Many of you probably know the ABC TV show, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. My family and I dutifully watched it every Sunday since it began, up until we moved to China. Since being back, I haven't been able to watch as many episodes, but that doesn't mean I don't still love the show! Ever since I began watching it, I have always wanted to volunteer with EMHE (and own a coveted blue shirt!), but up until recently, the opportunity had never presented itself.
On Tuesday of last week, I was driving home (in my new-to-me car!) and heard on the radio that EMHE was coming to Utah, THIS WEEK! I knew immediately that as long as it was within reasonable driving distance, I would be there! And they were! The house they were going to be building was in South Jordan, not far from me at all! I got home and immediately signed up to volunteer for the following Tuesday (June 28) from 8 AM to 2 PM. But then, when my roommates got home I thought, why didn't I think to ask them if they wanted to do it with me. I talked to them, and they said they did, but couldn't do it at the time I had already signed up for, so we looked at all the options and decided we would do that Friday, June 24, from 8 PM to 2 AM. We were all so excited!
So Friday came and Chelsey, Marianne and I drove up to South Jordan, received our blue shirts and hard hats, and were taken on-site! At this point, construction had been going on for about 26 or so hours, and they had the guest house and garage built, and the foundation was being finished in the basement/for the rest of the house. We were taken to the volunteer tent and basically told to sit around and wait, and that we would be on call to help with food. Kind of a bummer, since we wanted to work on the house. But, we figured, at least we are here, helping with what they needed. So we picked up trash, emptied trash bins and just hung out. After about 1 1/2 hours, they finally said they needed our help! Yay! We were so excited to go out and be at the construction site! Our first task was to move 2x4's from one area to the next. So the 20 or so of us made a line and we passed the wood down the line to where it needed to go. Unfortunately, we didn't have gloves on, so we all got a few splinters; ouch! After we completed that job, we sat and waited for something else to do. After a while, there was another wood pile that needed to be moved, so once again, we formed a line and moved the wood pile.
Finally after about 3 hours of being there (our shift was 6 hours long) we finally got word that they needed everyone to help with taking the forms off the basement walls! For anyone who has never done construction or been at a construction site, when you are doing a basement, they put up these huge forms, and and then fill the middle with the concrete, let it dry, and then take them off. There were about 60 or so volunteers and just as many, if not more, volunteer construction workers. So the construction workers would take the forms off the concrete, pass them to the men, and then the men would pass them off to us women and we'd take them to the truck. Now, there were mainly two types of forms: 4 ft-50lbs forms and 8 ft-100 lbs forms. So these aren't lightweight things! They had wanted us to form a line all the way to the trucks, but there were too many things and they weren't all going to the same trucks, and it really was just easier to have the guys doing a line to pass them to us, and the we would carry them where they needed to go. And that is how it went for 3 hours. We took all the forms off the house in 3 hours! We were told this would take a normal sized crew 5-7 DAYS! Yes! That is the power of volunteers =]
So that was absolutely incredible to do! I so much enjoyed my first day there (and it was so nice to be there at night!) that I couldn't wait for the next time I was going to come!
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