THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 24, 1994 TAG: 9407260508
SECTION: HAMPTON ROADS WOMAN PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 206 lines
THE AFTERNOON RAIN passed, leaving behind sticky sand, stickier air and a sky full of clouds.
It would get dark early tonight. And there still was a lot of work to do on the house.
The light hair against Claudia C. Cook's neck quickly had turned dark from sweat despite the red bandanna tied around her head. Perspiration beaded under her eyes and on her nose. This wasn't one of those sunny, 100-degree days like they'd had, but hot was still hot.
Cook sat on the dirty wood subfloor in what the plans said would be the kitchen, her white Reeboks curled under her, her T-shirt with its cartoon goose damp against her back. She gripped her hammer halfway up its handle and drove a sixpenny nail into the bottom of a wall stud.
It was an awkward angle, with little swinging room to nail the upright lumber into the floor at the base of the outside wall. ``Toenailing,'' Cook had learned to call it. It was not her favorite thing to do. Still, she cheerfully persisted, pulling out mis-hit nails with a grunt, joking about her technique, pushing on.
There was some urgency in the humid air surrounding this all-women Habitat for Humanity project on Prentis Avenue in Portsmouth. Cook and the other 13 volunteers working this evening needed to get the walls up and braced before dark. The heavy roof trusses were due to be delivered the next day. The volunteers' work - all the framing for this three-bedroom rancher - had to be strong enough to support the trusses and the roof that would follow.
Mary Keith Garrett, a Suffolk general contractor serving as construction coordinator for the project, told the volunteers - demanded, really, but with a big smile - that the trusses would be set up ``in a true and square building.''
``You all are doing the final details of a framing,'' Garrett said.
Cook looked up from the door frame she was nailing. ``Really?''
There was some pride involved in finishing in time. The workers also didn't want to keep the crane waiting the next day. Money and materials were donated for the house and hard to come by - no one wanted to waste it on idle equipment. They couldn't afford to.
Cook had signed on for most of the available housebuilding jobs - foundation, framing, electrical and plumbing, drywall. Everything but roofing. She didn't like heights. Others had the same concern, and someone asked Jeannette R. Haas, a Norfolk electronics worker serving as the framing supervisor, about working with the trusses.
``I don't know,'' Haas replied. ``I've never done it.''
Everyone went back to work. Cook scooted from door frame to door frame, pounding away, trying to miss the ring finger still sore from an earlier mishap.
It was getting darker.
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After an eight-year stint in the Navy doing mostly office work, Cook, a civilian, was looking for a little time off when she and her Navy husband moved to Portsmouth last summer. He was in medical corpsman's school. Her 17-year-old son was finishing high school and planning to join the Navy himself.
She took some night classes at a local high school, adding to her computer skills and trying out woodworking. She surprised herself by successfully building a barn-shaped birdhouse out of cherry wood.
She also was looking for volunteering opportunities. She spotted a newspaper ad for Habitat for Humanity.
The international nonprofit organization joins churches and other community groups to build low-cost housing for working poor families. It uses donated materials, money and, most of all, volunteer labor. The families are chosen on the basis of need, income, credit and work history. They receive a no-interest mortgage and must contribute 400 hours of work toward their own home and other Habitat projects.
The planned house at 1726 Prentis Ave., in the middle of a low-income neighborhood thick with boarded-up buildings, is the second all-women effort in Hampton Roads. Like last year's project, it's aimed at providing practical skills and self-confidence to women, as well as serving as a reminder of the disproportionate number of women in poverty.
Workers on Prentis Avenue wear T-shirts reading: ``Another House That Jill Built.''
Building a house. That appealed to Cook. She long had watched her handy husband fix things around their home. She enjoyed watching ``This Old House,'' the home-improvement show on public television. And she built a birdhouse, didn't she?
``I think a lot of women out there want to learn, but don't know who to ask,'' she said. ``I was thinking about volunteering somewhere. I thought I could pick up some skills. And I could help someone else.''
Others felt the same way. Many are teachers, off for the summer. Others come after work and on weekends. Some, like Haas, use their vacations. One who was nailing together a wall near Cook is a 64-year-old grandmother of five. Some are tradeswomen, electricians and the like, who find themselves on the tops of ladders wielding unfamiliar tools like reciprocating saws.
To most, like Cook, it was all new.
Since work began June 12, the 37-year-old Michigan native learned the names for things she didn't know existed. She handled power tools. She now knew to refer to measurements in inches only, to avoid confusion. She considered learning to drive a nail straight as the ``neatest thing'' she had done.
Her husband, who sometimes drove by the site to check the house's progress, helped Cook buy $100 worth of her own tools.
``I used to watch men do things,'' she said. ``I used to think it was all mysterious. But it's all common sense.''
And hard work. The atmosphere is cheery, the women help each other and joke about their mistakes, but those are real hammers they're swinging. Cook took home a sore arm after her shifts, and invariably slept soundly.
This was going to be one of those nights.
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Cook was ``plumbing the jacks'' - making sure all the door openings were level on both sides and toenailed into the floorboard before the trusses could be laid across them. Construction coordinator Garrett showed her what to do. Cook grabbed a level and a sledgehammer and got to work.
Around her, other volunteers were erecting the last of the main interior walls, finishing off the top boards to receive the trusses and attaching temporary braces so the heavy roof supports wouldn't knock the walls out of place. One woman, her fingernail black from a past mishap, hummed as she hammered from the top of a stepladder.
A problem developed with one bedroom wall, nailed together on the floor. They couldn't lift it past a brace. Not enough room. After they failed to force it into place, they solved the problem by simply lifting up the other end, making the bottom the top.
``They will try things they can't do,'' Garrett had said earlier. ``There's no pressure. There's that degree of vulnerability. . . . which I don't see in a coeducational group.''
``This is fun. This is different,'' said Katherine D. Baise, a Virginia Beach kindergarten teacher. ``Sort of like camp, for grownups.''
Across the street, 25-year Prentis Avenue resident Clara J. Dunbar watched from her porch. She made Kool-aid for the thirsty workers on the scorching days and let them lock their mortar mixer in her back yard.
``It's so strange,'' she said. ``I'm 75 years old, and I've never seen anything like it. I mean, all women. No men at all.''
Garrett called Cook back to the back door, where she had started. The twelvepenny nails needed to go in straighter to better bite the floorboards. And they needed to be hammered further into the stud.
``Get 'em flush,'' Garrett said, smiling broadly. ``Because you may be hanging drywall, too. And you'll be saying: `Who let this nail stick out?' ''
Cook slammed the nail until its head dug into the wood, then moved to another door frame. Check the level on both sides, slam it with the sledgehammer if it's off, level again and toenail it tight when it's right.
``That one sounded better,'' Cook said, critiquing her hammering style. She held another nail against the frame to see if the first one reached to solid floor. ``Yeah, that went in.''
She checked another nail the same way. ``I don't want to have to do it again.'' She and another worker had to rip out and rebuild a window frame twice before they discovered that someone else had measured it wrong in the first place.
Cook took a break, chugged water from a small cooler and climbed back into the house. She pulled the work glove off her left hand and shook a sore index finger she had nipped with her hammer.
Earlier, she had been holding a wall section upright when the end of someone else's measuring tape almost poked her in the eye. This only added to her good-natured reputation of being accident prone.
She had hit her hand and fingers - the reason for wearing the one glove - scraped her knees and leg, been banged by a board and walked into a wood brace. In the weirdest accident, another volunteer mishit a nail that flew and hit Cook in the back, scratching her.
``It happens,'' she said, laughing. ``Plus, I'm just naturally clumsy, I guess.''
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Back to work. The sun broke through a little, but it was after 7:30 p.m. It wasn't safe to work in the dark, plus the women were careful about not being in the rough neighborhood after dark or alone.
Cook squinted at the level. ``I'm going to have to hit it,'' she said, reaching for the sledgehammer. ``It's good for your aggression, frustrations.''
Another frame. Another squint. ``I like the bubble to fit neatly,'' she said. ``Yeah, I want it perfect.''
She was running out of door frames. The other work was getting finished, too. They were going to make it.
At 8 p.m., some left. Others finished up. Another brace for the hallway. An outside wall that needed to be pushed out a smidgen. More calls of ``Jeannette!'' More questions about details.
The last six workers walked off the site together about 8:50 p.m., tool belts slung over their shoulders, as fireflies flickered around the dark shape of the half-built house. Cook had left a little earlier, heading for a late supper with her husband.
She had talked about her sense of fulfillment, about proving something to herself and the world. But mainly she talked about her wonder at what this group of people was accomplishing.
``I like to drive by sometimes when no one's here and walk around. It's amazing,'' she said. ``It goes up so fast. At first, it's just a bunch of dirt.''
Just before leaving, tired, sweaty and dirty, helping put away tools in the trailer, she had one question: ``What time are they starting tomorrow night? Same time?''
The trusses arrived the next day. The walls held. The work went on. MEMO: Habitat for Humanity still is looking for more women volunteers for
the Prentis Park project, particularly anyone with trades experience,
such as electricians, plumbers or heating and air-conditioning workers.
But any woman is welcome. They'll be working all summer. Call the office
at 625-1281.
ILLUSTRATION: JIM WALKER/Staff photos
THE CREW OF HABITAT FOR HUMANITY VOLUNTEERS, CLOCKWISE FROM FAR
LEFT: Anne Mayes of Portsmouth saws while Barbara Fitzgibbons of
Chesapeake holds the two-by-four; Mindy Meade of Chesapeake drives a
nail; Claudia Cook of Portsmouth; Kathryn Ogg of Chesapeake; Sonja
Stevenson of Chesapeake.
Photo
JIM WALKER/Staff
Mindy Meade of Chesapeake works from a stepladder to help erect the
main interior walls for the Prentis Avenue home in Portsmouth.
by CNB