Volunteering on My First Habitat for Humanity Build

My grandfather was a carpenter. I never knew one end of a hammer from the other. So imagine how I felt last year when I followed in his steel-toed-boot steps to present myself for my first day on a construction project for Habitat for Humanity.

You’re probably familiar with this outfit, which has provided housing for 65 million people around the world since its founding in 1976. It muscles together community support to finance and build homes for people who couldn’t otherwise afford them. The future homeowners are required to invest up to 500 hours of sweat equity, including building the place and putting up with skill-free volunteers like me.

My wife and I had been donating to Habitat for years. We had scrambled to afford our own ever-escalating mortgages, which made us even more sympathetic to people who couldn’t make a down payment. Add in the image of Jimmy Carter in a hard hat (he and first lady Rosa​lynn famously supported Habitat, in person, for more than three decades) and we were sold on the mission.

We showed up at 7:30 a.m. on a site a few miles from our house in Fort Collins, Colorado. Inside the construction trailer we met Julie, an artist and maintenance worker who would live in the home we were helping to build. That personal connection was a force multiplier.

But ... uh-oh. A hammer! The site organizers gathered us together, and after a prayer (our build was supported by Foothills Unitarian Church, where I’m a board member), we discussed jobs. The site supervisor sized me up and asked, “Want to help us install hurricane ties?”

Moore helped install structural metal connectors, known as hurricane ties, in the Habitat house.

Courtesy Peter Moore

A hurricane tie, I now know, is a twisted and perforated hunk of metal that attaches roof framing to the wall studs. You install the ties by putting on a hard hat, circling your waist with a leather tool belt, filling it with nails and ties, tucking a hammer into a holster, choking back impostor syndrome and then climbing an 8-foot ladder. My first tie took 40 hammer blows to secure. My 12th tie, 30. My 40th, 20 mostly efficient swings. By that point, my forearms were throbbing, and my hands were dinged in a dozen places. But every time Julie walked by, she was smiling, so I was too.

All simple stuff, if you know how to do it. But until that day, I hadn’t, and it was gratifying to learn.

The next morning, I awoke sore from head to foot. The only muscle that didn’t hurt, in fact, was my heart, which had strengthened from the exertion. No wonder Jimmy and Rosalynn lived so long.

AARP essays share a point of view in the author’s voice, drawn from expertise or experience, and do not necessarily reflect the views of AARP.​