South Carolina: Day Two

Hello, this is Jayliz DeJesus. I am a Junior in BCT at Dauphin County Technical School. This is my first BC Cares trip, I was so excited when I found out I was accepted to participate. I put a lot of effort into my essay to make sure I had the chance to come along.

The day started out Tuesday morning with breakfast together as a group. We had pancakes and bacon. Afterwards we met in front of the church for our daily meeting.  The meeting is where we talk about what our goals are for the day and assign students to both jobsites since we are working at two different locations.

I was working at Miss Melinda’s house where we were installing a new roof and repairing the subfloors inside her home. My job today was to install shingles. Brightbill and Flavio taught me how to align the shingles and nail them. Since this is area is a hurricane zone, we used 6 nails per shingle. I worked on several different areas of the roof including large areas, valleys and other sections that required more detail.

It was hot today, so we took several breaks in the shade and drank a lot of water. In the afternoon I worked in the house. We measured the hallway for luan plywood and cut and fit it into place. Later, Christy and I removed carpet in a different area, removed some doors, and marked and cut out rotted subfloor. We installed new nailers and subfloor in those areas and sistered up some new joists. We used an oscillating saw, a circular saw and one of our new cordless nail guns. There was a lot of clean up to do and then we had to put the rooms back together so they could be used tonight.

The best part of the day was at the end of the work day. The homeowner, Miss Melinda came out and took pictures with our group and thanked us and hugged us. She told us we were a blessing and told us how much she appreciated our efforts.

Mr. Carroll's crew went to another job where we continued to work on replacement windows and doors. The  installed three replacement windows and trimmed out the exterior with new wood and aluminum. Mrs. Johnson came and learned how to use the break to bend aluminum for the exterior. A storm door was also installed and the group worked hard to custom fit a new door on a storage unit in the back of the house. The team’s carpentry skills were put to the test!