Wednesday, our studio headed upstate to Clemson and Greenville for both Solar Decathlon and Crop Stop Review. While a crew of people working on putting cabinetry for Solar Decathlon together, we had a “skeleton” crew go to Greenville doing the final touch on Crop Stop Kitchen porch.
The biggest lesson or experience we learned from this semester is every project is different, different characters, different stop points and different ending condition. There are a lot of unpredictable issues and tweaks happening that can potentially extend the time frame And also amount of the work. And do not ever underestimate time cost for a real building project, only the finishing or touch-up paint can take several hours and not even capped.
For example, when we planned on coming Greenville this time, we thought we only have to give another coat to decking board, put up railing at another end of porch, some touch-up paint and 2×4 legs beneath counter top. We wished 4-6 people 3-4 hour to finish it. But first thing we did is to spend around an hour to clean up decking board! The dirt gave a board really crazy amount of orange stain to it plus we sort of had construction work during the muddy ground condition two weeks ago, washing away the dirt and its remain color is a big challenge before we can start adding on another layer of wood stain. Cleaning took time to dry, even most water was wiped away.
So in a word, more.
There is always more to do than finish it right away.
Putting cabinetry and coordinating with Clemson team is not “finish right away” for Solar D crew, neither. But gratefully, after awesome Solar Decathlon Cabinetry crew’s and Crop Stop finishing up crew’s hard working, we can see the finish line of this semester. Today is a big day for Solar Decathlon team. The event and review will last the whole day. All our effort will become the true value to present to everyone. It will be exciting and wish us luck!
