wow its already been 6 months!

im pretty sure that no one reads our blogs but i felt the need to say that time has passed so quickly. It's already been six months, ive moved, have a career and almost forgot about the project. I wonder how the house looks. I wonder how the Evans' are doing. Maybe i should go back to Ruston one day. We shall see.

A very informal message.

ahhh haaa, today we finished taping. Not floating or sanding, just taping. Tommorrow we will sand and mud like there is no tommorrow. We only have less than a month left. WHATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT?????!!!!! There is so much left to be done, floating, sanding, painting, siding, installing trim, flooring, tiling, kitchen(everything with that) bathroom stuff, doors, hardware, electrical (hopefully we didn't drill through all of the wires),accessories, lighting, landscaping, driveway....... Can it be done? Stay tuned for next week, when we are closer to having only 3 weeks left. AAAaHHHHHH!!! just when you feel like you've accomplished something, reality of time seems to slap you in the face. POOL party time yet????

Y'ALL DO KNOW I WASN'T TALKING ABOUT THIS KIND OF MUD!!! RIGHT??

THE BUILDING PROCESS- EVOLUTION OF CONSTRUCTION

April 13, 2008
Since the last time I have blogged, sooooooo many things have happened.

Oh yeah, our whole house has basically been built. Lets recap, shall we.

March 7, 2008- SIPS PANELS ARRIVED March 8, 2008- SIPS walls erected

March 9, 2008- ALL SIPS walls completed- sips roof panels started
March 15,2008- Roof complete

That is 2 days to erect all of the walls and about a week to erect our whole house. Amazing. Of course this was all due to the use of S.I.Ps. Structurally insulated panels.(poly foam sandwiched by 2 sheets of osb) There were a lot of doubters. I, being one of them. The concept of leaning up the walls made perfect sense to me. The roof was a whole different story. I wasn’t a believer until I saw these panels go up. We are talking about 4’ x 20’ long panels a whole lot of pounds, lifted only by several human hands 13’ in the air. I was definitely proved wrong. The roof panels went up, not so smoothly at first, but they sure went up, and are still up to this day. Thank God. Back to the schedule……

Today
April 13, 2008- taping and floating. We are on the final stretch. Can you believe we put up a house, and are at this point only a month later. I still can’t. This experience has been amazing. Sure it’s been an emotional rollercoaster, but it sure has been a fun one. Looking back on this past year I can’t believe where we were 8 months ago to where we are now. Our whole class has grown exponentially in so many aspects of this project and life. I may be speaking too soon, because we must now get down to the nitty gritty finishing work, but no matter what I am still proud of what we have accomplished.

what happens after this?

Get a job……. Oh yeah, that’s what I have to do once I finish this house and graduate. The fact that I will be done with school after a long, grueling, crazy, (there are way too many adjectives to describe this time period) 5 years in architecture school, is really starting to set in. When I finally get a second to breath, (about once a week) this thought comes to mind and I kindof start freaking out. Where will I go? Sky’s the limit right??? To Austin or to Nashville, that is the question. Or Maybe…..who knows. I find there’s a little beauty in the unknown.

I'LL ADMIT, IM A DRAMA QUEEN!

It’s been a while, I know, but things have been busy. A lot have things have happened, and looking at the site today you can tell. It’s really exciting to see everything coming together. We were discussing today how the building process looks and works just like building a bass wood model, only at a WAY larger scale. There are a lot of imperfections, but looking at the whole, it just is what it is, and what it is supposed to be. I love getting expertise from professions. I am very anal when it comes to doing things and expecially things that other people will see, critique, live in, etc…. I believe that if you are going to do something, STOP, THINK, MEASURE A MILLION TIMES, AND DO IT ONLY ONCE!! That concept just doesn’t ever seem to happen with our class. I really think sometimes people just really like doing things over and over and over. Not me, its very bothersome. But also on the other hand, there is only so much you can control, you can’t do it all, so you just have to let things go!!!. I am realizing that in the construction world, nothing is perfect. You can’t just offset things to perfect dimensions like you would on autocad. The eyeball dimension IS perfect. IT KILLS ME! But I think I’m getting better at letting things like this go out on the site. Other wise I’d give myself a heart attack. (I am a drama queen- we all know this).

Murphey's Law-- (I highly dislike his truthful enlightenment!!)

Just getting back from Austin, Tx fresh ideas circulate in my mind. It’s good to get out, get away and get inspiration—especially since it is out of Ruston. Everything was going well while we were out of town on our 402 trip. Form work for half of our foundation was in place, things seemed to be rolling, until…….. Monday, Martin Luther King Day, we received our permit for our slab( yet we had already started building our formwork 3 days before that—we didn’t know that we couldn’t do temporary construction before receiving a permit---wupps) so a fine was presented before us. Not to mention our building restriction line might not be sufficient enough. We felt like we just got hit with a 2 x 4 or ran over by and auger or sliced with a chainsaw. ( choose your destiny) So,what do we do now? The building inspector was out for the rest of the week. WORK WAS AT A HALT!!!!! Most of us thought, BREAK for us. But as you can tell from my previous writings, that was not the case. We still have to design this house, figure out what this house looks like, the materials involved.…….. so many things. Man, Murphey was right!!!! Dangit!!!

What to do???????

Others afterthoughts could be devastating. But pre-pre-thoughts can be self- destructing. So what does one do? Think about all the things that have to be done and drive one’s self crazy or, like the rest of them, come to that mountain when you get there. I just can’t do that. Its not apart of my atomic structure. Productivity is not my middle name. The thought process might be, but it is also a hindrance. Thinking about all of the things we need to do, we need to draw, need to detail, need to order, need to do, to do, to do, (this is one second in my world). By now one can see how hard it is for me to be productive. “Prioritize,” they say. I guess. But everything is important, to me. It try to just sit back and just let things happen, but that just doesn’t happen. Things just don’t happen. I’ll leave you with this, “Process is more important that outcome” Bruce Mau. If that were only true in this case, right?