My Habitat Home: Things that you need to know about the outside of your house

We had a workshop yesterday and a few things I wanted to point out are things that concern the outside of your home. Something that I learned from one of the classes Habitat for Humanity offers is an issue with the foundation of the home. Due to the weather you can get cracks and things in your home along the foundation due to the rain hitting the side of your home. What you need to do is take walks around your home and make sure the dirt around it is at a slant to push water away from your home. See the illustration to the right:

The siding that is on my home will be placed there by volunteers, members of Habitat for Humanity, and my family. Knowing how to install siding the right way to avoid it bowing out since siding expands and shrinks with the weather is important.





If your vinyl siding has come apart here is a solution for you.

The portion about the siding was the first part of our workshop. The second half was building a knickknack shelf in which we deviated from the plan. My knickknacks wouldn't fit on something as cutesy as that so, we switched gears a little.

We made our first down payment. Woo-Hoo! $200 more before we can be considered for building and $350 more before we could move in. It felt so good handing the money over. I almost had a moment where I wanted to cry. We aren't getting the house yet but every moment that we are a step closer it brings on a feeling of anticipation and excitement.

They intend on building 10 homes this year our home will be one of those homes. Three are in the works now. For the most part I am a very patient person and I am able to sit back and see what happens. This is one thing I'm a little impatient about. You're supposed to empty your head before sleep. I've not been able to do that since we started this process. I lay in bed daydreaming about the flower garden I will create, the swing set we will build, the little house we will build for the kids with a garden on the roof. It's a little maddening.

We have one more workshop and we will have nothing more other than to get our 32 hours of sweat equity in every month and the rest of our $700. It's kind of getting to the point of surreal. Like I'm not here I'm just watching from a distance.