Building: Week 30

Wow!! 30 weeks of building. That number seemed so far away when we began this endeavor. Our house is nearly complete. We are waiting for the others to catch up now. They are not that far behind at this point and that is exciting. In our meeting last week our supervisor gave us a calendar with a schedule of things that still need to be done to all the houses. All of the tasks ended on July 30. We asked him if he believes that we will be done on the 30th. He said that if we stick to his schedule we will indeed be done on the 30th of this month. He told us that this week is our test week. If we prove to him that we will work hard enough this week and keep to his schedule he will give the RHDC office their two week notice and we will have our open house in the first week of August. He said he will try and talk them into having it on July 31, but that is a Friday and their office is closed on Fridays. They absolutely will not have it on a Friday, so the next available dates would be when ever the office can the following week. Tuesdays and Thursdays seem to be their days of choice so we'll see what happens. This means that we are finally counting down the weeks for real now and not just guessing when the open house, and subsequently move-in day, will be. And it will not be a day too soon. With the temperatures soaring and this apartment lacking air conditioning we are sooooo ready to get out of this place. It has been a very long process but it is almost over. We knew it would be difficult not only physically but especially mentally (and trust me...it was) but we also knew it would be worth it in the end. Well, now that we are seeing the house in it's nearly finished splendor we are very excited and we are so glad that we did this program. We know that we could not have done it without the Lord's help. We are thankful for the answers to our prayers and all the prayers on our behalf. There is still work to be done and trying to get it all done in three weeks will be difficult but it can be done. Here is a short list of the things that still need to be done:

Outer stone on two houses

Grout stone on all houses

Electrical in 1 house (sub-contractor)

Carpet in 3 houses (sub-contractor)

Finish hardware in 2 houses

Plant grass or sod for all houses

Build back steps or patios for all houses

Clean garages and basements
Final Clean up of all houses

There are many little things that I won't name to be done too, so you can see that it is still a lot of work to be completed in 3 weeks but everyone is pushing hard now. Keep praying for us please, we need the Lord's help to accomplish these tasks.

Here are the latest pics of our house:

No, that's not dirt on the floor, we have carpet now. It looks nice. It made some of the rooms look bigger.

We finally got our appliances. Now our kitchen is functional.

Even the kitchen sink was finally installed. No more big hole in the counter top.

There were things I forgot to take a picture of. The drywall people finally came and patched the major drywall issues we had. They are going to sand the putty today so we'll see how much dust they get into the carpet. But it does mean that the final paint touch-up can be done now. The other thing that we finished on Saturday was the outer stone. It looks a little better now that it is all done, but I am still reserving judgement until the grout is done as well. Then we will see how I feel about it. The one thing I do like is that it is the only house in the whole neighborhood with "round" stone. Our house truly is unique. I can't say that it will be that way forever though. USDA bought out 14 more lots in our neighborhood (including all the lots around us) so someone else may see our stone and pick it. Anyway, things are looking up.