A Book Fair Sequel

One of the things that was bothering me throughout the Book Fair was that thousands of dollars were spent on our pavilion, only to have it torn down when everything was over.  This is what happens to all of the places.  Then I learned that our materials are all given to a needy family which I think is wonderful.  The family is responsible for taking the building apart and transporting the materials to their home.  Here are some photos of that process!  The family who is getting the home has five children in a little two bedroom home.  The father is a builder, but is unemployed right now.  He carefully supervised the dismantling with a friend and a Haitian helper, and they even took every screw and nail and put them in a bucket to reuse.  I felt a little sad when it came down...

The deck and sidewalk boards are removed. 

 Each board was carefully saved.

 The front door and windows are gone.

 The porch is nearly gone.  It was kind of scary when the helper was sitting on top of the tile porch roof removing the screws with an electric drill - I worried that they would all just come off and he'd go sliding to the ground.  Notice the ladder which was made on the site.

 Back doors and railings all gone.

 Drywall all gone.  At the building next door, the workers just took hammers and smashed the drywall and glass windows - I can't imagine that clean-up mess.  Our guy carefully removed as much drywall as possible, I guess to reuse...

 Sorted into piles of wood, metal roofing, plywood flooring and aluminum sidewalk supports.

 All gone - you can see the surrounding rubble.

 Here's the Monteros' home.

He is building the new home around the outside of the old one and then will remove the inside walls. I don't know if you remember the windows from the front of the Noche de Hogar building, but here's one now in the front wall.

 Here is Brother Montero, his wife and one son.  Can you see that she has a beauty parlor in her front room, but no windows?

Here's a back view of the house.  The wood wall was once the decking from the pavilion. Can you see an old crib-sized mattress propped up as part of the wall?  You can see how much larger the finished house will be. (By the way, they live on a dirt road that appears to be getting curb and gutters before getting paved which will be nice for them, but their lot is still pretty ragged.)

I don't know if we will visit the site later for a further update.  It just made me so thankful for our lovely apartment here and our home back in Atlanta, and a little ungrateful to the Lord for His bounteous blessings.  

Note:  This blog entry is dedicated to Ben and Jaclyn who have purchased an older home in Dallas which will be torn down for a new home to be built on the site. Good luck!