Florida - Habitat – The ReStore

While Bill works at the build site in Fellsmere, Barbara works in the ReStore in Vero Beach.

The Indian River Habitat for Humanity's ReStore sells pretty much anything: furniture, home improvement items, housewares, books, toys, exercise equipment, linens, and so much more.

Employees and volunteers create a great place to shop and get great deals on used things.

This picture shows some other volunteers. This particular group hales from Tennessee (Nashville), Ohio (Akron), South Carolina, Minnesota, Michigan, and Canada. Most of the volunteers in this picture are “Care-a-vanners.” They stay in their RV behind the store and put in at least 30 hours/week in the ReStore.

There also are employees, future homeowners, and regular volunteers. This store has a great crew! 

This was Barbara’s second year at the ReStore – working both years in linens. 

Here’s the linens section of the back room.

Barbara sorted, folded, priced and displayed all sorts of linens. She was ultra happy when lots of well displayed curtains were purchased on her last day. Woohoo!

Profits from the ReStore go to Habitat for Humanity to help build homes for people in need.

image from Indian River Habitat for Humanity's website

Florida - Habitat – The Build Site

We like volunteering at Indian River Habitat for Humanity in Vero Beach, Florida for two reasons – it’s near Barbara’s dad and Bill can work on a build site while Barbara works in the ReStore. This is our third season with this Habitat affiliate. You can check out our first year and second year posts.

Bill works at a build site in the town of Fellsmere. Habitat acquired this parcel of land to create a development with over 60 homes. Each year they build a number of houses and they expect completion next year.

One of the cool things is to see the transformation.

Two years ago (the 3rd house is just a slab with a tool shed)

Now

Another thing we like about this affiliate is that the Site Supervisor, Ricardo, cares about quality. If something is done poorly, he fixes it. The porch posts line up all the way down the street. Ricardo, like most Habitat supervisors, is very good at getting volunteers to do significant work even if they don’t have prior construction experience.

You meet lots of people. Here Bill confers with Mike, a retired electrician from New Jersey who now helps supervise.

Richard (age 92) has volunteered for decades and is still making a significant contribution.

And we have to mention Rex and Susan. We don’t have a picture of them, but they totally renovated a house needing repair. Here’s a picture of the renovated home. Looks like new!

The building process includes two ceremonies – the wall raising marking the beginning of construction and the commissioning which hands over the house keys. We watched this wall raising last weekend.

It’s great to be a part of a crew that gives back to the community.