ASP

From July 10-16 I was on Appalachia Service Project with my church.  We go every summer and work on houses in the Appalachia region (mostly Kentucky and West Virginia).  This was my 10th or 11th one, I'm not quite sure.  Mary Grace, Trey, Lauren, and Carol Ann were also on the trip to.  My group was fortunate enough to work on the inside of a house (Mary Grace's and Carol Ann's group worked on roofs). Trey was in my group and we replaced drywall on two ceilings and two walls (after we cleared out the two rooms we were working on and trust me, that was no small task), took out a 300 pound flue blocker from the kitchen ceiling, and mudded and sanded the ceilings and walls until we were all covered in drywall dust.  It was hot, hard work but in the end we left the house warmer, safer, and drier than when we started. The crew coming in after us was going to finish up by painting the ceilings and walls and repairing the kitchen floor.  Here are some pictures with descriptions below:

Here is me trying to lift the flue blocker, it's a concrete block with a cylinder cut out of it.  It was used when the house had a coal burning stove, it kept the smoke from getting into the attic area.  The current homeowner didn't even know it was there.  The walls and ceiling in the picture are bead board and they had been covered up by drywall.  The concrete thing was putting major stress on the roof trusses so we had to take it out.  The trusses had bowed over time because of the added weight.

Here is the process of the flue blocker falling.  Paul is standing in the foreground.  He sawed all around it and then had to pry it loose.  Our first plan of action was to have Trey and Mason stand on ladders and catch the thing when it fell.  After actually thinking about it we decided that wasn't a good idea and we put old tires on the ground and let the concrete block fall on them.  It did and bounced off.  It was way heavier than we expected it to be.  It's a good the the work crew the week before us had replaced the floor joists because otherwise it would have gone right through.

Here's Trey and the homeowner showing off their muscles after the concrete thing fell to the ground.  Lots of bricks and mortar and stuff fell down with it.