After weeks of temperatures reaching into the 90’s and even a couple of days last week hitting the 100 degree mark, who would have guessed that Saturday would bring drizzles and cloudy skies all day? Certainly not the hardy volunteers from Kaiser Permanente who showed up en masse at King Arthur’s Mobile Home Park in Riverside early Saturday morning to paint and rehab the exterior of four homes. Almost 80 volunteers joined us to help out 4 low income homeowners who needed help.
While most of the volunteers filled out waivers and got their safety orientation in the clubhouse, a crew of carpenters were already busy rebuilding the steps to the front and rear entrance of the home belonging to Armando and Maria. While they were at it, the volunteers noticed a stack of 12” by 12” pavers that were just waiting to be laid around the side of the house. After checking with the homeowner, the volunteers proceeded to level the ground and lay the pavers so the new rear entry steps would land on the new paver patio and walkway. This is one part of the project where the cool, drizzly weather actually worked to our advantage!
Thanks to good planning, we were able to make sure that we had three homes side by side so the volunteers could work together and share supplies and equipment. The home belonging to Bonnie & Lupe was beautifully landscaped with some wonderful plants that the volunteers were careful to work around and Lupe did a good job trimming things back for us to allow the work to be completed.
It was touch and go for a while with the drizzle so the volunteers took advantage of the awnings on both sides of the homes and worked under cover for the first part of the day all the while watching the skies and waiting for the drizzle to stop. God smiled down on us and made sure that the wet weather stopped just when we needed it and the work kept going along smoothly all morning long. We were able to move along into the areas that were not under cover as the damp weather turned to a nice overcast day.
It even warmed up enough to allow the group to do a second coat on the home belonging to Jorge and Carmen. A second coat was necessary because we were trying to cover over a pretty outdated gray color on the body and the new, lighter color was just not doing the job with one coat. The second coat was exactly what it needed.
The 4th home belonged to Tina and Alejandro and definitely needed some TLC, especially on the deck. The Kaiser team brought along some stain and got busy re-staining the wooden rails on the stairs and deck to brighten them up along with the new paint job. That was the final touch to make sure everything was perfect.
Huge thanks going out from Habitat Riverside, the folks at the King Arthur Mobile Home Park in Riverside and all of the homeowners who received help to all of the great volunteers from Kaiser Permanente. We couldn’t do what we do without your tremendous support. You made a huge difference in the lives of many people Saturday.
