Saturday Work Day

Today we had an official Saturday workday - and what a great day it was. The rain finally subsided and warm temperatures allowed for a great deal of progress on the landscape front. A number of landscaping students came out today to help with filling Deltalok bags and forming the retention beds in the backyard (as spoken of in Valerie's blog). Other exciting achievements include setting the west deck and ramp along the side of the house - in addition to cutting the bottom edge of the siding along the north (front) elevation.

Chris and Matt C. set the range-hood vent and continued siding along the East elevation, while Katharine and I finished up paint on the ceiling in the loft and living/kitchen areas. The house has been cleaned out to allow for a clean painting environment, and we began priming the window frames and casements. Arya and Matt have also been making an amazing amount of progress on the tiling. We can certainly see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Painting various wood materials in the house have caused a great deal of conversation over the past couple of days. There is exposed structure (joists, structural decking) in the bedroom - and it has been discussed as to whether that material should be left exposed or painted white as originally planned. With delivery of the reclaimed red/white oak flooring, in addition to the painted "Yarborough Yellow" accent wall, it seems that we must decide whether the wall or ceiling will be the accent. Between the oak wood floor, yellow wall, and pine ceiling - there may be too many materials with competing tonal/accentual values.

Though it was tough to paint the beloved Atlantic white cedar fixed window frames this afternoon, after stepping back it became obvious that it was the right choice to paint these the same white as the walls. The frame begins to disappear into the wall and the landscape beyond becomes the main foci. This began to clarify the fact that materials may be beautiful individually, however their place in the overall scheme or palette may not work effectively to emphasize the intended effect.

In other news, progress has been made on the East/West door hardware. Phil Clawson, our Andersen representative will be coming up to the site on Tuesday to help us re-evaluate our integration of Andersen door hardware into our custom doors. He and Sam Ledford of Hiwassee Window & Door have been a great deal of help to us in coordinating this initiative. God-willing, we will procure the hardware and start construction on those soon.

Out of Plumb!

On Thursday morning 4 UT students, research assistant Matt Lyle, and Albert Cooper, General Contractor for Johnson & Galyon eagerly arrived at the house to continue the installing rigid insulation on the ceiling, drywall on the marriage wall, and trim around the Anderson windows. Matt Lyle and Aaron Grohol had to maneuver the scaffolding throughout the kitchen and living spaces with the button cap nail gun nailing in large sheets of rigid insulation.

Katherine Dike and I worked on the trim around the Andersen window frames. The drywall will be returning on the window openings and will meet up against the trim pieces. The trim creates a consistent space between the rough opening and the actual window frame. The pieces are flushed with the interior window frame to create an extension of the frame similar to the frames that were constructed in UT wood shop. We first had to spray insulation around the frame to maintain the tight envelope of the house, but it was very difficult to cut back the insulation once it had expanded and fully dried.

Albert Cooper and Laws Nelson stayed out of the way of the large scaffolding to work on the installation of the drywall. On Monday, the dry wall man will be graciously installing what we have not completed, so our work has to be finished by Monday. Unfortunately, Al's good eye found that the marriage wall is not completely straight. We have all gotten used to the slight variations in measurement in the construction of the house, but the marriage wall curved near the connections of the vertical and horizontal members. Al and Laws and to cut 1/2" furring strips to make a vertical surface the screw in the drywall.

About the time Al and Laws were getting ready to screw in the drywall I had to leave the site to meet our professor Tricia Stuth and research assistant Samuel Mortimer. At 3:30 pm we left UTK and drove an hour and a half down to the McCallie School in Chattanooga, TN. McCallie was having their second ever Science Night, and we were invited to present conceptual and systematic aspects of A New Norris House. Although we didn't leave Chattanooga until 9:30 pm, it was great to see the enthusiasm from the middle school and high school boys and especially their parents. The program was extremely organized, welcoming and fun, and we would love to go back next year to share our progress of the project.

Honing the Skills

Though we completed our entry door frames and slabs [inner structure] near the end of last semester, there is still a great deal of designing and fabricating to be done on them. Additionally, there are two more doors and a cistern enclosure door to be completed. The past few days have been spent getting our drawings, materials, and skills in line.

Because a new team came on-line just last week, it has been important to get everyone on the same page. Because I spent a great deal of time in the wood-shop last semester, I have been showing newbies Justin and Matt how to use specific tools and fabrication processes so that they will be knowledgeable as the semester progresses. We have started with the simplest [crawl space] door in order to hone our skills. In three days we have gone over how to: 1) take a rough-cut and often warped piece of wood through a jointer, planer, and table saw in order to get it perfectly square; 2) biscuit join the inner slab; 3) rout the plywood faces for a perfect edge; 4) dato cut the corners of the door frame for an optimal gluing surface; and 5) assemble the pieces for a square frame.

Aside from showing off our fresh skills, this list begins to show the importance of understanding the process of building component assembly and fabrication when solving design problems both on the site and in the office/lab during the design and drawing process. In order to draw a manufactured object, one must first know how to manufacture that object.

For example: today Matt, Justin and I went to research some Andersen hardware for our doors. Needing all entry hardware to match [between our Andersen french doors and self-fabricated doors] we are required to use a specific hardware which requires us to rout mechanical channels into the edges of our fabricated doors. It was a culminating moment for me to see us work through this multi-faceted problem together. Now that Matt and Justin have a sense of familiarity with the fabrication process, it is easy for us to have intelligent problem-solving conversations about how we can fabricate these doors to work with our complex hardware. It will only get easier as we become more adept in the fabrication process.

Being familiar with how something is built only pushes a design further because it allows us to fix an issue before it becomes one. As we acquire more knowledge about building methods and tools, we bring compounding options on how to solve a single problem. This honing of skills will only help us as we begin to work through even more complex designs of details - such as our hidden-opaque-window-assembly [even the name is complex] due next week.

For some of us graduation is just around the corner, making it easy to think about how these skills apply to an office environment. Throughout this process of designing, testing, redesigning, building, and repeating as necessary, we will be able to pass this knowledge of design and process on to our peers and co-workers, allowing us to improve overall design intent from large to small-scale, and effectively enhance collaborative energy and problem solving in an office environment.