up, we all ended up back in the dining hall playing cards while they showed a video about Biloxi right after the hurricane. Nikki taught us to play Egyptian Rat Screw, which I'm afraid is one of those games I'm no good at - requires faster reflexes than I'll ever hope to have. Then Gordon came over and introduced himself, and showed us how to play Left-Center-Right, which was a fun little dice game (he pointed out that it's more fun with dimes than with chips...). Then we taught Gordon how to play spoons, which as usual, got a little violent! I'm a little better at that one, but still no match for the lightning-fast reflexes of my progeny, so I spelled s-p-o-o-n first, and went to play Left-Center-Right with another group. All in all, a very enjoyable evening of fun and games!

Today was "cereal day" for breakfast, which meant our choice of grits or oatmeal, plus cold cereals available. Of course, I chose grits, which I always do when I can get them - I like them with lots of butter & honey! Today Pastor Sandy and her gang decided to just make all the sandwiches with everything on them, and bagged them in bunches of 6 - so we took enough for our 19 people, plus bags they'd made of snacks, etc.

Before heading out, Al & Alex picked up some corner tape for mudding, and some corner trowels. They were going to be working in the bathroom and hallways, and needed some more specialized items - the supply guy gave them a little bit of a hard time about it, since (as we found at this house) some people were using corner tape for the straight joints, which really messes things up.

So here are pretty much just a bunch of photos of our day... rain was called for, but Miss Janie had told us yesterday it wouldn't rain, and by golly it didn't!

The entryway crew ran into an electrical problem (which at one point involved some actual shocks and some rather un-church-like language, haha), so they had to remove some of the wrap material on the front porch to fix it.

Here are some of the kitchen cabinets we schlepped upstairs yesterday - still in boxes. It seems that there was some sort of major miscommunication or perhaps even disagreement between Mister Bob and Lowe's and Camp Victor, and in the end it's been decided that all the cabinets will go back, and they'll be re-ordered elsewhere. I'm not quite clear why.

 

More work... (we just keep moving along with our assignments). 

Lunchtime... when you work hard, you've gotta relax hard!

Back to work... Miss Janie came out onto the front porch as we were painting the railing, and told us how happy she was to have it nice and white again - it's her favorite porch (actually I think she referred to it as a balcony). I can see why, too, because it's the one that gets the morning sunshine coming up over the Gulf in the distance.

I spent pretty much the whole day up on the extension ladder, painting porch railings front and back. I have dents in my thighs!

All throughout the day, Mister Bob wanders around from crew to crew, offering advice (some solicited, some not). Most of us were able to eventually gracefully get back to work, but at one point he cornered Al & Alex in the bathroom for 40 minutes. His cell phone went off several times, but he didn't hear (or ignored) it.

 

At one point, I saw a crane on the shore. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but it's similar to the great blue herons we have at home, and it made a gronk-y noise like they do - but I think down south they're usually cranes.

Al developed a bad headache throughout the day, which then made him nauseous, and when he got on the 2nd van to come home, he said he feared he might not make it without being sick. So when the 2nd van wasn't back to camp yet when I went in for dinner, I was a little concerned! But it turned out that they just made a detour to WalMart for supplies, and also the little crew at the other house wasn't quite done yet. But still, it was a long ride home for part of our crew!

Dinner was spaghetti, with garlic toast, and green beans - it sure hit the spot!

Nikki & I started in on finishing painting in eggshell some interior doors that were laying in the bedroom; last week's group had painted all the trimwork in that room, and the bi-fold closet doors, but there were 2 wooden doors that still needed done (which Mister Bob bragged he'd gotten for $20 each at a clearance sale - meaning we had to scrape off stickers & gunk, and paint over scrapes and scuffs).

But as soon as Bob 1 arrived with the exterior paint, we all started working on that, since the weather was calling for rain tomorrow, so we wanted to get as much done outside as possible today. Some of the new siding had already been installed on the front porch area, so that needed to be painted in situ. Then we started getting out strips of siding and pre-painting them, laying them out on the grass to dry as we went. We figured that way once our "siding crew" was ready to start putting it up, even if it was raining the rest of the week, it would be painted.

The siding crew got to work removing some of the old siding and trim around the bow window, which had some strange angles to it, and needed some remedial structural work as well, before they could think about re-siding it.

 

Remedial mudding work continued in the living room...

 

 

 

Around noon, a delivery truck arrived from Lowe's, with Miss Janie's new kitchen cabinets which we carried up into the living room (though Mister Bob only accepted some of them because he said they got the order wrong), a big stack of Pergo flooring (unsure where that goes, so we just carried it upstairs), and two pallets full of a beautiful cream-colored ceramic floor tile for the bathroom, bedroom, and kitchen, which we stacked under the house (no more room up in the house till we're ready for it).

 

 

 

Lunchtime... there's a cool little boathouse where we stored our coolers and ate lunch. Half of it was a dock, with a sling and winch system for lifting a boat out of the water, though we didn't hear whether she had a boat and lost it, or what. Attached to it was a screened-in patio with a tile floor and some tables & chairs, and one of those outdoor fireplace things. The screens needed some work, but otherwise it was a really nice little outdoor living space. From what we could gather, these structures had been damaged by the storm, but were rebuilt by a crew of Mexicans (perhaps the group that initially fixed the house?), until they were frightened away by alligators, which Mister Bob seemed to find hilarious.

 

After lunch, we started to paint white exterior trimwork, while continuing to paint siding strips.

 

 

The siding crew continued to struggle with how to work with the bow window, but they also started to cut trim for the other (more normal) windows on that side of the house.

Al, Alex, Bruce and Mike continued to work on patching up the living room walls & ceilings, and the "entry crew" worked on figuring out what materials they needed to get that part of the project going. I think I heard that part of their afternoon was spent dealing with a nest of fire ants they discovered under the front steps.

The 2nd van arrived around 4:00, so we cleaned up our things and put them away for tomorrow, mostly under the house.

Dinner back at camp was a variety of quiches, which were really pretty good. I had Mexican, with salsa & sour cream on top, mmm. After dinner, we met Gregg from PA, and learned (because we asked) about the complete history of the Moravian Church, which we had known nothing about. It was very interesting - they're a relatively very small denomination, but disaster relief is apparently a major focus for them. We attended the little service at 7:00 (really just some singing with guitars), and then dispersed to get showers, etc. They played the BCS Champsionship game on the projector at 8:00 - LSU was pretty much the home team, though there were plenty of Yankees rooting for OSU, for what good it did...   I found that I could access the wireless network from the dining hall (which I couldn't last year), so I sat up and checked emails and posted about the bus trip.

 

Aha! I just found that one of the photos I had of the kitchen shows the photos Miss Janie had hanging on the wall. So I zoomed and cropped, and here you can sort of see the big dredge pipe, and if your eyes are very good, you can see the photos of the house with parts missing.

 

Our work papers said the house belonged to an elderly woman named Jamie. When we arrived, we met an elderly gentleman who started to show Dave (our fearless leader) where things were left after the last crew, so I guessed that the paper was wrong about the gender of the owner. But as it soon turned out, that was Mr Bob, and the owner's name was really Jane, "as in Tarzan". She's what we all decided was what a Southern Belle was like - very gracious, always looking her best, including flowered hats and all. Mr Bob is the widower of Miss Janie's deceased best friend, and although he lives in Florida, he apparently has been doing handyman type work for Miss Janie for many years. We were never clear even by the end of the week how much of the post-Katrina work on her house he had done, and what had been done by Camp Victor groups (and it seemed some other contractor had been involved at some point as well).

 

Her house sits right on a bayou, with a gorgeous view of marshland for miles, and then the bay in the distance. Unfortunately, I don't seem to have gotten a photo of the scenery. This is a view of the other houses in the neighborhood - a very picturesque area I thought. Beautiful morning, too!

We learned that this area (Gautier) is pronounced go-SHAY by the locals (I would've said go-TYAY, but this is rural Miz'ippi...)

 

 

 

 

We met her too-cute little puppy, Olive Oyl...

 

 

 

 

Here are some views of her house as it was when we arrived - as you can see, it's raised, with no living space on the ground level, because the bayou waters often rise even in normal conditions. Miss Janie showed us photos (which I wish I would've tried to photograph) of the house after Katrina. She had evacuated when the storm was coming, and returned 3 days later to find that there had been 4 or 5 feet of water inside the 2nd level of the house, and also that a huge (6' diameter by about 40' long) dredge pipe had washed in from the bay somewhere and had taken out the whole back corner of the house! In the photos she showed us, you could see right from the bathroom, through what used to be a wall to the back bedroom, and out to the bay. In the living room, which has the bow window you can see behind the scaffolding, the bottom of the bow had been busted out, but the windows were still there. Very odd. She said she moved back in at that point, since the kitchen, 2 bedrooms, and 1 bathroom were usable. We were never clear on when the holes in the walls were fixed, but I'm guessing they were at least temporarily patched to keep the weather out for some period of time. I think the major structural repairs had been done by a contractor some time ago, but either they left without doing any of the finish work, or they were fired, not sure what happened there.

 

Although, at some point while the walls were still open, she bought a jacuzzi from a friend and had it lifted into the bathroom before rebuilding the walls around it. Kind of funny. She says everyone always asks how the heck she got it into that little bathroom.

 

 

Here are some photos of the inside before we got started on it...

 

We spent some time assessing what we needed to start on, vs what our paperwork had said.

For example, after we read the label on the Hardi-Plank siding, we found it didn't need to be primed at all (it's pre-primed), so we sent Bob 1 to Lowe's with some of the Lowe's cards and a chunk of painted siding to match us some new paint (we had two Bobs on our crew, so we named the one driving the van Bob 1 and the other one Bob 2 - and as opposed to Mister Bob the handyman, haha).

 

Meanwhile, in the living room, our paperwork had said it was all primed and ready to paint, but it turned out that the previous group had primed over lots of bad drywall/mud work, so our "crack" drywalling crew got right to work fixing it up (which turned out to be a 2-day job just to get it ready to re-prime).