The Cager house will be completed by the time we put away our supplies today. We now know that 3-4 days down here is not near enough time – but we with our ace team, we were able to finish what the Global Hope January Crew & Permaseal began on the Cager house.
James Cager has been working for over a year on his mother, Dolores’ home. He has put in beautiful kitchen cabinets, tile floors and did a great paint job throughout. The wall color choices of celery, peach, a beautiful light blue and a pink & brown bathroom reflects his mom, Dolores’ lovely taste. The house is almost ready for her to come home to.
This home has special significance in the Lower 9th Ward. Just days after the storm, Mrs. Cager was the first to sign a lease and allow Common Ground to use what was left of her home as an emergency relief center for water, medical supplies and later on as a relief and distribution center.
What a great crew working on the house! Lead Carpenter, Mike Taylor and Crew Leader, Doris Taylor were supported by John Cox, Jenny and Ellie Christeson, John Dede, Ted Ferris, Pat Murphy, Kathy Gumbel, Ron Hason, Mary Hason, Jill Koestner, Sue Lenihan, Bob Lothrop, Jack Lothrop, Kristin Lothrop, Kara Lothrop, Julius Sherrill, Lisa Sparagna with consulation provided by Petie Sydello who have all contributed to this project. We also thank Common Ground volunteers Sam and Tank for their assistance.
We finished the exterior of this home — we built shutters, window boxes and a trellis, trimmed out all the windows, installed a new front door and trim, planted flowers, painted trim and added accent colors to make it homey & cute.
We now know that there is no need for books, cards or other free time supplies. We’ve even had trouble finding time to blog for Global Hope each day. After a long day of work, we can’t wait to shower or sometimes we have dinner first. Then if we can muster up any energy, we find a bar with food music. We last 30 minutes to an hour, and we end each day happy knowing that we have helped someone. We not only build homes, we also have a built a great sense of community – our Global Hope community and our newer community — our friends in the Lower Ninth Ward.
