But they were wrong. They said you couldn't build a house in a hundred hours. It was Susan's idea. Brandon's wife suggested that for the 100th house that we build in Tuscaloosa with Habitat for Humanity we should build it in 100 hrs. Brandon, our construction director here, also to commemorate the event, entered himself in a 100 mile race. He came in second and ran for 24 hours and 30 minutes mostly non-stop, and sprinted to the finish line with his kids running with him.
     So, like I said, they were wrong . I know because we dedicated the house for Tiffany Walker and her son today, April 27th 2015, on the fourth anniversary of the tornado that devastated a large swath of Tuscaloosa. We started on Tuesday at 5:30 am and finished on Friday about noon. Two shifts, from 5:30 to 3:00 and then 3:00 to 10:30 pm. Clock hours was only 73 but actual people-working-on-the-house- hours was 51. At the dedication, someone said, "Well then, you shoulda built two."
     We had a great group of volunteers for the week from Michigan and Florida. This was their fourth trip down (or up) to work with us. Dave, Chris and Amy, Ross, Tom, bunch of great guys with willing hearts and mad skills that God sent just at the right time.
      As usual, Brandon set us up for success, staging all of our materials and supplies in three conex boxes near the site. We cheated a little in that the foundation and saferoom was done before the official start. The metal for the hip roof was precut and predrilled for the screws . And two big chunks of the roof trusses were put together already for ease of installation.
     By noon on the first day, the house was blacked in and the three subcontractors for electrical, plumbing and heating started their dance and they were done roughing in all three by 7pm. Then the city inspectors dropped by, passed them all and it was green light to start insulation the next morning.   Drywall started and finished in less than 24 hours with big kudos to Larry and Herman, friends of Brandon's from Mississippi and veterans of many a blitz build on the coast.
     Started painting interior walls on Thursday morning on a house that wasn't there just two days ago.   finish the painting in cupla hours, on the the flooring, sheet vinyl in the kitchen and bath and click together dark bamboo everywhere else. And so on like that. Brandon called eleven places to get sod for the yard, as far away as Georgia and Miss., only to find it at our local Ground Floor.
      I had been working for a while to invite Linda Fuller (co-founder of Habitat for Humanity and Tuscaloosa native) to one of our dedications and I finally wore her down and she and Paul came over from Americus the night before and attended the dedication this morning . Gave a beautiful and moving speech to the crowd gathered with a bit of both her personal and Habitat's history included. Afterwards, we gave them a tours of completed and ongoing projects around town, had lunch at the Lion's Den and then off they went.
     It was great fun but wouldn't want to do that every week. I don't think Brandon slept more that a couple of hours during the whole thing. Near the end he was getting a bit loopy. At one point he was showing some volunteers how to hang a pre-hung door and was about to have the door open out instead of in to the bedroom. Then, a few minutes later, he was doing the same thing again. Oh well.
     That's all for now. Sorry I haven't been blogging much lately, but I will try to get back at it on a regular basis.
     It's off to Nepal (I hope) to work with the Fuller Center on a build May 13th. Honduras at end of June and Biloxi with Bart for the 10 year anniversary of Katrina. Went to Guatamala on a Habitat Global Village build this past January with Larry Winger and friends too. Other than that, not much going on. Love ya.   Peter