It Feels Good Beng Done Early.

With the end of this week brought the end of KHO in Campbellsville. This was a pretty good week. I had a small crew, and a small, simple roof.

Sunday afternoon everyone got their crew packets, which give details about each job. The more i looked through my packet, the more excited about the job i was going to be doing. my previous two roofs were 18 and 20 square, pretty good sized roofs. the thing that made those two difficult were the chimneys and valleys. This roof was beautiful... only 13 square, no valleys, no chimneys, no nothing, only two boots to work around and three vents to replace, neither of which are a big deal, only involve cutting a few shingles. for those of you that dont know, boots are the things that go over a pipe that sticks out of the roof in order to keep water from leaking back into the house, some are rubber, some are metal, it just depends on what the pipe is, their on almost every house, and arent difficult at all to work around. needless to say, i was really excited, i even asked Todd, our supervisor if there were any catches to the roof that would make it more difficult or something, and there wasnt anything that he knew of. i did my best to not get my hopes up on having an easy week because it seems that everytime that happens, especially when your working, you always come across a problem. Sure enough, i spoke way too soon thinking that this roof was going to be a breeze (if it wasnt for my awesome crew, it could have been a long week!)

Now that ive spoken about my crew ill tell you a little bit about them. I only had 9 people this week, which is several people less than the other weeks (12 and 13) but since i had a small roof it was plenty of people. When i first met them, i was a little bit skeptical of a few people, they seemed like the girly girl kind of people, or the kind of guy that isnt on the mission trip to work or serve God, just because going to camp is the right thing to do. Most everyone suprised me as to how well they worked, or suprised me as to how well they didnt work... one in particular her name was shannon, shes a 13 year old girl... a girly girl. i was also skeptical when i found out her age, after the first week, and one of my young female campers falling asleep on the roof, i pretty much swore off young girls on a work. a few of the girl staffers had met some of my girls before hand and expressed some concern, so i was a bit skeptical. Turns out, she was one of my hardest workers. needless to say i was pretty excited about the work ethic of my crew. i really enjoyed not having to work at motivating the majority of my campers.

now back to the roof i was so excited about.
This house was a 2 story house, which i hadnt worked on before, but the hight was no problem, it was just a little harder finding a sturdy place to put the ladder, no big deal though. when i got on the roof, the first thing i noticed was that the entire roof was much, much bouncier than any other roof i had been on, which is never good. i walked around the roof, never fell though, so i went ahead and got the campers up there, and started stripping off the old shingles. the contrators before used plywood as opposed to boards while building the roof, which is fine as long as you use thick enough plywood. As we started stripping the roof, i noticed that the plywood on the roof was very thin, and needed to be replaced in some places. since i had never worked with plywood before, i called Todd to see what he wanted me to do, when he got there, the first words out of his mouth were "oh my gosh, you have got to be kidding me." never a good sign when you have 11 people on the roof. todd explained that the minimum thickness of plywood that you can use on a roof is 1/2 inch, the contractors before decided it would be a good idea to use 1/4 inch plywood, and it had been a very long time since it was laid down, and had become even weaker. Not only did they use thin wood, they built what are called 'fly rafters.' fly rafters are rafters that are not supported by the house, and if you put any weight on them, you go flying. always good news to find out. end of story, we had to resheet the entire house. luckily we didnt have to take up the old plywood, and were able to lay the new plywood down on the preexisting wood, but still an inconvenience none the less. When todd returned, he brought a guy named Dale with him, dale is a pro services employee who helped us out for the day. by the end of the day, we were able to resheet the half of the roof we had torn off, lay tar paper, put new drip edge down and lay all of our chalk lines for our shingles. not a bad days work at all.
tuesday is when my campers really impressed me. we got to the job site about 815, prayed and i explained what wed be doing all day. what we had to do, was to strip the remaining side of the house, resheet and tar paper, we would keep on going from there depending on what kind of time we had left. Everyone had the roof completely stripped by 915ish, and then we had the whole house resheeted by 1115. i was blown away. it had taken us atleast three house the day before to resheet the roof, with dales help, tuesday it only took us three hours to strip, and resheet the house. we were able to tar paper, and even start laying shingles on the back side. wednesday, we finished shingling the back side, we did 1/2 of the roof in less than a half day, like i said, i had a great crew! our chalk lines were messed up about 1/2 way up the roof, and i even trusted them to go by the drip edge (a line on the shingles) rather than laying new chalk lines, which i hadnt done with any other group. Thursday, we laid chalk lines, drip edge, shingled the front 1/2 of the roof, capped off the ridges, and tarred by 1230. we did all the work they had planned for us, plus resheeting an entire day and a half early. it felt so good to finish early and not be rushed on the last day. We finished so early, we were even able to get summer snow on thursday, which is always a treat!

Friday we went and helped Whitney and Erica finish up their deck for about a 1/2 day. Friday was a good reminder of how much more fun roofing is than decking. im not sure what it is, roofing is just so much more fun than decking. i was glad we were able to help another group out though.

the friday night worship service was one of the best so far in the summer. i believe we had atleast 4 salvations that night, along with many other decisions, either being rededications, or descisions to actually do something with their faith and to pursue Christ. it was absolutely amazing looking around at the campers, and seeing the ones who you know are only there because they had to come, or are only there to talk to girls standing there with tears in their eyes simply praising Christ!! it brought an incredible smile to my face. I also realized this week that this summer has helped me to open up in my worship, it seemed like before i was hesitant to raise my hands in worship because i was worried about what the people around me would think. This summer, ive felt alot more comforatable singing louder, raising my hands, and just expressing myself in general while worshiping.