Murphy House and Duplex: Done! / Graham House: Roofed!

This may be redundant given the title of this post, but we finished up the interior work and exterior painting on the Murphy house and the left half of the duplex that we've been working on for the last two weeks. Next week they'll be getting the Certificate of Occupancy and then the families will move into their homes! We've also started working on another house that is adjacent to the Murphy House, which will be lived in by the Graham family. I don't know many details about them, but I do know that their house has 3 bedrooms and two bathrooms.

Our work on the Graham House has included installing blocking between the frames so that they can hang cabinets, shelves, appliances, etc. This was pretty fun for me, because it married together two of my favorite things: measuring and hammering. Basically, we measured the distances between the vertical 2x4s, cut the pieces to fit, then hammered them into place and put nails in them. After that we started work on the roof, which was pretty fun. The weather didn't hurt either - both days that I worked on the roof it was 60º and sunny. Abby, Dustin, Erik, Eliza and I worked on the roof all day Tuesday installing the waterproof tarp, laying down chalk lines, cutting shingles and then nailing them onto the roof. Besides getting a sweet tan/sunburn (depending on which part of my body you look at), we had an amazing view of the town. Sheridan sits in a little depression where the creek runs through, and the house we were working on is east of town on the ridge overlooking the town toward the Big Horn Mountains.

Yesterday, after finishing up the roofing and eating lunch, we got to call it a day and go hiking in the Tongue River Canyon. About a half an hour drive from Sheridan, the canyon has some awesome rock formations that I had no idea existed in Wyoming (or at least in those mountains). We hiked up the side of the canyon, past some caves which some of our teammates with flashlights explored for a bit, then came back down to chill by the river and climb on the rocks there.

Right now we're looking at installing siding and windows on the Graham House then possibly installing some drywall and mudding afterwards. If we do that, then we'll pretty much have worked on every phase of the construction of a Habitat house other than the foundation and initial framing. Another possibility still in the works is doing deconstruction at a house that was donated to Habitat, but the necessary permits are still being worked on. One last thing: it started to snow today while I was walking around, and it didn't even phase me. I've officially adapted. That's all for now (besides the pic below from the play place at the YMCA)!