How working on a Habitat for Humanity project helps restore your faith in mankind

Stepping onto a Habitat for Humanity work site is a delight to the senses. As I put on my hard hat and safety glasses Thursday, I immediately started taking in the rhythm of hammers pounding on nails, electric saws buzzing as they made precise cuts, house leaders yelling out measurements for those cuts and volunteers chatting as they worked together to put all the pieces in place.

No matter which direction I looked, people were in a constant state of motion and they looked genuinely happy to be doing so. When I stepped onto the work site for the Meadows at Plato Price development, I experienced a true sense of community.

Habitat for Humanity International this week hosted its big annual build in Charlotte for the first time since 1987. The nonprofit planned to build 27 homes near the airport in west Charlotte in a week, with the help of 900 volunteers from all over.

Thursday I had the opportunity to be one of them, as a volunteer on house number 14. House leader Mike Masto put me on roofing duty. After taking way too long to secure myself into a safety harness I was handed a hammer and an apron that I filled with fistfuls of nails, then climbed a scaffolding to the roof.

This was my third visit to the site in four days. On Tuesday, a lot of progress had been made with framework in place, walls secure and trusses for roofing constructed and waiting at the ready to be raised. When I walked through the area Thursday, all of the houses had roofing efforts in progress.

Masto gave excellent instruction on nailing down the synthetic roofing felt that he had just rolled out. Nails were to be placed along the trusses so it was not only secure to the roof, but also the frame. Roofing underlayment, or felt, is what lies between the shingles and the roof sheathing, or roof deck, which is typically either oriented strand board or plywood (in this case it was the latter). It’s installed directly on the roof deck and provides a secondary layer of protection from the elements, including rain, snow, and wind. Luckily the weather this week has been impeccable.

This was not my first time wielding a hammer, so that experience was not new. However, the satisfaction that came with knowing each nail I was driving into the roof was going to eventually be part of a finished home for a family in need made the task all the more meaningful.

“It’s really important for us to be part of this,” Masto said about himself and colleague, Ryan Dennison, a house leader for the site next door. Both men used to be site supervisors for Habitat, so they had the construction experience. When asked to be house leaders for this event, Masto said it was an easy yes. “It’s so fun to be part of this again,” he said.

While there is plenty of hard work going on during this event, there is also a lot of fun. Everyone is incredibly friendly, with a ready smile and ready to help. Even though several of the volunteers have no previous construction experience, I would never have been the wiser because of how efficiently everyone executed their given task. One of the volunteers, Brett Perrine, from Boston, was helping install plywood to the roofing trusses and said, “We’re now professionals; or at least we feel like it!” Thursday was Perrine’s first day on site. Had he not provided that information, I might have assumed he and another volunteer working alongside him, Eric Wille, were indeed professionals.

At one point while on the roof of house number 14, I took a moment to take in the full scope of what was happening all around me: humanity at its best. There is an overwhelming sense of optimism when you see hundreds of people coming together to make several families’ dreams come true. If you are ever in need of reassurance that there is still kindness in this world, then step onto a Habitat for Humanity worksite and let the harmonious echos of hammers remind you that it indeed exists.

Melissa Melvin-Rodriguez is a visual journalist for The Charlotte Observer.