Blitz is done. Yay!!!

Last week was our big "Builders Blitz." The Blitz entailed 30 homes being built in one week by various northeast florida home builders. Habijax oversaw the whole thing but each general contractor was responsible for lining up sub-contractors for the houses they were building. It went of without much of a hitch. Only one house failed to get its certificate of occupancy by dedication time on Friday. It was a long couple weeks for me as I worked 10 days straight with a couple 10 hour days in there. It was in the low to mid 90s all last week too. I have to say that I'm glad to see 30 families getting affordable houses but I don't think Builders Blitzes are what the Fuller's had in mind when they started up HFH. I mean we paid a bunch of contractors to build the houses while homeowners and volunteers picked up trash and raked up rocks all day. They did get a chance to put up some siding one day and lay sod on another but the 5 other days it was a waste of volunteer resources. The Americorps pretty much babysat the volunteers until they got bored enough to leave in early afternoon and then we could do some real work. Overall, it was a good project to be a part of. The first picture above is the house that was widely considered the best one for the week. Ryland Homes went well beyond specs for the landscaping on this one. It is quite a nice looking place. The other sets of pictures above show the progress of houses between June 4 and June 9. I think the second set of pics do a good job of showing how much was accomplished in 5 days.

In other news, the grass for the mini-golf course has been order but I don't know went it will show up. I know some people (Kim) have been begging for some pictures of the progress but I haven't brought my camera to the work sessions lately. We didn't work last week because of the blitz but we'll be back this week to finish up everything except the grass. Two weeks ago we put up hole signs which really make it look nice. We also put some pavers in between the holes. I'll try to remember to take a picture this week and post it. I can report that we did quite well with the fund-raizin' pulling in a whopping $725 from 13 donors. Some donors did not want to be mentioned on the blog and I don't remember exactly who so I won't mention any names, except Lee, but I will send an email out thanking all that contributed. It looks like we will use all of that money on supplies with a couple bucks thrown in by the three of us building it to cover the slight overage. Thanks again and look for pictures soon.

-Jonnie Juicebox