For those of you not from this area, let me inform you that we had one heck of a storm system roll through yesterday.   Rain like I have not seen in ages, and in Olean, MPH winds that took down trees, knocked out power and likely did some additional damage that we are not yet aware of (Bob's Woods).  While it was a nasty evening, the day turned out to be a highly productive one for BR.  We began working with Rebuilding Together's Olean Chapter, painting a smaller house in the area, however, given the massive number of volunteers that showed up, the job went quickly and we were soon able to move locations and return to work on Carter's house, which we had started the weekend prior.    We spent quite a bit of time at Carter's and accomplished much with the help of two volunteers that showed up from the Rebuilding Together job.  Additionally, two other BR recruits appeared in the afternoon to help power wash, scrape, re-putty windows and prime...

On Sunday (today) we traveled to Buffalo to continue work on the Justin & Sal house, part of the Make-A-Wish foundations efforts to make their existing home more accessible.  As I mentioned before, the house needs A LOT of work, but I was amazed today to find the progress that has been made during the past 7 days.   The sub floors are in, the walls have more paint, a sliding door (which will eventually lead to a deck) has been installed in Justin's room and there are plans to have the electricity on tomorrow and the new furnace installed Wednesday.   AMAZING stuff happening all over.  BR has been focused on getting the stairwell from hell dry-walled, and today moved one step closer to having the job completed.  Our head engineer, Jim, did some design-on-the-fly and had us reframe a lower, flat ceiling below the existing slanted, uneven, and less stable structure.  It turned out better than I could have imagined and I hate myself for doubting him, if only briefly (lol)...   The walls going up the stairs are also now drywalled, which is an accomplishment given what we had to work with.  Today's crew consisted of myself, Jim, Jen, Scott, Rick, Rob and Laurie from Cricket.  While there are no new pics, I can assure you that things are progressing rapidly on all fronts.  Stay tuned and contact Jim via www.bonaresponds.org to sign up to help.

-Nate