J.T. Pennington - Week 11 Lessons Learned

Week 11 : November 6th - November 10th

Lessons learned/reflections:

Monday 11/06 - I had to call a land surveyor because I didn't see the right hand boundary distance on the survey drawing; when I had him on the phone and we were looking at the same drawing together he pointed me to C1 - "Curve 1," - and the corresponding chart at the bottom of the page; the street curves and there is too much information to put in a small box on the drawing in the space designated so there is a symbol then note in a schedule that describes all of the information. I guess I've never worked with a site that had a true radius for one of the lot line boundaries.

We have some tall windows that have a very low sill height in the living room, which is based on a constraint of the door manufacturer's limits of the lowest door lite that they make; we use that as a horizontal regulating line to match adjacent windows to the exterior door lites. While working on interior elevations, I learned the interior side of the window's sill trim is the stool and apron. The solution of the baseboard and the stool/apron is to rip the baseboard to a lower height and add a keynote to provide a lower baseboard only in the specific room so it compliments the windows.

Tuesday 11/07: A rapid rush to complete construction documents, but I had some help from some other people: Ryan put together a door and window elevation sheet and added some of our typical details which he modified for our specific job, Batton had finished the floor plans with putting dimensions and adding door and window tags. James helped finished the last three pages of interior elevations that I was not able to finish in time. I finished the site plan drawing, deleted transom windows from the floor plan, and changed the toilets to be tanked instead of tankless. The client meeting is later today after I leave for Clemson's classes. I printed a full size set for the client meeting and an 11x17 set of the structural construction documents that came in early today.

Wednesday 11/08: I heard the client meeting yesterday went well, which was good. I redlined our consultant structural construction drawings. One of the things that I've been taught to look for is gaps of design or responsibilities between disciplines. Structural drawings call for the main entrance stair and the rear stair to be framed and supported per architectural drawings. We do not have any stair enlarged plans or foundation drawings for the stair at this time. This should be something we draw prior to going for permit - or ask the structural to modify his scope to cover these items. We also don't contract with M/P/E consultants during CDs so there are some coordination items that I had previously done with commercial design work that I am not doing with residential construction documents - another difference that I'm noting in my goals of comparing and contrasting commercial and residential work processes and procedures.

We are working on a development in Florida that the developer called and said that they want to preserve an existing tree on our lot. I analyzed the consultant drawings and was able to take the data from the tree and preservation plan and transfer it to our site plan drawing. Unfortunately the tree is in the middle of our back porch, so I'm not sure if we will modify our schematic design or push back on the developer that they should consider removing the tree.

Thursday 11/09: I switched gears from the primary project I have been working on in Sullivan's Island to a new residence in Mount Pleasant. Working on the same thing - interior elevations - I am faster and feel like I know what I'm doing - which is a good feeling that discussions and a dialogue of redlines have sunk in while at Beau Clowney Architects. I'm looking forward to free pizza lunch and a discussion with fellow classmates and mentors over open ended discussion questions regarding professional practice later today at the Cigar Factory. Here are the two questions I submitted:

1. Professional Practice: We have a lot of transparency in our office through Monday morning workload meetings and a shared digital calendar with upcoming deadlines.  Academic Life: I maintain paper calendar and block out chunks of time for how long I think it will take to do a specific task, but recently have felt like I never get everything accomplished.  There are also office tasks that with a low priority seem to slip through the cracks such as photographing completed work for marketing purposes, updating our website, and updating blogs.  How do we juggle all of our responsibilities while still maintaining a happy live/work balance when there are too many things to do?

2. We're struggling in our academic studio with a budget problem for the cost of a 24'x36' pavilion is exceeding our $10,000 budget - we've made a material takeoff and are using a spreadsheet with unit costs, but we have holes in the budget for things that we're finding out now are a major cost - light fixtures, paints or stains for finishes, galvanized hardware.  Without hiring a specialized consultant - what are some of the ways that students can more accurately estimate costs? 

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Friday 11/10: Continued on interior elevations for a private residence in Mount Pleasant, SC. I started on this project in early August but didn't know what I was drawing - didn't know the company's lineweights and how they drew their exterior and interior window conditions; I learned all of those drawing techniques on a job in Sullivan's Island. Yesterday was cold, rainy, and dreary - today is full of sunshine opportunities with my second cup of coffee in my hand.

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Images of work completed:

Site plan for a new development in Florida. Developer wants us to keep a tree - except that we weren't provided that information when we started schematic design. The big green tree is in the middle of the back porch - that won't help us very much:

Construction documents for a private residence in Sullivan's Island:

Facade with notes and materials:

Consultant structural redlines for construction documents

Ground floor plan: