Whistle while you work.

I think I've finally found my favorite type of community service: Habit For Humanity! I had the opportunity to volunteer earlier this week through the business I work for, and I had SO much fun, even despite the heat.

I've never been too handy (silly since I'm an engineer, right?) and I've NEVER worked on a house before, except painting, so it was an awesome first experience. There were five of us from Eaton, including the other Operations intern and my roommate, so we all got to "take the day off" from work and give back to the community. The job site we worked at was building a duplex, but it is still in its early stages of building, so we got to build and put up wall frames. I'm such an engineer, I think I had more fun reading the schematics than anything else. :P

I learned quite a bit, too, of course! I now know what "flushing" boards means and the actual definition and purpose of a "stud" and why it's important to build walls in certain ways, especially when there's two stories to the house. The main architect gave us some great tips on how to use basic tools too, like the best way to grip a hammer and all that kind of stuff. I imagine this might not be new to anyone else, but I definitely benefited from talking with him all day. That just means I'll be that much more prepared when it comes to working on my own house in the future :)!

Here's some pictures of the house we were working on and some of the things we got to do!:

Holding up the stairway wall before it's "tacked"

Holding up another of the walls we built

The front of the duplex! The boys put up the front walls!

Team Eaton :D

What we accomplished in 8 hours. It doesn't look like much, but it was a ton of work.

Because I had an incredible experience and so much fun doing Habitat, I think I'm going to start volunteering at home too! Anyone know of any places near East Lansing? 

Oh, did I mention I got to use a giant table saw and was trusted to cut studs to exactly the right lengths? :D