Thursday

Greetings from the Deep South. I spent another day on The Roof job, but there is another portion to the work. The Roof itself is the covering for a cement floor living area being used for storage and as a work shop. (It reminds me of a garage except that there is no overhead door.) And that entire room flooded during Katrina--not just from the storm surge, but also from the rain through the damaged roof. So the structure needed new shingles on the roof as well as a new ceiling from where the rain came through. And that's not to mention that the drywall has all been cut off at the knees (from four feet of flooding).

The Roof job, like some others, has challenged me sometimes in terms of wondering why the people who live there aren't "doing more." As I mentioned earlier, the homeowners have not been around this week, but since we are working in the work shop area, it is obvious that the man who lives there is a skilled handyman. He has a plethora of tools, from all sorts of different home repair disciplines. Scattered amongst the workbenches and on the floor around it, we found drywall screws and tape, staple guns, locking wrenches, socket sets, and tons more. And the home owner's son is an electrician. So, couldn't they have done this work on their own?

As these thoughts began to surface in my mind, I decided to ignore them and began my work in the room. Damaged furniture, children's toys, sporting gear, and tool shop materials are all jumbled in together, amidst apparently broken appliances. Our first task was to pick up the room. We threw everything in boxes to get it on one side of the room so that we could begin taking down the ceiling. I would just grab a box and start picking stuff up off the floor around it until the box seemed full--so one box might have a doll's hairbrush, a lone sock, a screw driver, a blanket... There was no rhyme or reason to any of it, either before or after we stacked everything up. Next, we moved all the boxes to one portion of the room. My next task was to remove the air vents (registers) from the ceiling. Let me tell you what that was like:

I look at the ceiling. The registers are too high to reach. I need a step stool. I look around and find a nearby chair instead. I look at the register. The screws are Phillips head. I look for a screwdriver. I find one, but it is a flat head. I keep digging. I find another flat head. And another, and another, and another, but no Phillips head. I run across a cordless drill. Is it charged? Yes! Does it have bits? Only a flat head. Sigh. There HAS to be a Phillips head bit here somewhere; I think I saw one earlier. Where was that? Which box did I throw that in? Or am I just thinking I saw a bit? I start looking at the boxes around me. There is NO WAY I am ever going to find a bit in the boxes I have just filled. I go back to the workbench and find a small box of Phillips head bits. Yay! They are shorter bits, designed for a power screwdriver, not a cordless drill--but I am going to use it anyway. I place a bit in and tighten the chuck. I stand on the chair, and reach the drill up to the ceiling, and discover that I have chosen a bit that is too large. I try to release the chuck but can't get it to budge. I suppose that's what I get for not tightening it by hand. Back down off the chair, I have to find someone else to get it loose for me. Then back to the box of bits. This time I test the bit before putting it in the drill. I find the right one, put it in, tighten the chuck, back on the chair, and FINALLY remove the two screws holding up the vent. I am getting somewhere!! I move the chair to the second vent, step up on it, and end up on the ground. The leg of the chair gave way as I stood on it. As I attempt to fit the pieces back together, I take a closer look at the bottom of the chair and realize that all the legs of it have been repaired with what looks like expanding spray foam. No wonder it didn't work. Now I need a step ladder. There is one, in the shed at the other end of the house. I find it amidst rusted metal hardware and a kitchen table--the water-damaged top resting against one wall, its four matching legs across the room. I return to the workshop...

This is only the beginning. I won't walk you through such detail on finding a staple gun and staples--but not the right size staples for the gun. I won't walk you through finding three right-hand gloves and not a single left-hand glove. I won't discuss how the heat and humidity left me soaked in sweat that dripped--not just beaded or rolled, but dripped--from my eyebrows, my nose, my lips--and this was while "indoors" in the morning, and not doing heavy labor...

What dawned on me this day was the overwhelming frustration of trying to accomplish even a small task when you can't find what you're looking for--things you know you own, but you can't find. Imagine if someone came to your home and scattered the contents of your kitchen, some ending up in your dresser, in your storage closet, in your children's rooms, in your bathroom. What would it take for you to feel like making dinner when you came home?



Over the course of several days, I have spent several hours on this post, thinking, writing, thinking, thinking, thinking, and I still don't have the answers. I don't know what it all means. I don't have a nice little wrap-up. Two things I do know: that God has created some very special people who are capable of doing disaster recovery work, and that I hope I never need their specialized assistance.