Habitat seeks help to finish building house

Greater Fairfield Area Habitat for Humanity is asking for more volunteers to work on finishing a new home being built at 807 N. Ninth St. in Fairfield.

Workdays are 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesdays and Saturdays. Volunteers can sign up for specific time slots with Scott Timm by calling 515-291-2560 or emailing him at stimm@iastate.edu or call the Fairfield Volunteer Center at 209-9045 or email the center at fairfieldvolunteers@gmail.com.

?Or, people can just show up at the home during the workdays,? said Timm. ?Volunteers should wear sturdy shoes and work clothes. We?ll provide the tools and teach skills.

?People can come and work for any length of time, it doesn?t have to be all day,? he said. ?Ideally, we?re looking for volunteers age 18 and older. Anyone younger than 16 must be accompanied by a parent.?

This is the 11th house Habitat has built in Fairfield.

?We?re about a month behind schedule because we haven?t had enough volunteers helping,? said Holly Butler, construction manager for Greater Fairfield Area Habitat for Humanity.

?We have a pretty regular crew that shows up on Tuesdays, but we need more people on Saturdays,? said Butler.

?We?ll be putting up drywall the rest of October,? she said.

Specific areas in the house are scheduled for work throughout November and December:

? Front and back deck, Saturday Nov. 2, and Tuesday, Nov. 11.

? Front and back deck; drywall cleanup; paint preparation and priming, Saturday, Nov. 9 and Tuesday, Nov. 12.

? Paint priming, Saturday, Nov. 16.

? Paint doors and trim; stick-on tile primer; lay laminate flooring underlay, Tuesday, Nov. 19.

? Lay laminate flooring, Saturday, Nov. 23 and Tuesday, Nov. 26.

? Saturday, Nov. 30, is a not a workday as it is part of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

? Laminate flooring and cabinet installation, Tuesday, Dec. 3.

? Laminate flooring, cabinet installation and kitchen floor, Saturday, Dec. 7.

? Kitchen floor and counter installation, Tuesday, Dec. 10.

? Bathroom floor, cleanup and miscellaneous, Saturday, Dec. 14.

? Interior doors and trim, cleanup and miscellaneous, Tuesday, Dec. 17.

? Interior trim, cleanup and miscellaneous, Saturday, Dec. 21.

Dustin Wickenkamp and Chrystal Knight and their two children, 3-year-old Tatum, and 11-year-old Hailee, had hoped to be in the house by Thanksgiving and now hope it will be by Christmas.

Spring floods rendered their Packwood apartment unlivable. Five feet of water stood in their basement. The flood took out their furnace, water heater and breaker box.

Wickenkamp and Knight?s

application was merely one of the 100 Habitat received.

To be chosen for the program, applicants must undergo a criminal background check and credit history check. They must live in unsafe housing, have been turned down by a commercial bank and be able to pay Habitat back for the materials. In addition, each adult must contribute 200 hours of ?sweat equity? toward building the home.

In addition to the required work hours for the homeowners, they also will have two mortgages.

One mortgage is based on the amount of money spent to build the home, paying back for the materials, and a second mortgage is based on what the volunteer labor is worth. That protects Habitat from homeowners turning around and selling a house for a profit. The second mortgage is forgiven over time if the family stays in the house 20 years.

Wickenkamp said he and Knight have no problem fulfilling the 20 years requirement.

?We?ve put in so much blood, sweat and tears here that we aren?t going anywhere,? he said.