Community Engagement: Working with Boston Rescue Mission

Last month, six PAYETTE volunteers, along with Turner Construction, finished the first of the three sessions of a community service project for the Boston Rescue Mission in Roxbury. For this project we are transforming the basement of an old house that accommodates 11 homeless veterans into an activity room. Before our volunteers joined the construction efforts, Turner Construction had already been hard at work for a couple of weeks. They repaired the basement slab, poured the topping, along with some MEP work. When our team joined the effort, we helped frame out the walls.  

We started by laying the metal tracks on the ground to mark the walls. After cleaning out the residue on the ceiling, we screwed metal tracks to the ceiling so that the wood studs could be then placed between the two tracks.

We placed the wood studs to frame out the walls, the windows and the doors.

After a full day, we finished framing out all the walls. We are now ready to install drywall in the next session. In the final session of our series on this project, we will paint the walls and the ceilings as well as install new shelving to the wall.

This opportunity was the first time for most of us to get hands on construction experience at a job site. The experience was extremely helpful for us to learn first-hand construction processes and techniques. I also felt inspired about how we used our design experience to benefit the larger community. We are looking forward to continuing our work!

Project Team:
Steven Karveliuss
Rebecca McGee
Dane Clark
Hongyi Jin
Luke Laverty
Leon Auvil