It's a long road for many Hurricane Sandy victims, many of whom have to repair their homes on their own, including one Belle Harbor resident NY1 originally visited shortly after the storm. NY1's Ruschell Boone filed the following report.

Slow and steady. That's how Josh Reder described the work to repair the first floor of his house. He's been at it day and night for the last four months, in between his shifts at the fire department.

Reder has done most of the work himself.

"When you do one thing, something else breaks," he said. "You have to fix that, and it's an uphill battle.

While it may not look like he's winning this war, the house has actually come a long way. Just being able to walk across the floor is a major step. It took Reder three weeks to complete the sub-flooring.

"We had to walk beam to beam," he said. "Otherwise, you'd fall though into the basement."

An NY1 crew, and nearly a dozen volunteers, were doing just that inside the house during a visit in November.

Reder was gutting the 1,000-square space by himself when volunteers from the Mormon Church jumped in to help.

"They were set up across the street, so almost every day, they'd send some kids over," he said.

But when it came to skilled labor, Reder was back to working mostly by himself. He said that he, his wife and kids are trying to take it all in stride and make the best of it.

"You just, a little bit every day, and eventually, we'll get there," he said. "We're living nice upstairs. We're very comfortable, and as long as there is no rush to get it done, we've got a lot of time."

But what Reder doesn't have is a lot of money. He's paying for most of the renovations himself because he says he still hasn't received a check from his insurance company.

"Even though I didn't get cut-rate insurance, they still haven't paid, and it has to be, I don't know, three or four months since the storm," he said.

But at least he can smile about it now as he goes back to work, something he wasn't doing a few months ago.