Wednesday, April 20

Last Saturday we had a work day last Saturday. Dave Detloff and Al King were put to work installing trim in the dorm rooms. The rest of the Camp Daniel staff grouted the fourth bathroom. Crystal Johnson was here for the weekend, so she was trained by Jen in grouting. We had a lot of fun and got a lot done in short order.
Tony spent much of the days leading up to Sunday preparing for his sermon, which he gave at Living Hope Church. He did a great job. Tim also spoke for 5 minutes giving an update on church missions.
On Monday, Jen, Marceaux and DJ went to the Occupational and Physical Therapy Department at Concordia College to give a presentation on Camp Daniel and the realities of working with people with disabilities. Thus far, one person from the college committed to being a counselor. Getting the first person is always the hardest; I'm sure that the numbers will grow in following years.
Karol is still working on camp crafts. Lots of gluing and cutting needs to be done before camp.
Yesterday, Tim installed the vinyl baseboard molding in the two dorm baths. Tony and Karol were in Green Bay for continuing training, which is required by the county for the licensing of the adult family home.
Today, Karol gave both bathroom a second coat of paint, while the guys cleaned their house. Tony's been doing computer work for days now.

Thursday, April 14

We've had a busy week here, at Camp Daniel. A small group from Silver Birch Ranch were here for a work day yesterday. In the pic above, you can see that they're grouting the tile in the Jack Pine Cabin bath. Yes, that means that the one bath is done being tiled. The guys, Tim, Marceaux and Karol put in many hours getting that tile done. The pic above shows the shower area. You'll notice that the tile is different than the rest of the bath in that it's all 12" tiles. This is because we want less grout to have to keep clean in the shower area. The rest of the bath has 2" tiles under the large border. The 2" tile was donated, so we're using it until it runs out. It's more time consuming than the 12", but it's good tile, and more importantly; free! There's also very little waste with the smaller tiles; and they're quite easy to cut around pipes, outlets, etc.
Jen and Molly helped move the dorm project along by applying poly to the trim that still needs to be installed in the dorms and baths. Two coats each! Jen was happy that the weather permitted her to do much of it outside. (Less toxic fumes)

The Silver Birch group also put together and sanded the 6 bunkbeds that were delivered (in pieces) a couple of weeks ago. Or was that last week? Time's getting away from me!
Yesterday, Tony and Karol gave a tour of the grounds to a group from the Presbyterian Church in Lakewood. Longtime friend of Camp Daniel, Johanna Axelrod (Julia's mom) set up the tour with this, the church that she attends. Tony was able to share about the beginnings of Camp Daniel, where we are now, and where we are headed. I think that the visitors were all blessed by the visit.
Aside from tiling, Marceaux has been busy this past week working on Molly's car and Karol's golf cart. The golf cart had a major injury last fall that required the entire engine to come out, plus the metal box on the back was cracking. We're blessed to have Matt Mandich help us out with both of these problems. Hopefully the golf cart will be zipping around the grounds in the next week or so. Marceaux has also been working on Mega's Micro Bus. It's been in the shop getting road ready, but he had to make sure that everything was road ready for Steve Hays to use this summer.
Tony has been organizing the speakers for the summer. It's a lot to organize with everyone's schedule when we have four weeks of morning and evening speakers to fill. Like so many things, when one thing changes, there's a domino effect.

Have I mentioned? work days: this Saturday, April 30, May 14 and May 21. Let us know which one you'll be attending!

April 8

The countdown is on to get the Lumberjack Lodge dorm completely done by April 20th, which is the deadline that Tony gave because of a donor special event that will be happening on the grounds shortly thereafter. We've been working on the dorms for the past three weeks, but now we've kicked it into high gear. The main things that have needed done are the bathrooms: tiling, fixture setting, stall dividers and floors and the cabins (or dorm rooms), which mainly need the floors done, doors installed and finish trim done. In the above picture, you can see the shower area. We did the border first, then work below and above. The border goes throughout the entire bathroom. By the way, both baths are identical, except for the flooring color.


Cleaning, staining and finishing the floors is a many day process, which was started when we had our last work day. After they cleaned it, and protected the walls, Karol started on the floor logo, which is different for each room. Using contact paper she makes a positive and negative of the image. Using the negative as a stencil she using contrasting dye colors to paint on the image, then the positive contact paper piece fits right over that image to protect it from the color that will go on the remainder of the floor. The negative (stencil) contact paper is taken off, and we're ready to dye. Donning a heavy duty respirator mask, Tim applies the dye with a pump sprayer. In the green room, he applied two colors in a random blotchy way. The color variances are beautiful and will be more forgiving to future imperfections in the floor.
After the green was applied to the floor, Karol finished the logo. This, Jack Pine logo had too many small details to do ahead of time, so the small branches and the pine needles were added at this point. After that was dry, Tim applied two coats of a very caustic polyurethane type product, buffing in between. Then, when thoroughly dry, he applied two coats of wax, then when that was dry, buffed it. The floor is Beautiful!!
In between the steps for the flooring, Tim, Karol, Marceaux and the guys tiled, tile, and will be still tiling for some time. The above pic is the toilet area. This room has the finished green floor, so the guys covered the floor with kraft paper and tar paper to protect it while we finish working.
After the green floor was done, everything was moved from one set of rooms to the other so that the orange floor could get done. This cabin is Sugar Maple. Currently, this floor has one coat of poly, with the other being applied this afternoon. The smell is so very strong that no one can work in the building for about 12 hours after a coat is applied.
The above is the maple leaf logo that's on the floor. This floor is a rusty orange consisting of many layers of 3 different colors. To appreciate these floors, they must be seen live, as the pictures don't do them justice. So come for a visit, and bring your tiling tools!!

Saturday April 2

Since the last blog, we got 17" of snow, which set us back a few days. Saturday, the 26th, we all went back to the Kelly's to help with their remodel. We also did a surprise birthday celebration for Molly. Wednesday, a group from Silver Birch Ranch came out for a workday. They put the metal roof on the gazebo that was put up last summer. They also did a bunch of work in the dorms. They moved all of the exercise equipment from the Jack Pine room in the Lumberjack lodge to a room in the other dorm. Then they cleaned the floors and taped off the walls so that Tim could dye the floor. They also moved a bunch of cases of paper supplies that were donated. Additionally, Marceaux led a group in putting up the vinyl base molding in the Red Oak bathroom. They also did some small paint jobs and other miscellaneous jobs. Jen led a tour of the grounds for the people that haven't been here before.
Much work was done this week preparing for Able Church. An Able and camp attendee, Phillip Meincke, passed away last week. The funeral was at Able Church, during the regular church time. The family knew that Able was important to Phillip, so they decided that that would be a great place for the service. His small family is from far Northern Wisconsin, so much was put on Jen and the rest from Able to plan the funeral service. Well, it was a great service. There was over 100 people there. Some regular Able attendees, some from Phillip's group home and also from his workshop. They were all blessed to see people with disabilities participating in the service. A church FOR people with disabilities isn't something you see everyday, and one BY people with disabilities is extremely rare. Pastor Tim gave a great salvation message, and many were able to get up and talk about Phillip. Everyone at Able feel blessed to have been given this opportunity!
Lastly, Today was a scheduled work day, but no one volunteered to help, so I thought this might be a good place to put a plug in for upcoming work days.
April 16, April 30, May 14, May 21