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

Shame on me for not having blogged recently. Time got away from me, that's for sure. When I sit down to blog I look back at the last entry to see where I left off. Well, this may be a long one today! I'm not going to go in chronological order, so we'll start with the pictures. We had a work day last Saturday. A group came up from a church in the Sheboygan area. They are a great group, who's been here for work days before. They always get so much done, and we sure don't mind that they bring along lunch as well as willing and trained workers! In the pic above, these guys are putting up vinyl base molding in the finished bathrooms (well, now they're finished). We decided to get the larger 6" molding to protect the walls from all of the future mopping that'll be going on in these bathrooms.
These guys are putting up a guide for the tile border that will be in the remaining two baths of the Lumberjack Lodge. We now have a deadline of mid-April to get this dorm 100% done. That means lots of tiling, trim work and floor finishing will be going on over the next few weeks. It'll be fun.
Karol spent much of last week painting the signs that go on the Lumberjack Lodge. There are a total of four, one on each facade. This sign is about 30" by about 7', so you can read them from pretty far away. Now there's no excuses to not call this building by it's proper name! (I think that "women's dorm" is going to be a hard one to break). Then, during last Saturday's work day, a couple of the guys set up scaffolding and hung the four signs. Tim, then caulked them in.

Other jobs done during the workday: installation of interior doors, trim in two dorm rooms, waterproofed two showers (that we're tiling now), sheetrocked dormer in Trapline Lodge dorm room and put up sound board in same room.

Earlier this week, the guys torched the burn pile and tended to it for a full day, until it smoldered out. They also helped Tim install the enormously heavy concrete counters for the two dorm baths. Yesterday, Tim, Karol, Marceaux and the guys started the tile border in the two bathrooms.

Last week Molly and Karol went to Second Harvest in Omro to get food for our food bank. Those trips always make for quite long days. They left at 7:30 and got home about 4:00. Then the guys helped unload the food so that it could be put away, which took til about 6pm.

Molly and Jen have been doing brushing alot of polyurethane. They put two coats on the 5 sets of bunkbeds and they currently have one coat on the walls in the dorm room in Trapline Lodge. The guys started sanding those walls today so that tomorrow they can put the second and final coat on.

Chrissy got the newsletter done. Many at Camp Daniel contribute with articles, and Karol does a lot of the proofreading, then Chrissy brings it all together. It'll go to the printer this week.

Tony's been spending time building new puppets and costumes for this summer. Our "Trust" theme will be taking on a superhero feel, so he's making stuff to go with that theme. Karol's been working on crafts for camp, plus a few other minor camp things that are good to get done early.

Last Saturday, the Camp Daniel staff descended upon the Kelly's house unannounced. Tim, and his friend, Mike Waldrop were planning to work on electrical stuff for the basement that they're finishing (they need one more bedroom for the kids). They weren't planning on the rest of us, which made it even more fun! We came packing tools and lunch. We got lots more done than they had originally hoped and we're planning another Kelly work day this Saturday. We all feel like poor Tommy has been living in the hallway long enough!

Saturday, March 5

Last weekend we had an Able Church winter retreat. It was the first function of its kind that we've had on the Camp Daniel grounds. There were about 20 retreat attendees, plus all of the Camp Daniel staff. They slept in the dorms, and ate in the Hartley House. Jen and Marceaux set up the one unfinished dorm room as a chapel/meeting area.

There were times for indoor small groups and lots of outdoor activities as well. We had a fire down by the lake while everyone split up into teams and played monkey ball. (it's soccer with your hands, on ice) Everyone had a lot of fun with great fellowship.

Thinking toward summer: Deacon Jim, from the Illinois youth group that volunteers here each summer, came up to decide on which projects they'll be tackling this July. On Friday, Tony Sr, Tony and Karol sat down with the salesman that we buy Camp Daniel clothing from. We ordered t-shirts, sweatshirts, and jackets for camp this summer. Tim Kelly had a great idea last year that we implemented; t-shirts for the red team and blue team.

Monday, February 14

Around noon last Thursday, the group of 31 from Silverbirch Ranch came to Camp Daniel for work days. This year, Silverbirch has 30 students in their 1 year program. They brought their students at this same time last year, as well. They worked the half day on Thursday, stayed overnight in the dorms, then worked til noon on Friday. It was very cold, so most all of the jobs were inside. Below you can see three of the group that primed and painted the ceiling and upper walls of the two dorm bathrooms. This crew worked on drywalling the large dormer part of the ceiling in the dorm of the Trapline Lodge.

A few months ago, Tony and Karol put together information and ideas that they've gathered over the past 15 years, about bunk beds. It was finally time to come up with a do-it-yourself design for the dorm bunk beds. Plans were painstakingly drawn up, then Tim built a prototype. We've been very fortunate to have great people step up to help with different aspects of construction. Again, we had a volunteer to build the bunkbeds; a couple at a time. So the plans were passed along, and a few months later, we have three bunkbeds! The Silverbirch crew sanded, conditioned and stained the beds. They look great!

This crew was learning how to put up tongue and groove in the Trapline Lodge. Many of the volunteers learned new skills while at Camp Daniel, and we were very appreciative of the help! I believe that's called "win, win".

Monday, February 7

Tim and the guys have been working in the Lumberjack Lodge dorm. In the pic below, you can see that supports for the poured concrete counter. This smaller counter is also in the bathrooms. It will have a mirror above it. It's basically a primping area. These counters were poured in place, which is the same way that they did the first two baths.

For the large counter, (which will have 3 sinks), Tim decided to do it differently than he did the first two baths. Instead of pouring the counter in place, they poured the concrete counter upside down. When dry, it will be flipped and put in place. The benefit is that the top (which was the bottom when the concrete was poured) will be very very smooth. The downside is that this counter is extremely heavy, and the fit had to worked out quite precisely before it was poured.

Tim and the guys also insulated one of the attics above Molly's place. Dave Detloff has spent a few days here recently, working on tongue and groove in the Trapline Lodge dorm. This week, much time will be spent preparing for a large work day on Friday. We have 30 people coming from Silver Birch Ranch. We're excited at the work that'll get done. That's a lot of jobs to find and get organized for!

Tony spoke at Living Hope yesterday for Missions Sunday. He spent much of last week preparing for the service. It went great. There was a lot of fun Steelers/Packers banter throughout the entire service. All of the CD staff was at the Super Bowl party that Living Hope puts on as an outreach to the community. There were many new people there, and many people that attend Able Church.

Tony was super excited last week when he got a professional video camera in the mail. It was donated by a church in Ohio over a year ago; but we just received it, as we had to wait for the church to raise the money to buy a new camera. The main plan for the camera is to shoot a Jesus Film specifically for people with disabilities.

Jen and Marceaux have been very busy with the Able Church Special Olympics basketball team - The Able Attack. They won both of their games last Saturday. Recently, the Bury's sent out a missionary newsletter to their friends and supporters. Marceaux has also been doing handy work with the snowblower, fan on the bus, and the large bullet heater. He's also been doing Bible studies with the guys.