Weekly Report for Picher

Over the weekend, the vinyl flooring was installed by a local professional installer, and on Monday, with five volunteers, we installed the kitchen and laundry cabinets, installed part of the laminate tops in the kitchen and worked on the electrical devices and plate covers. We also primed the remainder of the woodwork, caulked in and filled nail holes in the base-casing to get ready for the final coats.

We listened to Dennis (the home owner) on what he went through with the tornado that destroyed his house. Quote from Dennis “(the tornado) took the braveness right out of me” He is no longer a brave man when it comes to tornados!

On Tuesday we had a group of eight men from the Cornerstone Mennonite congregation in Oswego, Kansas, here to help with painting the interior doors, woodwork and shelving. They also stained the kitchen cabinets and started the finish varnish on them. Two men from Fairland, OK church worked on the finish plumbing. We installed new deck material on the front porch and had the electrical service ditch closed. We had a total of twelve volunteers (all men and boys) today. Karen was busy keeping us fed.

On Wednesday a storm come through during the night and lasted till morning, no damage at the site. The owner, Dennis stayed in the house during the storm rather than the trailer.

We had two men, Sam and David from Cornerstone Mennonite, come back again to help us. They worked on finishing the electrical and varnishing the cabinets. We also did punch list items, painting, shelving and cleaning.

On Thursday volunteers Jay and son Lavon from the Fairland Mennonite congregation in OK finished the plumbing. Roy, Karen, Jerry and Steve worked on punch-list items, painting, countertops, towel bars, clean-up, etc.

It looks like we might be starting another project just up the road on this coming Monday providing some of the details to be work out.

Jerry Wyse has been busy getting the next project going and on Friday Jerry took four men from the Harbor (local homeless shelter in the same building where we rest our weary bodies) and started to clean up soaked particle and plywood sub floors, soaked drywall off of the existing walls of the new project for the H family while Roy and Karen worked on punch list items at Dennis’s house around the corner.

The H house needs a new roof put on, as the tornado took all the roof framing and the roof with it. The house needs to be stripped down to the bare studs. The H family is helping with clean-up along with some neighbors who are bringing their front-end loaders to haul off the debris.

The work continued on Saturday as Jerry went back to the H project along with Lenny and Bill from the Harbor and the extended H family was there as well to help throughout the day. Jerry spent all day at the site. Roy spent half day organizing the tool trailer and could have spent another day going over tools etc to get them ready for future projects.