Kali Tanguay says she loves her West Ashley apartment, but her real passion is helping others find their permanent homes in the Lowcountry.
As a construction supervisor for Sea Island Habitat for Humanity (HFH), she has been leading groups of volunteers and working with others to build stilted houses from the ground up from James Island to Edisto.
Tanguay, 24, received an architecture degree from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., before joining up with AmeriCorps as a long-term volunteer. The program connected her with HFH in the Lowcountry, and after spending a year in the program, she decided she found her fit.
“It was a way to get hands-on experience and connect with the real workforce,” she said in a recent interview. “I was only halfway through my term, and I said, ‘Yeah, I’m staying. You’re not getting rid of me.’
“And now, only two years later, I’m the most senior construction site supervisor on staff. It’s a little overwhelming sometimes. It puts me in a humbling position because sometimes I don’t think I know anything, but here I am building a whole house. There’s no other industry where you’re physically doing the work at every stage of the process like this.”
Starting the day right
Living in West Ashley, it can take Tanguay about 25 minutes to get to her current job site in Hollywood, depending on traffic.
“I always allot myself some extra time for coffee in the morning,” she said, laughing. “This operation cannot get done without me being caffeinated. No one wants to interact with me without my morning coffee.”
Vanilla cold brew from Caffe a Modo Mio in hand, she reaches the house at about 7:30 a.m. Volunteers arrive at 8 a.m., giving her about half an hour to get organized, set up tasks for the day and have a good game plan in place.
“We start with a safety briefing and a brief introduction to Sea Island Habitat if I haven’t worked with [the volunteers] before,” Tanguay said. “I assess their skill level, see what they feel comfortable with, and we make sure there’s low-work available for those that are very new.”
That’s one of the hardest parts of her supervisory role, she said — assessing people’s skill levels.
“I’ve worked with people before where it feels like second nature, but come to find out, they’ve never read a tape measure or they don’t know which one the impact driver is,” Tanguay said. “Teaching them in a language they understand can be a challenge. I talk really fast, so when I meet people a lot of times, especially locals, they look at me like I have six heads. They’ll ask, ‘Can you repeat everything you just said, but slower.’ ”
For about three hours, she leads the volunteers through the first half of the day, floating from group to group, ensuring that each task is being done correctly — and safely.
“It’s really just me running around like a chicken with its head cut off,” she joked.
Hot summer afternoons
Lunch is often the best time for HFH staffers to connect with volunteers, Tanguay said, because a lot of the all-day volunteers stay at the house for lunch.
“When you have a group of 25 college students, they aren’t going off-site, they’re going to be packing sandwiches,” she said. “And since I’m ballin’ on a budget, I usually bring my own lunch, too. I like a more snack-y lunch, so I bring cheese and crackers, and I make a little charcuterie for myself.
“If I’m feeling fancy, I go to Cafe a Modo Mio a lot,” Tanguay added. “They do pizza by the slice, and it’s New York-style so it makes my New England heart happy. If I’m over on Johns Island, Island Provisions is by far my top spot.”
And from there, it’s just three more hours of work. During the summer when volunteer hours tend to slow down, Tanguay gets to be a bit more physically involved.
“I got to install a doorknob today!” she exclaimed, happily. “It slows down in the summer a lot, especially before we get the HVAC installed.”
HFH does everything — building the house from the ground up, except for four major components. The organization doesn’t install the HVAC, electric components, plumbing or the drywall. But everything else — every floorboard, every nail and every coat of paint — Tanguay is involved.
Heading home
After a full day’s work of hard manual labor, Tanguay said, she likes to hit the gym.
“People sometimes call me a bit crazy for that,” she said. “But my other option would be to go at 5 a.m., and that’s absolutely not happening, so I go straight from work. I park the company van in a tiny parking spot, and I’m good to go.”
Other than that, you can find Tanguay at the beach (usually Folly, playing cornhole) or, on Tuesdays, at West Ashley House of Brews’ Tuesday trivia nights.
“It’s a busy schedule,” she admits, adding that she’s also a member of two book clubs (she just finished The Paradise Problem by Christina Lauren, and she has a lot of opinions about it) and enjoys playing tennis with her friend (they aren’t very good, she said, and they really just end up chasing the ball around and seldom actually hitting it).
But it’s still a slower pace than where she grew up, Tanguay said.
“Charleston just lives at a much slower pace of life,” she said. “Back home in Cape Cod, even when I go visit, it’s go, go, go, all the time. Everyone is in a hurry. Down here, I’ve really learned how to slow down and just stroll and appreciate things.”
Tanguay said it’s hard for her to imagine doing anything else in the future.
“I want to be here as long as I possibly can,” she said. “I really love this job, but the thing I love most about it is teaching. If I ever leave, I would want to go back to school and get a master’s in education and teach either higher education or secondary education at a tech or trade school. I just love being hands-on.”
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