After several long months, our project comes to a close. It's taken a lot of coordinated effort from all of our students, teachers, and partners, but in the end we have created a high quality product that we are all proud of. We had our banquet, gave the keys to Da Vinci Rise, and they will be all set up very soon. We hope to do a similar project next year, and look forward to what the future has in store!
0 Comments
So much has gotten done in the last few weeks of school, and the end of the project is so close now! All of the planters got finished, complete with waterproofing, drainage, all of the redwood and the sheet metal. The entire structure of the building is done, and the whole thing is wrapped in vapor barrier to protect the wood from the elements. We're still working on the finishing touches, like upholstering the seating that will be installed inside, installing the final poly-carbonate that will wrap the whole thing, and attaching the trim around the windows. All of the electrical is finished as well, thanks to the amazing efforts of Don Wallis and Paul Heckman. While our seniors graduated this past Tuesday, and we all said our goodbyes on Wednesday, CEA isn't quite done yet. This next week, we have a bunch of work days lined up to finish this project off just as strong as we started. This week, things progressed as usual. Three of the planter boxes are now completely done, with all of the sheet metal, redwood trim, waterproofing, and drainage installed, and the other three are well on their way. The first layer of plywood is on the roof, as well as some of the insulation. Over this The project is taking a more final form with every passing day. All four walls are up and fastened, and the beam truss structure that will hold up the roof is in place. We even have scaffolding up to make it easier for us to install the ceiling panels. Due to construction on the Da Vinci Schools campus, we had to move the trailer, but the build is still going as planned, and the finishing touches (windows, doors, lights, etc) will be added soon! This week was the greatest leap in progress we've had thanks to the bonus build day we had this Saturday. Working from 8 AM to around 6 PM, we put in a lot of work. The planter box team worked diligently upstairs to get all of the sheet metal finished and done with, and even put all of the redwood trim on a couple! While the team upstairs finished their project, the ground teams completely finished their walls, insulation and all. To top it all off, two of the walls are now attached to the trailer! The drainage and waterproofing still needs to be put in the planter boxes, the last two walls need to be put up, and the roof made and attached, but the end is in sight, and we're proud of our work so far. Over the past few weeks, we have made a lot of progress on the tiny house. Our school's FIRST Robotics Competition team has made it to the FIRST Championship for this year, which is exciting, but also means that we had to move our equipment out of the trailer that we were housing it in so they could take it to the competition. Despite this paradoxical exciting event and minor setback, we have completed a good deal of the walls and floor of the project. All of the framing (aside from the roof), is now done, and teams are putting on their plywood and insulation outer layers. Be sure to read through the captions on the photos for detailed descriptions of what we're doing! Sadly, bad weather conditions has limited the building we have been able to do for the past two weeks, however, great progress has still been made. The building of the actual tiny house has progressed fast, and a lot of the framing is already done; the floor has insulation, waterproofing, and joists, and is nearly ready for plywood flooring. Most of the walls are framed out, and insulation will start to be put on one of the walls next week. Despite the slight setback, solid plans have been made to make sure we have strong momentum going into next week.
This week, we finished building all of the planter boxes. All that's left for them is the sheet metal and redwood finishing, which will be done by the team in charge of the sheet metal. In the meantime, the other teams started on the actual tiny house itself, installing the sub-floor insulation into the bottom of the trailer, and framing out the walls of the counselling space. This week, we started to shift gears. On Monday, the main teams continued finishing up the planter boxes by sheathing them all in plywood, while the sheet metal team finished up cutting the sheet metal for the planters. Then, on Wednesday, all the teams gathered in Mr. Tostado's room to look over the plans for the counselling space, and started calculating the lengths of wood that will need to be cut in order to begin construction. In week 5 and 6, we continued building the planter boxes. Some teams are almost done with theirs, and even got to put plywood sheathing on their finished frames. Because we had the day off on Friday the 16th, some students were able to come in for an extra day of building where a lot was accomplished. In week 6, some students started cutting out pieces of sheet metal that will later be attached to the outside of the planter boxes. |