The last two days on the work site have been, in my opinion, extremely productive. We have been lucky to score absolutely gorgeous weather, which has made our task a little less difficult and a lot more enjoyable. My experience doing framing work at the end of Day 1 set the stage for Ollie to call on Neil and me to continue framing throughout Day 2. We considered ourselves lucky, as everyone else spent the entire day shingling the roof, nail by tedious nail. We spent the day inside with Ollie, finishing the framing on the bathroom, installing door frames and the cripple studs that distribute the roof load down to the floor, and sledgehammering out the sheathing that had been serving as a temporary external wall for the bathroom. While admittedly a tad less cerebral, the sledgehammering may have been my favorite task. Neil and I took out a lot of aggression on those walls...
Ollie had gifted us with a miter saw for the day, cutting our stud-cutting times by at least a half over the circular saw we'd been using the day before. Neil and I became pretty adept (for unskilled workers with 2 hours' experience) at cutting our wood to size and throwing walls up with the AK-47 grade nail gun. Of course, Ollie put us to shame any time the nail gun landed in his hands.
The electrical and HVAC contractors were on site today, thereby crowding the interior and preventing Neil and I from continuing on with our framing duties. We were thus shipped to the roof, to learn how to place and nail shingles like everyone else. We caught on pretty quickly, and I was able to complete my own little triangular section of the roof by lunchtime, but we both agreed we preferred framing. I AM glad, however, that we spent our day on the roof. Most of the group has spent most of their time up there, so it was great to see and experience first hand what they had been chatting about over the past few days. Obviously, it was also satisfying to contribute and to learn yet another skill. And for me, the construction of the roof in New Orleans provided an interesting contrast to our roof in South India. There, "roofing" consisted of mixing 50% asbestos with water to make a carcinogenic paste, which we then slathered into roof troughs and coaxed into forming a concrete-like substance via daily "concrete-watering" (so that the stuff wouldn't dry too fast). Here, of course, it's been a different story altogether. Each "course" of shingle, maneuvered painstakingly into place over synthetic underlayment, receives 6 nails, ideally, spaced 6 inches apart and 1 inch from either end. You handcraft the roof, shingle by shingle, nail by nail. That's not to say one method is better than the other (minus the, ahem, asbestos). They're just strikingly different.
Tonight, several of the boys and I indulged in Popeye's fried chicken (ALMOST as good as Bojangles'...almost), before eating second dinner at a place called Juan's Flying Burrito on Magazine St. We made the trip out to Juan's on the streetcar - which I still maintain is one of the world's coolest forms of transportation (right up there with the autorickshaw). The cajun-style Mexican food was awesome, and my "Tiger Woods" Arnold Palmer-esque drink was quite tasty as well. We hit up a fantastic gelato/everything amazing dessert place called Sucre several blocks down, and enjoyed a stroll through the Garden District back to catch the streetcar home. With its fabulously grand Southern mansions lining every street and the scent of honeysuckle already in the air, the Garden District remains one of my favorite neighborhoods.
I am headed to bed to rest up for our final day of work, to be immediately followed by St. Patrick's Day Shenanigans, New Orleans style. We're told there will be plenty of parades, music, and green beer to go around, so I'm pretty pumped for a good New Orleans party. Next post - things I've learned about Katrina and New Orleans on this trip, more about the people with whom I've been working, and perhaps an update on St. Patty's in the Big Easy. For now, good night all, and Happy St. Patrick's Day!
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