Roofin' is the life for me.....

This weekend I had the wonderful opportunity to be a part of Clark Howard's 2011 Habitat for Humanity House Build. It was about 35 degrees this morning and raining when I left my house around 645. They build their houses rain or shine so you have to come prepared. After I put on long johns (top and bottom), jeans, fleece pullover, fleece jacket, rain jacket, ear warmers, gloves, scarf, wool socks and work boots...I was out the door! Clark welcomed all of us when we got there and then we got started! The first half of the day I painted siding! I learned, well I already knew, that I am an extremely messy painter....This picture really doesn't do it justice but needless to say...this jacket is now a painting jacket because this stuff won't be coming off anytime soon!

Then we headed to the Varsity truck that was waiting to feed us a really healthy lunch of chili dogs, french fries and onion rings! A friendly face quickly took our order by properly saying "Whatayahave?" (only true Varsity goers will get that..and Clark really did say it!)

This was day 3 of this house build..can you believe it? This has all been done in three days!

After lunch I decided it was time for me to get some roof time in.....and I loved it! I shingled, nailed, measured and did all that other stuff that roofers do! I learned the proper way to lay shingles and I learned the proper way to remove the nails that you have put in the wrong place....with a Cat Paw! This became my favorite tool..because when I first started I put a lot of nails in the wrong place! Luckily I had a great teacher who was very patient. I guess you have to be patient when you are working with people that are doing this for free! The girl in blue below, Krista, was my shingle teacher. She has been volunteering her time time with Habitat for over 7 years.

OK...so the picture below is AWFUL of me....but this was towards the end of the day and after all....Roofers can't look pretty all the time...right!
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Clark was right up there on the roof next to us and hard at work! Clark's brother was helping out too. They are the most down to earth people. Of course I haven't met that many millionaires in my time but I can only assume that most are not as humble or giving as Clark. He has been working with Habitat since 1996 and building homes. He has sponsored about 3 homes a year since then. Really amazing! We met the future homeowners of the house we were working on and they were hard at work with the rest of us. I was not that familiar with how Habitat actually works but the future homeowners have to put in 250 volunteer hours of work prior to getting their house. They were very appreciative. Overall...It was a very successful day and I can't wait to do this again!