Day 2 - Reconstruct!

Our group got split up into two distinct groups. One group handled painting while the other handled some construction work at a women's shelter that was being rebuilt. I thought a lot of today's work was like the tail end of gutting. I helped remove drop ceiling hangers and bits of wire from the ceiling in some rooms where a drywall ceiling was to be installed.

The drop ceiling hangers were little eyelets with wire wrapped through them to hold up the crossbeams of the tile ceiling. It took a lot of effort to stay balanced atop a ladder while twisting the eyelets until they completely unscrewed. Then one of the workers there told me if I hammered against the eyelet in one direction, it would bend. If I hammered it back the other direction, it would just snap off.

Once I started using a hammer on the eyelets, it was a lot easier to take them out. After that, most of the work was in getting lined up beneath one, then untangling the wire that was tied through the loop of the eyelet.

Our group leader used a concrete saw to cut some cinder blocks in the wall on one side of the building. I was curious to see what was happening there. It turned out that the plan for rebuilding the women's shelter called for a door where the blocks had gotten cut. I got to have a turn helping to sledge-hammer the wall until there was a door. At least two other people took turns, so we never got overexerted.

I got to watch a volunteer help open a door through a brick wall that was cut for a door also. He took a flying leap and drop-kicked the wall, and at least two thirds of it fell out. Brick walls don't have rebar inside them, so I think this is why the brick wall fell so quickly.

At lunch, I realized that I forgot to put my sandwich in the cooler we had brought. Since it had sat in the van, the cheese had melted. Another volunteer called it "grilled cheese the Louisiana way!" It tasted good.

In the afternoon, I went back to helping remove hooks from the ceiling in different rooms at the women's shelter. Since there was a deadline on getting the ceiling finished, another volunteer started helping me take away hooks. He showed me how I could use the side of the hammer to hit the eyelets. That made it much easier to swing and hit them. We worked like that for a while, but then I noticed something up in the higher part of the ceiling.

There was old insulation up there, and then I saw an ice cube tray jammed up underneath that. There was only one way an ice cube tray could be stuck there like that I thought. It had to be up there because Hurricane Katrina left it up there when the storm surge came through.

I didn't worry about what I saw. For a while, I helped some of the volunteers hang drywall in the upstairs part of the women's shelter. Then we got ready to end our work day and clean up.

There was bad news though--our group leader had gone to help somebody fix a truck engine. There was an accident with the winch used to lift the engine out of the vehicle body, and our group leader broke his finger because of it!