Volunteers build a foundation

The tiny house shook with a cadence of striking hammers, while the hollow scream of a buzz saw rose above the noise.

Students and workers for UNC Habitat for Humanity carefully hammered down the remaining window frames and rolled out the last of the tarp onto the roof beneath a gray sky holding the promise of rain.

As the last of the work was being finished Sunday evening, Peter DeSaix, University employee and chairman of the partnership between UNC Habitat and Chapel of the Cross church, stood in a dirt-streaked street nearby, astonished by the sight.

"This is amazing. It's amazing," DeSaix said. "Wow!"

Such was the mood at the culmination of Blitz Build, a yearlong project headed by UNC Habitat to build a home for a University employee in just three days.

The event, which took place from Friday to Sunday in the Rusch Hollow neighborhood in Chapel Hill, brought together about 140 volunteers with supervisors from Orange County Habitat for Humanity and AmeriCorps.

The event, which has not been done on campus since 1998, has been in the works for a year.

Habitat and other organizations have raised about $56,000 of the $60,000 needed to build the home for University employee Linda Parson and her children Isiah, 5, and Imani, 4.

University students and faculty, with members of Habitat's partnership with Chapel of the Cross and various campus institutions, as well as Parson herself, spent their weekend working morning and afternoon shifts constructing the home.

Volunteers, many of whom had never worked on a construction site, found themselves hammering down flooring, raising walls, gluing windows and scaling rooftops during the weekend.

"I think it's amazing," said volunteer coordinator Stephanie Bright.

"It's a little scary, too, but that's why we have all this skilled labor here to make sure everything goes just right."

Friday began as volunteers and supervisors nailed flooring onto the house's foundation and built the walls that would be raised the following day.

Over the next few days, what began as a simple concrete foundation slowly molded into the outline of a house, as volunteers and workers pieced together the wooden skeleton and put up walls.

By Sunday afternoon, students were setting the windows in place and walking across the black-tarped rooftop.

"It was scary at first, but after a while, you begin to feel more comfortable," said senior Rohit Bhandari.

"It was a lot like being on a sailboat for the first time."

Despite the apprehension Bhandari and others initially felt, the volunteers were eager to build, said construction supervisor Tyler Momsen-Hudson from Orange County Habitat.

"That's what people want," Momsen-Hudson said. "They want to come out here to have something to do."

The event has potential to forge stronger town-gown relations in Chapel Hill, said Archie Ervin, assistant to the chancellor and director of minority affairs.

"I just think that this is a very important University-community relationship," Ervin said after a brief dedication ceremony at noon Saturday. "And I'd like to see this being extended in some meaningful ways."

Others such as sophomore Kelly Walker, who was there with 10 of her fellow members from Zeta Tau Alpha sorority, say the Blitz Build has another important long-term goal.

"I think it's (important) for a family to have not just a house, but a home," Walker said. "Your whole life feels more in order if you have a home."

Contact the Features Editor at features@unc.edu.