The group I was with joined up with a group from Wisconsin doing drywall and demolition... moving debris and busting out walls in a shed...and putting up drywall in a house. The house had been damaged beyond repair and was slowly being rebuilt with new fixtures and walls. The shed out back hadn't been touched since the storm hit.
We arrived on site at 8am with crowbars and sledgehammers.
The homeowners were living outside in a trailer in the front yard, as is common for a lot of families in the area. Their house was slowly coming back to life, but the shed was still totally beyond repair. The insides were in sad shape. Fallen and broken paint cans everywhere, tools and toys and wet and rotting supplies. It didn't smell good.
The reason we were gutting the shed was to convert it to living space for the father-in-law of the family. His own house had been destroyed and he needed a place to call home.
Here's what the shed and debris looked like
when we got there:The first order of business was to clear out all the debris onto a big pile on the side of the house. It was sad to see a family's personal possessions reduced to a pile of rubble: a plastic Ninja Turtles figurine, Mardi Gras beads, books, a child's dollhouse, power tool manuals, pieces of scrap wood and metal for hobbies and projects.
After removing all the stuff we could carry, we set about with crowbars to pull off all the drywall to the beams, essentially gutting the structure. Behind the drywall was wet pink fiberglass insulation which needed to be pulled out, and underneath that, silverfish, palmetto bugs and tiny little lizards.
The drywall came down relatively easy, but the nailed-up pegboard was more stubborn. We also had a tough time removing florescent lighting fixtures and a rusted iron sink (the water main hadn't been turned off, but thankfully demolition was halted momentarily and the valve shut off in time)
Meanwhile, the team inside was busy measuring and putting up drywall. The difference in smell was astounding...it had the 'new house' smell, whereas outside...was something entirely different.
We worked for about six hours before taking a group photo and heading back to Handsboro.
