"Terrible" Terri and "Scintillating" Scott supervise delivery of the windows and doors. Habitat houses aren't what you'd call luxurious, but you can believe they're well-built. These windows and doors are better than code requires so they'll last for years, perform beautifully and save the homeowner(s) lots of money over the years on their heating and cooling bills.

The back porch is supported on one side by the house itself, but the other end requires posts, which (by code) must have footings. The hole in the background, which Mike is inspecting, presented no problem, but the nearer one had a big rock in it, far too big to dig out. Here Terri is jackhammering the rock down so we can get the hole dug deep enough to make a regulation footing for the post. Damn, that tool's bigger than she is!

Scott mixes up some concrete for one post, while Terri, biceps bulging, continues to unleash the hounds of hell upon the big rock. Neither one of these are very pleasant jobs, believe me!

Once the big rock was dealt with, we poured the footings. Because of all the digging we had to do to get at that rock, the hole was much too big, so we used some scraps of plywood and tossed in some dirt behind them to make the footing a more reasonable size. No sense mixing up more concrete than necessary. If you've ever mixed concrete I'm sure you'll agree!

They tell me that boxing in the ends of the rafters is extremely critical to make a house more fire-resistant. If hot air can circulate around the rafters, and enter the attic, the roof is much more likely to catch fire. But if the ends of the rafters are boxed up, they may char a bit but they won't support an open flame. It's a bit hard to believe it really works, but apparently all the home construction experts agree it does. Here Scott and another gentleman (I forget his name) figure out how they're going to install the fascia boards.

Sheathing is a plywood 'skin' that's installed over the exterior surfaces to brace the studs and provide a substrate for the finish stucco. The north gable is the last of the exterior wall surfaces which hasn't been sheathed yet. Mike sent Terri and I up the scaffolding with instructions to get it skinned.

I like Terri, really I do, but she has one very annoying habit: she keeps picking up my camera when I'm not using it and taking pictures of me! The gable ends are full of odd shapes that need to have plywood pieces carefully cut to fit for sheathing. Here I am measuring one.

Pounding nails up on the scaffolding is a pain in the butt. You need to be careful not to fall off, of course, but you also need to find some leverage to swing the hammer. Also, they go up in five-foot increments, so it seems like they're always a little too low or a little too high for where you're working. Here Terri drives nails in one of the gable sheathing pieces. You can see the odd shape of the piece; it has to run up along the truss member so it can be nailed all along its edge. That's what makes careful measurements so critical.

Terri looks about half as tired as I feel after a long hard day climbing up and down that damn scaffold. None of this is terribly hard work but it wears you down.

Here's the product of our efforts. We didn't QUITE finish; there was just a little triangular piece for the next crew to finish up. I'm proud of what we accomplished though.

"From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life." -- Arthur Ashe

September 22, 2004: A frame rises from the rubble

September 28, 2004: Finishing the roof framing

October 5, 2004: Roof sheathing goes on

October 6, 2004: More finish framing

October 12, 2004: Framing the back porch

October 26, 2004: A slow, wet day

November 2, 2004: Bricks on the roof?

November 30, 2004: The walls get sticky

December 7, 2004: Plumbing and wiring the pump house

December 14, 2004: Paint goes on