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COINS Romania

Habitat For Humanity Build

May 2018

Welcome to my site, here you can find information, photographs, tall tales and more on the COINS Build. 

This is a work of semi-fiction. I have paraphrased, mis-remembered and I expect just made some stuff up. But I do hope this provides a view of our trip and how much we truly enjoyed the experience.

Alex Smyrl, May 2018

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  • Writer's pictureAlex Smyrl

House Building - Part 2

Progression


Work on site continued on the Tuesday in much the same way as we left on Monday evening. We started earlier - a respectable 9.00am, and did a full day. For Team Paint that meant rafters and beams. A lot of them. And pots of wood treatment. A very satisfying job, but at this stage we're not really sure what's going to happen to our neat and tidy, well preserved wood stacks.





Quantity Installed


Progress continued on the first storey, Team Hammer helping the family volunteers and the contractors to finish the outside wall structures and fill in the interior walls.






Site Foreman


It was sometime on Tuesday that not only did the COINS Team, but all the Romania team on site realised that Dan knew what he was doing (having worked in the trade in a previous career). This became clear as he was left to install the windows without supervision. The rest of Team Hammer just carried on noggin'.


[Photo]


Work continued at a steady rhythm throughout Tuesday. I certainly started to feel at ease with the physical labour. More than once we all mentioned that we never spend a day doing manual labour at home, even digging our gardens we'd stop after a few hours.


The satisfaction from spending time, doing a simple job as well as you can, is difficult to describe. As the paint splatters, the hammers hammer the walls go up. What started a day before as piles of wood, unknown bags of things and a few people wandering around was taking the shape of a home. Actually four homes.



The sun shone down all day, we carried on paintin' n hammerin' and then a sigh of relief as we're told the bus is here. Amazingly the first full day has flown by. To be honest I thought I'd be whimpering in a corner that I just couldn't go on by lunchtime.


Time for a cold reflective beer !












Excavation


Wednesday started as Tuesday had closed, the sun shining and more tasks to complete. Once again Alex split us into Teams, Team Hammer up on the first storey and he suggested Team Paint. This time we all said no - a day and a half bent over painting rafters had done us in.


This could have been an almighty mistake !!


Digging - we were to be digging. All day. In the hot sun. I'm sure there's more than one song about that but Bernard Cribbins kept on coming to mind. We grabbed our hats and gloves and with a dread in the pit of my stomach walked over to the ditch we seen the day before.


So we dug a hole, all day, in the hot sun. The hole became longer and deeper and turned into a very impressive trench. The most amazing thing ... the time flew by. We spent time chatting and gossiping, spent time silently just digging - working it into a routine of spading and shovelling (did you know they are different things ? I didn't).


At the end of the day we were all very proud of our trench .... it was for the main drain, so Team Paint had become Team Poo !!!



As we emptied the soil out of our pockets it was time to make a great escape back to the hotel.





Topping Out


Whilst not a known term in Romania, a similar ceremony, for luck, was performed on the Wednesday afternoon. As the second apex of the roof was secured, a towel, a tree branch (traditionally a spruce) and a bottle of palinka (Romanian moonshine) are tied to the apex.




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