Saturday is a.... working day?

The day started off at a brisk 40 degrees in Minot. The best thing to combat a cold morning is a warm breakfast. Here, Cobi cooks bacon and eggs for the troops. Breakfast was cooked for ALL the people staying at the church and the associated houses. 

It was so cold in Minot (how cold was it?). It was so cold we went out to frost on the windshield of the van. Our work day was slightly delayed while we defrosted.

Here's the bathroom at the beginning of the morning. Notice the tub and all the nails in the wall.

Kim worked very hard all week. Here she is pulling off some drywall. She also helped to remove all of the nails still left in the studs. A tedious job to say the least.

Before we removed the tub, Chris decided she wasn't clean enough so she jumped in for a quick rinse.

Here is the final bathroom. Notice the lack of tub and nails!!!

Jane, Chris and Cobi were bad, so they were sent to the basement.

Two work sites and two dogs. Roxy is the dog of one of the workers in town to help with the cleanup and renovations in Minot.

Here Roxy makes sure no one drives away the earth mover while her master is out for coffee.

This is the dinning room at the beginning of the week. Broken tile and debris littered the floor when we started.

Larue worked to get all the tile and glue scraped off the floor and cleaned off of the floor.

Here is the finished job. Tiles, drywall and nails removed.

The kitchen at the start of the day was a lot to get done. The counter top, sink and remaining drywall had to get removed.

Ruby helped to remove the nails, wet drywall and insulation from all over the house. 

Thanks to all her hard work the kitchen now looks like this...

This is what the kitchen looked like less than 48 hours before. A little bit of hard work goes a long way!

Here are some pictures of the basement. The basement was by far the worst of all the rooms. Most of the rooms were carpeted with layers of mud and wet ceiling on top of them. Getting all this out took hard work and a stick-to-it attitude.  

This room was filled with maroon carpet and a thick layer of mud and other bits.

Even after 4 months the basement was still very wet and stinky. In this room used to be wood paneled walls, yellow carpet and maroon paneled duct work. Now most of the carpet is gone, paneling removed and mess removed.

The water heater and furnace will still need removed. The walls however, do not.

Here is the orange duct work that was previously covered by the maroon panels.

We removed the wet carpet from the stairs and portions of the wall.

Here is one of the masks we used after one day of work. 

Ruby and Chris celebrate the piles of junk outside and a job finished.

These signs could be seen all over Minot. They will be back and so will other volunteers. Perhaps one of them will be you???

Friday in Minot

We left Spirit Lake Ministry Center on Friday morning and headed west to Minot, ND.

When we arrived in Minot, we checked in at the Lutheran Social Services Disaster Relief trailer to get our job assignment. 

We got to our job site and our orders were to remove all the dry wall, cabinets and any other items damaged and unable to be rehabbed. 

Everyone suited up to get ready to get dirty and Cobi had a sandwich.

Here is a before picture of the kitchen. 

Here is the sink to be removed tomorrow. Check out the mud in the bottom.

Here Jane removes some cabinet doors

Chris asks Cobi to find her contact and tie her shoe.

Here is the end of day one. We still have to take out the sink and counter top. Look at the droopy ceiling fan blades.

Here is the before picture of the bathroom. Notice the high water mark on the cabinet door.

Here is the shot before all of the dry wall was removed from the top of the staircase.

Here is the after. The debris on the stairs is not all of the drywall removed!

Can you name the snowmen?

Ruby removes a load of trash from the house.

Here are the piles moved out of the house by the edge of the street.

Here are both piles at the end of the day. This was only about four hours worth of work.Chris heroically saves a little yellow shed!!!

Larue finds out the meaning of "one size fits most."

After all the hard work we headed back to Our Savior's Lutheran Church for a home cooked meal. Friday night was baked chicken, rice, turnips and salad. Ruby especially enjoyed the dessert; apple cobbler.

On our way back to First Lutheran Church we saw the "sticker bus" which had hundreds of flashing lights on it.

Tomorrow is another day of removal, so the piles should be twice as high.

-Cobi

Last day at Spirit Lake

Thursday morning started overcast and cloudy, but after breakfast the sun began to break through the cloud cover.

Since we weren't able to complete the ramp this week, we were able to get some more things done around the camp for Libby and Mike. God works in mysterious ways!

We started to build some shelves inside the shed. Here Kim levels the bottom shelf to get things started.

We also started to put some 4x8 sheets of plywood on the roof so Mike can get a proper roof started.

Ruby gets ready to get the shelves up.

Chris and Kim finish up leveling the final shelf in the shed to complete the interior shelving.

Finished shelf number one...

Finished shelf number two...

And the finished roof sheeting.

We were able to get all that done before lunch!!! Seeing as how hard we worked, Mike gave us the afternoon off to do some sight seeing. Here is a collection of our photos from Fort Totten and a brief road trip to see the area.