We can't thank all the participants and supporters of the Women Repair Week held last week June 6th and 10th. Women came out to assist Veteran, Victoria Bullard, and her active duty husband with starting on the repairs they needed on their home. There were so many organizations and companies that came in to support this couple whose story can be seen here: Military Helping Military
Attendees of the event were educated on the importance of women taking a role in home maintenance and teaching them some of the skills to complete some of them. They also learned more about our Repair Program and how they can help with it. The women were all enthusiastic and ready to help with the repairs.
On Monday, the women suited up and got a lesson from Tim Johnson with Hawk Crawlspace & Foundations on what to look for in your home's foundation for moisture issues. He showed them how to tap on the wood to hear the changes in the sound between dry wood and wood saturated with water. He also showed them how he uses a moisture reader to see how moist a crawl space actually is. The women asked a lot of questions about foundation repairs and maintenance and learned a lot from Tim. The ladies helped with blocking and assisted the home owner move her belongings into a storage pod, so her repairs could be completed. A few active duty military Navy men came out to help in the afternoon, so we put them to work on taking down the cabinets.
On Friday, our Home Repair Program Manager, Rainham Rowe, taught the women how to patch holes in drywall and how to cut in and paint walls. She showed the women how to use mesh tape to reinforce areas that are not holes, but deep enough to need more than one skim coat of mud to patch and how to sand down a patch to blend it into the wall. Rainham also demonstrated how to match the plaster swirl pattern to blend in a patch with the existing wall. It was a damp day, so many of the patches weren't dry at the end of the day, but the women did start priming walls that were blemish free.
Thank you to WAVY-TV10 for showing the story about the Bullard's home and to the VFW for stepping up to get the ball rolling to find assistance. Funding from the Sentara Foundation and Alex Serrano with I Sell 757 went to help pay Hawk Crawlspace & Foundation's employees, and Hawk Foundation secured the donations for the materials to install a dehumidifier and encapsulate the home's foundation. Lowe's supplied the lumber. Thank you also to South Bay Communications and Security for sending women out to help on Friday and offering to install a security system with two years monitoring to the family.
More work will need to be completed on the home, to get it into fully safe livable condition, but we're excited that the couple are on their way to a warm, safe and dry home.
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