No, not that kind of rehab. Restoring old broken down houses back to their original splendor, or as close as we can get to it. There are many homes in serious need of attention and repair, particularily in the West end of Tuscaloosa.
     Our Habitat affiliate here recently was awarded a $100,000 grant from the city to be used on twenty such homes . $5,000 per home is not a whole lot to work with, but doing good case work to see where it could have the most effect for the most families is what we are up to these days.
     One of the first projects under this grant is for Ms. Denise, who owns a home on T Y Rogers in the West End. One of the homeowners told me that the locals call this area of the west end " the bottom". Denise is not currently living in the home due to her leaky roof and windows and holes in the siding. She was accepted to have her home worked on. When our construction manager meets with potential clients, they put together a wish list of the work that they would like to see done. In Denises case, the leaky roof was first, then the siding and windows. At first it looked like we would be able to do all three within our budget.
     We had a group of six men come to volunteers from Seneca, South Carolina. All in their sixties, mostly retired- all in good health and ready, willing and able to help with this new project.
One of the fellows, Deek, is 80 years old and was working hard all week, up and down the scaffold, tearing off the roof, etc . He did know when to take a break if he needed too though.
     I had the day off on the Monday that they started work. They set up scaffolding all the way around the perimeter of the house, three walkplanks wide with safety rails, both to work on and as fall protection. OSHA says if we do that, we don not need ropes and harnesses to go work on the roof. We have enough scaffolding to do two complete houses now.
     We were blessed with blue sky and coolish weather all week that we had the roof opened. Not usually the case. Once you pull off old shingles from an existing house, usually big, grey clouds roll in with imminent rainfall threatening the expand your scope of work by soaking the sheetrock on the ceilings as well as the contents of the house.
     Denise's roof had about a six inch sway back ridge from one end to the other. We ended up running a string between the two gables and reframing a new straight and strong roof to that line. All new 5/8" plywood, 30 lb. felt paper and then new architectural shingles . The shingles that we used are donated from GAF, a local manufacturer. They have pallets and pallets of shingles that are rejected for sale due to a slight color non-match. This donation helps greatly in staying within budget also.
      It's hard to predict with a rehab such as this how much will be spent to repair it, until you really start into it. We pulled the old shingles up and, oops, they only used 3/8" thick plywood originally. Plus the swail in the roof. We ended up spending half the budget just on lumber and plywood to put the roof back. At that point, it almost looked like Denise would have to choose between windows and siding. From the construction point of view, it would be better to do the windows first and then the siding.
     I told Brandon that he should check with the Restore (a store our affiliate operates where people donate materials and the proceeds go back to building more homes). Sure enough, the day before, someone had donated a batch of double glazed vinyl windows, that with a little sawsalling, could be made to fit and would be a world of difference better than the leaky and broken single glazed windows that were presently in the house.
    For the siding, we usually have ten or twenty pieces of Hardi siding left over from each new house we build. I gathered all of that up from the various sites weve been working on, including our "graveyard" on Juanita drive and came up with enough to do maybe a third of the house with. The balance, Denise will purchase and we will install.
     So, in a few weeks, she will basically have a new house in the old box. The sag in the roof and siding will be gone, and even though some of the floor on the inside of the house will still have some of the original charm (sagging floors), from the outside all will appear straight and new.
     Even though it is a grant for the work, Denise has still caught the spirit of Habitat and has been out to help most days that we have been there. She even got up on the roof with us and ran the nail gun.