Thank you to all the selfless volunteers that have supported us, and enabled us to move forward with this home.
Also, thanks to Advanced Disposal, Crockett Septic, Ellis Construction, Four Seasons Heating and A/C, Kohler Company, and Square D for their generous support.
May 1, 2021
December 10, 2020
The home is essentially finished!! Our crew has been hitting it hard the last few weeks, and other than landscaping, which will happen this spring, the home is done and our Family will move in very soon!!
Thank you to Kirby, Mark, Dennis, Bob, Eric, Spence, Joe, UWSP and all the others who wholeheartedly and selflessly gave of themselves. Without you this would not have happened. We would not be bringing another deserving Portage County family the dream of home ownership; a safe, affordable and WELL BUILT home.
And special thanks to Bill Smith. Without Bill’s leadership, patience, and determination our 2020 build would have been lost. Given the pandemic and all the normal and abnormal circumstances inherent in construction the difficulty in this build went to eleven!
We truly express all our admiration and thanks.
Well done.
November 22, 2020
It was a busy week. We managed to hang almost all the doors, put up a lot of casing and trim, finished the vinyl flooring except for the utility room, finished up painting, and placed the counter tops. Also the mason put in the driveway and the electrician finished up. Carpet comes Monday and Tuesday and the plumbers come on Tuesday. This coming week we will continue on trim, doors, closets and finishing off the front porch. The home is really coming together.
November 15, 2020
We had a great painting crew in on Friday and we also managed to get 300 sq ft of vinyl flooring planks down. Wednesday and Thursday the kitchen cabinets were installed. Saturday more finish work was done on the porch.
This coming week includes more flooring, counter tops, bathroom cabinets, finish the porch and start on doors, baseboard and casing.
November 11, 2020
We started installing the kitchen cabinets today. By day’s end on Friday we will have the kitchen and bathroom cabinets set.
November 10, 2020
We had a couple volunteers working overtime yesterday to take advantage of the weather. And…….here is where we are!
November 8, 2020
We just about have the exterior completed. All that remains is a little soffit, fascia and wrapping of the beams and posts on the porch. We worked “overtime” a couple days and were able to get a lot accomplished. We will also b working Monday November 9 at 8:00 to try and finish the exterior in the nice warm weather.
We also had a great crew from UWSP inside painting, and the living room, dining, kitchen, halls and bathrooms got their first coat of paint. A big thank you!!
This week we hope to start on cabinet installation on Wednesday.
November 1, 2020
We took advantage of the relatively nice weather and…..(deep breath)…… finished the back of house excluding fascia, finished vinyl on east and west, got 1/2 the soffit and fascia on West, the front door and garage door got brick molding, we put up most the F and J channel on south gable, started siding on the east side of the garage door, and established the height of the vinyl on the living room /porch wall.
We will hit it hard on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday this week and hopefully finish the vinyl, soffit and fascia.
October 25, 2020
The dry wall finisher starts Monday the 25th, so this week was spent hanging the remaining dry wall. By Saturday at 1:00 we had it completed.
Next on the schedule, given the BALMY forecast, is siding, soffit and fascia. Join in and help Wednesday, Friday and Saturday beginning at 8:00am!
October 17, 2020
Bill said….finish the ceiling dry wall gang…….so we did! We also managed to get most of the walls done in the bathrooms.
Wednesday we will be blowing the attic insulation in.
Moving forward we will finish hanging the dry wall, then head over to siding. We will hit the siding hard to finish it up before it gets any colder….or more of that white stuff comes down……..
This last week we received a lot of materials, insulated the house, and built a wall for the utility room and built a closet. It was a great team effort – thanks to all the volunteers. It’s going to be a nice warm house.
We are forging a new partnership with the construction students at Mid State and their instructor Craig Buttke. Craig and the students will be putting up drywall on Tuesday Oct 6th. ….Thank you!!
And we are continuing or long standing partnership with the UWSP Women’s Basketball Team and coach Shirley Egner. The Team will be in on Saturday October 3rd, working on siding.
This week we will have crews working Wed, Fri and Saturday mornings.
September 12, 2020
This weekend we made good progress on our Fifth Avenue house. The roofing work continued and we are close to finishing, but rain on Saturday sent us inside. On Saturday we fine tuned the framing to get ready for a building inspection on Monday. We added all the required bracing and brackets required by today’s building codes. The big bad wolf will not be able to blow this house down! We also added the blocking required throughout the house to get ready for installation of Sheetrock.
It was a good weekend with some new and old volunteers working together. Thank you!
This week (September 4-5) we expect to finish the roof and door installation, and complete the blocking inside the house. We are getting ready for the electrical contractor and the garage door installation to complete the closing up the house.
August 29, 2020
This week we had good progress on the house build. The windows and two of the doors were installed on a rainy Friday morning. Then Saturday we worked on the roof and got it about 60% completed.
Each day we had four volunteers, and though it would have been better to see more people, those who came worked hard and were good sports on the roof and getting rained on. Thanks to Scott who worked hard leading the team.
The heating contractor was also in on Friday and installed much of the duct work above.
August 10, 2020
Working around the wind and rain we nearly completed sheeting the roof, got the window opening picture framed, and did more of the truss work for the porch.
August 1, 2020
We continued with the sub fascia, the lookouts, the roofing and porch framing this weekend. Looks great!
July 25, 2020
The trusses are up! Next in the project is sheeting the roof and getting the shingles on.
July 17, 2020
Preparation for the trusses is complete with the framing done and OSB on.
