Rebuilding

Yesterday and today our entire crew headed to the Gentilly district to work on yet another aspect of the rebuilding process in New Orleans: rebuilding. It provided a stark contrast to gutting, and I certainly welcomed the change in atmosphere and difficulty (the previous two days, I ended up drenched in sweat!). When we arrived, we were split into groups to get quick tutorials on how to do our respective jobs properly. Because of the hopelessness of my spackling pursuit, I quickly turned to sanding, which because of its tediousness, kept me busy for the rest of the two days. As we all worked, I noticed how bright it was in the house, which was a lot different from the dark, moldy houses we had gutted the two days before. We all talked and listened to music as we worked, and the homeowner and his family were around for part of each day to encourage us and thank us for our work. It was definitely great to have him and his family around, as it provided us with the benefit of seeing the house’s occupants. Overall, it was a much more personalized and positive experience (building instead of destroying in order to build later), and it was all capped off today with a fried turkey and homemade jambalaya, which the homeowner’s brother assured us we would remember. It was great! So now we’ve done some gutting and some rebuilding, and this trip has given us a good taste of a lot of different types of work. If any of us end up coming back to help out some more (which is definitely possible as there still seems to be plenty of work), we’ll be more flexible from the start.