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The Home Dedication Ceremony was held on July 23rd for our two Habitat homeowners, Bobbie Dicking and Carmen Sanchez. South Collin County Habitat had a great ceremony planned for the 93rd and 94th home build (and St Elizabeth Ann Seton’s 2nd home build). There were short speeches, a home blessing, and the Litany of Dedication. Bobbie and Carmen were presented several gifts, each which symbolizes what it takes to make a house a home. After thanks were given the day concluded with refreshments and a house walkthrough.

Since our last update, there have been some additional projects completed in the backyard of the duplex. This includes building the second storage shed and a deck and stairs between the two homes, leading down into the back yard.

A lot of progress has been made on completing the outside projects on the duplex.  This includes building and backfilling the retaining wall, installing gutters and the outside air conditioning units, laying sod in the front, side and back yards, and pouring the concrete for the parking pads. The dedication date has not yet been set. Plans are beening made for the 3rd build to begin in 12 to 18 months, as soon as the funds are raised.

Just a short update on the status of the build.  Habitat for South Collin County is working on completing some of the outside projects on the duplex.  This includes building the retaining wall, and preparing the grounds for the pouring of concrete for the sidewalk and parking pads.  They can begin on the landscaping, once this has been completed.  The dedication has still not been rescheduled.

Dedication that was scheduled for Sunday, June 4th was postponed due to rain. The second collection this weekend will help support our next build which we plan to begin constructing in twelve to eighteen months, depending on how long it takes to raise the funds for the materials needed.

The final touches are being done on the inside of the duplex with putting up the blinds on the windows.  On the outside, they are building retaining walls, which are needed to install the outside air conditioning units. Landscaping also needs to be done as well as pouring concrete for the parking pads. Some or all of this may be done by the other sponsoring organizations. Please check the on-line sign-up sheet for future volunteer opportunities. The Dedication date has been scheduled for Sunday June 4th at 3 pm.  Please join us in welcoming Carmen and Bobbie into their new homes. 

We have not had a Seton build day since our last one on April 8th; however, we wanted to let everyone know where we are at in the build process. The next major construction project is the building of retaining walls for the duplex, which will be contracted out. There is still the landscaping to be done and some interior work such as installing the bathroom cabinets.

The primary work on the 18th consisted of painting areas that needed a second coat of white paint on the trim and painting some of the exterior doors.  In addition, the volunteers started to install shelving in the closets, and putting up trim/molding around the perimeter of the interior doors. 

The primary work on these two days consisted of working on the exterior of the house - installing siding, the trim around the siding, and caulking around the siding and trim. Other work included sheetrocking storage rooms, removing chunks of concrete and rock from the yard, and leveling out, as best we could, the front yard. There is still a lot of work that needs to be done. If you are interested in volunteering there are spots available - new build dates are being assigned, additional workers are needed on some days, and volunteers sometimes need to cancel.

We had mentioned in a previous article that the Habitat homes are not provided free of charge to individuals; instead, the recipients have a mortgage with Habitat-SCC and pay property taxes that are escrowed by Habitat-SCC. In 2016, the Habitat homeowner families collectively paid $96,376.34 in Collin County property taxes. 

On these build days we continued working on the outside of the house, finishing the window trim, starting on the siding, installing the soffits and caulking the exterior. We also worked in at cleaning up the yard and filling in the trenches that had been dug for the water and sewer lines. The plumbing, electric and HVAC contractors had also been hard at work between the two build days.

Since the last build day, the roof was put on and a lot of the plumbing was put in. We spent the 14th putting up bulkheads and on the 21st we started installing soffits, window trim, and the permanent supports for the front porches.

Seton's second Habitat for Humanity build continued with our third and fourth build dates. The duplex is now really starting to take shape with most of the windows installed and the roof trusses hoisted in place. Some doors were hung and insulation put over the exterior sheathing on the outside wall.

Seton's second Habitat for Humanity build has officially begun. Together with our partners at St. Mark's, work began on framing the exterior and interior walls. By the end of Day #2, all the interior and exterior walls were up, as well as almost all of the sheathing. While there will be about 9 more days of work for Seton, Days #1 and 2 showed tremendous progress by people of goodwill working together to carry out God’s plan here on Earth