Stay in Texas

Stay in Texas

Click here to see my trip to New Orleans.

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Well the renovation is just wrapping up in the same time frame as I was planning on leaving Texas and heading to New Orleans. I expect that there will be lots of need for temporary help during the Super Bowl and Marti Gras celebration. I will see if I can get work driving buses, but will also be happy to continue as a day laborer. Here is a view of the rear of the church. The side entrance that we use is to the left. The rear entrance that most church people use. The addition was mostly to the left of the rear door and up to the construction storage area (fenced area in middle).
A lot of my jobs are getting things cleaned up and letting the church use the renovated areas. When they made the addition (in the right background of this picture of the fenced in storage area), they had some left over dirt from digging the foundation. They piled it in the storage area. My job was to move it by shovel and wheel barrow to the dumpster (by side entrance in the picture above). They had moved about half the dirt with the backhoe before the backhoe went to another job, but the dumpster wouldn't hold it all.
Here is the mostly empty dumpster (with empty wheel barrow) after about three loads. One thing that really bothered me is that the dirt I was taking to the dumpster was mostly very rich black top soil while the soil that they had used to smooth out the remaining lawn area (behind the fence in the picture above you can see it is mostly orangish clay. I have had a garden (and helped my dad in his garden when I was growing up) and really don't like the way many construction projects don't take the time to keep the top soil as top soil. Oh well, what to do?
After seven hours and about 50 trips to the dumpster, the dirt pile was all moved. However, the sun was behind the dumpster and I decided to wait until dawn the next morning to take my picture. However, during the night someone had dumped there 'bulky item' trash in our dumpster. Well, you can still see the nice ramp I used to fill the dumpster. My first jobs were to move stuff from room to room so they could lay the flooring in different rooms. One of the last rooms was the kitchen and pantry and they had problems getting the vinyl floor down right (it needed to be warm for the glue to set, and there was a cold snap right after they laid it).
Once the kitchen floor was down, the started installing the kitchen appliances, stainless steel tables, sinks, etc.. That has mostly been completed and so the plumber and L.A. have loads of work connecting up the plumbing and electricity. Here is Alfredo working on connecting the dual water heaters in the pantry. Then the lead plumber, Oscar, came in and was working there as well.
Sometimes another plumber, Michelle, joined the team. Here she was looking on as Oscar and Alfredo were working on the water heaters. Michelle was shy about having her picture taken, but L.A. got her to pose for this picture. Oscar is the lead plumber and speaks quite good English (all on the team are Mexican). Michelle has four kids so must be keeping busy. L.A. once mentioned that his son would routinely call him on it whenever he said hot water heater. He would ask why anyone would need something to heat water that is already hot. Notice I typed water heater above, but only after editting out the 'hot' adjective.
You might wonder why three people would work on those two water heaters, but when you see the required pipes, it starts to seem pretty reasonable. Also, with this picture did you know that my camera was focussing perfectly but that your monitor might have a hard time displaying the image clearly? Did you notice that was a question? Of course I often mention that questions do not logically convey information (though people often make erroneous inferences about some of my questions). Anyway you should be able to make out all the pipes. The floor sink in a closet just to the right of the right door was also a big problem all along.
The last thing to be finished was the kitchen, but by my last day on January 10, 2002 everything was looking pretty good in there. This is the view from the fellowship hall/meeting room through the left roll up door/counter. This end of the kitchen has freezers and food preparation appliances.
This is the right view of the kitchen (with L.A. installing one of the three garbage disposals. This end of the kitchen has the dishwasher and sinks for cleaning the dishes and such.
My main contribution to the kitchen was cleaning the Fiberglass Reinforced Panels (FRP) on the walls (glued over the standard drywall). I got the glue and anything else off the FRP. L.A. took this picture of me on a ladder as I did to clean the FRP. There had been a sign at Trojan Labor saying that we should call the office if we were asked to climb ladders, but Charlie simply asked that I clean the FRP and mentioned where the ladders were. He never asked that I climb the ladder. After climbing telephone poles for Verizon during the strike and then picking fruit, it seemed pretty silly to me. Tom probably posted the signs to keep his insureance company happy. On the right is the A/C guy on the roof with the compressor.
These are the signs in the employee area of Trojan Labor. I was finished at 3:20PM and got there at 3:45PM. However, Tom didn't actually open up until 4:30PM (though the sign says they were open 6AM to 9AM and 4PM to 5PM). Trojan employees wait in a little twelve foot square area in the back. It took about fifteen minutes to bet my pay. When talking with the folks at M.D.I., it seems that Trojan gets $12 an hour while we only got $6 an hour. It seems that they don't have a hard time finding workers though as employees really aren't trreated very well.
Here is the view of the rest of the office at Trojan from the waiting area through the plexiglass.