Vicki Doudera - Realtor, Author, Mainer

I’m back from Alabama, where we started with a slab and ended with a nearly finished house… pretty amazing, considering that we worked only 4 days (one being a total washout due to rain).  I’m more impressed than ever with Habitat — the operation in Mobile is huge — 20 houses being built at once — and there are lots of dedicated volunteers who show up throughout the week. We also worked alongside a dozen Americorps volunteers — young twenty-somethings with heart and energy.

I find it fitting on Martin Luther King Jr Day to envision a world where everyone has a decent house to live in, and Habitat for Humanity is taking the steps, one hammer swing at a time, to make that vision a reality.

Here are more photos:

Here’s the first wall, and the house once the roof trusses and sheathing are on…

Here’s yours truly with a fellow Maine realtor doing some framing…

And a few more from my short side trip to downtown historic Mobile. I was amazed at the architecture — everything from Gone-With-the-Wind type mansions to 1930’s bungalows. These girls in their colorful dresses were in Bienville Square, where the Mobile Marathon was concluding.