'It's a lot of hard work'

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'It's a lot of hard work'

By Glenn Burkins – May 9, 2010

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While some Charlotte women were busy Saturday preparing for their annual Mothers Day fete, others used the day to begin construction on a Habitat home.

Just off Statesville Road, an all-female crew labored from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., sawing lumber, plumbing walls and pounding nails. Some dressed in the familiar drab garb of the construction industry; others wore colorful shorts.

“It’s a lot of hard work,” said Anjanette Flowers (photo below), morning news anchor at Channel 36 (WCNC), one of about 30 volunteers who showed up to work.

Nearly every year in Charlotte since 1991, Lowe’s Companies Inc., the Mooresville-based home-improvement chain, has teamed with Habitat for Humanity to co-sponsors an all-female construction crew.

Saturday’s crew was made up of volunteers mainly from Bank of America and Lowe’s.

Lowe's spokeswoman Laresa Thompson said the project, called Women Build, is designed to encourage volunteers to get involved in solving the issue of affordable hosing. Similar efforts were underway Saturday in other U.S. cities.

“A lot of the folks we are helping are mothers -- single mothers, in some instances,” Thompson said. “We want to encourage them to know that they can have the American Dream, and we are helping them to reach that.”

Women also account for a growing percentage of Lowe’s customers, she said.

The ranch-style house going up near Statesville Road will one day belong to Hisela Dunlap, a divorced mother with three children, ages 19, 12 and nine.

“It’s been a long, hard road, but we finally got to it,” Dunlap said during a midday break, as most of the women grabbed a boxed lunch and a cold drink then headed for a clump of trees to escape the pounding sun. “Right now I can’t believe we’re doing it. It hasn’t hit me yet.”

Dunlap, who has never owned a home, said she has driven by the construction site often – about 15 times in the last two weeks -- just to reassure herself that it is not a dream.

“I smile real hard, and then I just go on home,” she said.

Linda Blum, a local Habitat official, said that unlike some Women Build homes, the current project, scheduled for completion in August, will be finished entirely by women – even after the media spotlight is gone.

So how does an all-female crew differ from one dominated by males?

“They tend to go a little bit slower,” Blum said, “but I’ve actually heard that the (all-female) houses are better built, because the women are more precise, take more time and ask more questions.”

Flowers, the WCNC anchor, had committed herself to two hours of labor on Saturday – enough time to appreciate the difficulties of home construction.

“It looks easy, hammering a couple of nails,” she said. “But some nails are a little bit harder than others.”

Her biggest surprise: “How quickly I started sweating. I was out here about 10 minutes today and I was sweating.”

In the photo above, Sonya Caldwell, left, and Angela Hollis, who both work for Lowe's, pause for lunch while working on a Habitat home in north Charlotte, Saturday, May 8, 2010. (Photo: Qcitymetro.com)