Work Day One Feb 21

Today was the first day of work for the Adult ASP team in Brenton, West Virginia. We have two different families we are helping and so have divided our group into two teams as mentioned in yesterday’s blog.

Team 1 with the three Johns, Betsy and George headed west after loading their trucks with necessary equipment, traveling about 25 minutes to a home currently not occupied because it is unsafe. There is no water in the house, although the house has water lines and plumbing, and the power supply is in need of updating, no hot water heater connected. In addition, the owner has requested that a double door opening be replaced with a single door and that openings for several windows in the house be finished -- mouldings placed on the window frames, and painted. They had to find the water source and then make sure it was connected under the house. The water source is a small hose coming down the hill (from a spring?). There is a valve on it in the back yard. John had to climb under the house and find out where the water source connected to the plumbing in the house. He had to replace a broken pipe under the house and then several other pipes and then several fixtures inside the house. Once completed, the team could use the toilet, except for Betsy -- no door for the bathroom.

The double doors were removed and a single door frame installed and the remaining opening filled in with sheeting and sheet rock.

The team added mouldings to several framed windows and painted the mouldings.

John Casale searched out electrical circuits to find which were live and which were not. The house has two electrical panels, one inside which is full, and one outside added more recently. which will be used to connect the water heater and other yet to be determined circuits.

Team 2; Paul, Mickey, Tim, Susan, Jane and Ted

After a necessary and quick stop at the local convenience store -- supporting the local economy, team 2 headed east. Their location is only about 5 minutes away up a road along a coal mining operation. We have two basic tasks: to finish a front porch and to remove and replace the floor of one of the bedrooms. The family had had a scary fire about two years ago and the bedroom floor of the daughter was flooded with water from the fire company’s efforts to put out the fire -- the family said they wet down everything in the house. As a result over time the floor had given way in one spot and there was a hole in the floor, and the particle board was in generally bad shape.

Tim, Jane, and Paul worked inside; Mickey, Susan and Ted, with help from time to time from Paul, worked outside.

The initial job inside was to tear out all the old particle board flooring, a difficult and time consuming job, as it turned out, taking a good part of the morning.

Those on the outside went to work on the porch. A previous team had built the porch deck and stairs. Our job was to add 2 X 6 inch railing and spindles for the deck and stairs. Work began by trimming the 4 X 4s to the height required by ASP and making sure that the deck railings were level and fastening them in place. Once this was done for the deck, we placed 2 X 4s under the railings and at least 4 inches above the deck so that we could place spindles at regular intervals.

Another task for the porch crew was to make a structure that would fill in a gap of about 7 inches between the deck and the house. Mickey built a box like structure out of 2 X 4s and we attached this.

Even without the spindles in place, it was amazing how much safer the porch seemed once we had the railings in place.

As you can see from the pictures, we completed some of this work with the spindles we had.

Inside, with the particle board floor torn out and all the staples removed, we began the process of cutting 3/4 strand board to fit on the open floor. It took two 8’ X 4’ boards, cut to length and width and then a length of strand board greater than 8’ so we had to piece together strand board for the last part of the floor covering.

We are now into our fourth and final day of work. More info and pictures will follow when times permits.

Getting there is half the fun.

Members of the Adult ASP team met in the church park lot early Saturday morning. We had heard that the center in Brenton, WV was expected a fast moving snow storm on Sunday. The center director had asked John to delay coming to the center until Monday. We decided to go ahead on Saturday so we would not be driving on Sunday during the snow storm -- we would later find out it was a wide decision. Nine members left in the three trucks, Paul’s, John’s, and John’s. Ted and Jane would follow later after a Immigration Task Force meeting in Princeton. The ride to Beckley, WV (our stop for the first two nights, adjusting for the snow storm) was uneventful. On Sunday we made our trip to Walmart for some items, and sat around waiting for the snow to start. It finally started in the afternoon and we walked a short distance through the snow to the Outback for dinner. We had the usual good time at the restaurant with an excellent waitress who entered into our sense of humor. It was still snowing as we headed home.

We woke up the next morning to a beautiful snow, not a lot, but it was a wet snow and beautifully traced and covered the various shapes of the tree limbs and branches.

We left the Fair(mont)field hotel about noon and headed to Wendy’s for lunch before heading out -- we were not sure we find a place to eat at Brenton and the center director had asked to arrive around 2 or later.

We were soon on our way to Brenton and, we would find, it a very beautiful drive winding our way through the West Virginia mountains and snow/ice covered trees. We arrived in Brenton shortly after 2.

We found that we would be divided into two groups for our work here. One team consisting of the three Johns and George, the other made up of Paul, Micky, Tim, Susan, Jane and Ted.

We had a short meeting with the members of the staff, Marika, Shelby, and Jackie, sharing a bit about our selves with them and they with us, talking about the center and the work procedures and expectations and the daily schedule.

After dinner, members sat around doing a variety of things, reading, knitting, working on blogs and pictures, reading, working on puzzles, singing Beatle songs.