Several years ago, a rescue mission in San Francisco's Tenderloin inner-city neighborhood decided to start a private Christian school in a 1920's era building that they owned. They initially had only a few students, and didn't attract much attention. But as the number of students increased over 50, the Fire Department "discovered" the school, and insisted it be closed, pending a long list of problems with the old building (structural, electrical, plumbing, fire safety, etc) being corrected.
Enter Mike and Sandy's church in Danville, plus some other churches around northern California and as far away as Colorado, who got together, raised over $1.4 million for materials, and put thousands and thousands of hours of volunteer labor to the task of completely redoing the old 3-story + basement building, and bringing it into compliance with modern building and earthquake codes.
Of course like many projects, this one expanded as it went (e.g., fixing that one little leak in the roof turned into replacing the entire roof, including all the supporting trusses, which were badly rotted). But after more than 2 years of work, it is finally all finished, the furniture, etc. has been moved in, and the building inspectors have given the OK for the kids to once again have their school in the building.
Like at Habitat, Mike learned all sorts of new things working on this "commercial building codes" project. He's worked on the new roof, installed new circuit breaker panels in the basement and on the 2nd floor, put in armored electrical cable and steel conduit, and lots of outlet and switch boxes. Of course he has also done lots of framing and flooring work. Most recently, Mike has spent several days installing smoke detectors and alarms, and their associated conduits and wiring, and repairing holes in the sheet rock wall board, made by the plumbers who needed to fix "one more little thing" inside the wall.
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