Edit [12/26/08]: See these photos and more at my Flickr page.
An office job means that I get to work on construction sites less often than I like. But Friday, I spent the day building out at The Trace along with the other Design Studio folks on the project, Kristen, Sam, and Nadene. We worked with Bryce, a construction supervisor with Habitat, on one of the eight houses currently being framed. Another eight or so foundations are going in, and the remaining houses are being permitted while the lots are being graded and readied.
Alongside volunteers from Thrivent Financial, the company that is largely funding this 28-house affordable subdivision, we built the porch framing and beams, nailed sheathing, and loaded trusses up on the roof of the house. The whole project is moving forward at a breakneck pace; Habitat is well organized and they’re committing a lot of resources to move forward on schedule. Walking through each construction site to assess the new house designs, we found a few details to change but no major problems.
Above: Nadene, Sam, and Kristen (behind the wall) talk with Doug, our main partner in Habitat’s pre-construction office, about possible improvements. More pictures below:
Our construction site rests at lunchtime. This is the Cedar, one of Habitat’s standard plans that we revised to make a better quality house:
Leah from Hands On also came out to help:
Kristen chats with the construction supervisor, Bryce:
Trusses stacked on the roof:
The back end of the Trace, with site preparation, drainage work, and road construction in progress:
With construction work in East Biloxi happening more slowly by the day, Habitat’s speed and scale of work is a refreshing change. It brings its own challenges, making it more difficult to comprehensively design the houses and streetscape, but we’ve been able to make a lot of progress given the circumstances. If all goes well, this will end up being a project to be proud of.
