ecoREHAB

week 3: journals

This week left me feeling a great sense of accomplishment. With floors framed out, sub-floor added, and three walls up and framed, I felt as if I could conquer the world. Photos from this week were definitely "refrigerator material."

As soon as we got out to the job site on Monday we were rearing and ready to go. We picked up caulk and screws and got straight to business. Problem was, we were TOO ready. Unfortunately we forgot to stagger the sub-floor until it was too late. Still works. In theory. Laying out the sub-floor added to the excitement, but the building still felt rather small.

I had the privilege of framing out walls with Buddy. Its one thing to draw these on paper, but somewhere between the paper and the real world, something gets lost in translation.  Turns out 16" O.C. is much more difficult than "extend line," "copy," and "duplicate." Learning from a man who has done this for 30 years definitely made this a simple crash course. Buddy foresaw problems that I would have never seen until it was absolutely too late.

Day three scared me a little bit. Up until this point, Buddy was lurking around every corner to fix all of our mistakes. Unfortunately, he had other things to attend to instead of babysitting us. However, he did lay out the largest wall on the site and left it for us to assemble. While the assembly went well, we "pencil whipped" the guy working on the windows. The wall was assembled, but forgot to calculate in an extra inch for the windows. SO, they became an inch smaller. Funny how rough openings don't translate into actual openings, don't account for warping of boards, and add all kinds of fun into the process. Somehow through this all, while Buddy was gone, we managed to throw up three walls! These walls added so much to my visualization of the building. It also added to the homeowner's ideas.  He began to envision so much more for the space, and it was exciting to see that happen in front of my own eyes.


Also, this week we began to calculate materials we will need. By analyzing the elevations, we were able to decide all of the insulation, wrap, and exterior material we would need to complete the job (at a later date).  By spending time with Matt, Michael and I learned a lot about re-using materials (the windows from the church, etc.).


By the end of this week, I am feeling a great sense of accomplishment. I think it should be required of students to do a design build while they are at Ball State. I've learned much more in these last few weeks by actually getting my hands dirty than I have in the last few years of my build tech class (not saying they aren't important, because they are) but definitely vital to my success in the future.