Habitat for Humanity: Friday April 13th! Oh no!

Today I worked with Sean directly, and Ken I believe. This was to be my last day as a non-Crew Leader. The day started off with Brian explaining to Sean what to do. I came along not too much later, and asked what was going on with this group (only the three of us) Sean told me, and continued on with his work.

Now I am stuck not knowing a term. (what's new?) What we were working on is not a TGI beam (which I have now heard called LBL ... ack!), but the beam that looks like several layers of plywood fused together, and has a furniture-style finish to it. They are the heaviest pieces in the structure of the house, and the only pieces that are left uninterrupted to run the length of the structure.

Anyway, our task was to drill a hole all the way through, and a pilot hole to sink the bolt. We needed a washer and bolt to secure them in place, and we needed to sink the bolt where this board would face out onto a stairwell, because drywall would eventually end up having to sit there. We encountered a great many challenges, but throughout the day I also found myself taking on a crew leader role; assigning tasks, creating a system to getting things done and following-up with my team members. It was only at the end of the day that I realized Brian might have wanted Sean to crew-lead that day, but in the end, I don’t think Sean really minded.

Some of our challenges were as follows:
1. Not drilling pilot holes at first, and bolting the bolts onto the board, then having to take them off and redo them with the 1 1/8” pilot hole included
• Solution: don’t be a dork; pay attn to instructions the first time around!
2. Measuring no more than 14” apart of the bolts, but still making sure that the holes we drilled were far enough away from the joist hangers that we could get the bolt and washer in there
• Solution: some creative measuring on my part, and then passing that off to Sean so he could complete the measurements all the way down the length of the board.
3a) Drilling a pilot hole too far
3b) Running out of bolts
• Solution: Using a shorter bolt where we had drilled the pilot hole too far!
4. The drill bit not extending far enough to drill through the board
• Solution: At first we just switched sides so we could complete the hole, but then I went to Dave with the problem, and he cut the Flathead off a 1” flat head drill bit, so that we had a 1” extension bit, which was all we needed to be able to drive the hole right through the board.

In the afternoon, I was working on drilling the holes right through the board, and Sean and Ken were working on finishing the holes, bolting, and drilling the pilot holes where needed (in the stairwell only). At one point I was standing on a ladder, and using the hammer drill (with the 5/8” spade bit) to drill through the wood and because of the amount of force I had to put behind the drill, combined with the fact that the ladders would “walk” if they were not perfectly steady, resulted in the ladder at one point just deciding it wanted to dump me off. So it tilted fatally to one side, and I was left with no reliable ladder under me. Reacting fast, I grabbed onto the TGI beams I was standing in the middle of, just barely managing to keep hold of the drill (the brand new hammer drill Dave took out of the box just for me) and I swore. Then I yelled at one of Mike’s kids to grab the ladder. I was very grateful for that kid’s fast reaction time.

So that was my Friday the 13th adventure.