Today was the first day at the construction site of the renovation project for my City Planning class. The point of this class is to renovate the house at 20 n 42nd St, in Philadelphia.
I am very excited for this class, since it is very different from the financial and development work I have always done. I am eager to get my hands dirty, and learn about construction. I like the hands on class approach, and know that this project will help me be more realistic about timing, costs, and processes related to construction of properties.
Last year's class acquired the property, replaced the roofing, demolished the internal walls, replaced the floor plates and the staircase. The house right now is looking good, walls are being fixed, doors have been selected, closets set, etc.
There is much going on in the house on Fridays and Saturdays, when students work in many different projects. Walls are being leveled and plastered, the staircase banister is being scraped, moldings are being placed, and the electrician runs back and forth throughout the house to complete the installation.
There are many things that need to be done, walls need to be finished, doors need to be scraped, sanded, painted and polished, the bathroom needs to be installed, everything has to get painted, flooring has to be placed, and the backyard needs to be redone.
This semester I will be in charge of the backyard renovation, which is right now looking awful, and is complicated because three houses share the backyard.
Today I dedicated my day to scraping a beautiful banister post on the top of the stairs. While working on this project I learned my first construction lesson: Read the Instructions!
I was commissioned the project, and without asking many questions I jumped righted in and applied scraper, and started scrubbing it intensely. The effect obtained was that instead of peeling of the paint, I uniformly distributed it, painting the entire thing of a deep red. It took me the rest of the day to sand off the layer of painting I had distributed.
When my teacher saw the mess, he came by, and simply asked me to read the instructions. There, on point number 6 was the secret to the scraper's kingdom; Let the scraper sit for 15 minutes before scrubbing off. Oooops. At the end of the day I left a banister that is looking much better, though not entirely completed.
