THANK YOU, AMAZING FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS!

Wow. When we put the call out to our supporters list to join us for a Saturday of hard physical labor and back breaking work on what I'm pretty sure was the coldest day of the winter so far, we didn't really know what would happen. But we should have known to expect great things from an amazing group of people! My muscles are sore and I'm still not quite sure I've gotten all the plaster out of my hair, but all I can think about is how completely overwhelmed and blown away I am by all the wonderful people that turned out to help us remove plaster yesterday. What an incredible team!

Here's a peek at what it looked like before we started:

The goal was to tear down as much of the plaster on the walls as we could to reveal the original blond brick, most of which was in pretty good shape. It probably goes without saying that this is not an easy task. It requires a fair amount of brute strength combined with some pretty intense detail work and a lot of patience. Some spots would come right off in huge chunks, while in other sections volunteers were painstakingly working on for 1/2 an hour just to get a 12 inch section removed.

Our first step is to get everyone checked in and geared up for safety (goggles, gloves, respirator, ear plugs, check!)

Then folks went to work with a combination of sledges, crow bars, and a couple of air hammers. Here's a peak at the southern wall team going to town (and yes, that is dust in the air).

And here's what the same wall looked like when they were almost done.
Even Bill Kordosky, our general contractor, said he was absolutely amazed at what the team of volunteers had gotten done. He said his team would be floored when they saw how much had been accomplished over the weekend.

And so are we.

To say thank you really doesn't seem to do it justice, but CAFAC supporters are an amazing group of people and we can't thank you enough!