A quick week recap as we go into fall break!
This past week, our steel team has been hard at work preparing the steel elements for the trellis. The process has been cutting all the metal down to size, punching holes in the parts that get connected to the columns, brushing/grinding off all the rust and metal where they will be welded, and then actually welding the pieces together. For the vertical trellis panels, welding the spacers to the frame has begun while the overhead trellis elements need to be cut still. After all of these steel parts are finished, we have to send them off to be powder coated which will protect them from rusting and the environment.
While this has been happening, the wood team has been busy priming and painting all of the pieces for the walls. A coat of white primer was applied over the course of a few days to all of the pressure treated boards that were not already pre-primed. After the primer dried, we started painting all the primed boards the color “French Toast” which we decided on as a class. Painting will continue today as we are prepping all of the wall parts for the CNC machine. Once everything is painted, they will be able to be cut on the CNC which will make all of the dado cuts for us. Assembly should go very smooth after all the boards are precisely cut and drilled on the CNC.
Another thing that happened this week was Clemson’s Marketing and Communications team came to visit. On Tuesday, 3 different groups of design build students were at different locations showcasing the work done at the Design Center in Charleston. The first group of Kaden, Malu, and MaKayla were downtown sketching to show what happens in our Field Studies class taught by David. The second group of Nolan, Kylee, and Shane (me) were on site at Corrine Jones park replacing some informational signs that had rotted. Finally, the third group of Carlos, Abigail, and Tyler were at the marsh lookout with Bradford talking about how the city of Charleston functions with the landscape. The MarCom (marketing and communications) people were going around to these sites taking pictures of us in action. On Wednesday, the MarCom people were at the Cigar Factory taking pictures of us in studio and us working on our project in the shop.
Overall, a very busy week of prefab and photoshoots right before our fall break. A lot of us are using our short break next Monday and Tuesday to reset and be ready to get prefab finished when we come back. Hopefully we will be on site soon after break and then the on site construction can begin.