Senior Projects

Today I was in the shop again. I still didn’t have the materials I needed to continue my project, so they had me start on another side project. For this one I was doing more edge banding, but this time by hand because it was on circular pieces of wood. These pieces are for lazy Susan’s to sit on and they needed to be finished off for the job. The process basically involves cutting the edge band to the length of the circumference of the circle, then coating both the wood and the edge banding in a glue and then sticking them together. After that I sand off the extra glue and edge until smooth. Below are pictures of the process.

I’m still working in the shop for the company I am at, but today I started a new project. The company has a job that their doing for a small dance studio nearby which is making them small portable dance floors, and they assigned the task of making them to me. All I really had to do was take the precut wood and edge band it, which is the thing I did during the first week where I put the laminate on the unfinished parts of the wood. After that I basically just took the 3×4 sheets of wood and glued cut up foam flooring pads to the bottom. I ran out of foam flooring pads and am still waiting on more so I have not completed the project yet. I’m really enjoying working on it and an excited to have a project to myself.

Week 3 was a success. I finally got to drive a Lamborghini Aventador. This is my fourth post this week so I will keep it short. Biggest takeaway from this week is time is money. You hear it all the time but seeing it is different. Today we “wasted” over an hour (between both places). The McLaren’s tire was punctured 4 miles out from a clients house so he won’t get the car until Monday. Another client forgot about a listing appointment. These things don’t disappear so now we have to schedule another time to go and fix/show these cars and houses. What can we do better for next week? Be more resourceful. Real world doesn’t limit sources.

This week, I made an outline for the story about Arlys. I spent about two hours at the Washington Public Library working on it each morning. I went through my list of highlights, copied-and-pasted the sections of each transcription I wanted into a new document, edited them, and sorted them into five chapters and an introduction. I’m anticipating that each chapter will be between five and ten pages, if not more (the introduction’s only three), which may take me a while. I’m hoping to get at least three chapters done, because expecting to finish it before the end of the quarter is a little ambitious.

In the afternoons, I either went to Washington Community Arts Studio (WCAS) or Lion’s Lake Park in Washington. I have a time slot at WCAS on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays. When I was there, I made basic character sketches of Arlys and her husband John at different ages. They’ll be good as references, but they were also helpful to get my thoughts sorted out and visualized. They were done straight from my head, so that’s why they’re a bit messy. I attached a couple of them down below. Today, I drafted the introduction while I was there (and got to use the stencil!).

When I was at Lion’s Lake, I spent time doing live sketches of things in nature. I used pencil, watercolors, and ink pens. The pencil was for sketching, the watercolors for blocking in color, and the ink pens for detailing. I went through a bit of a learning curve with these sketches. The first two were incredibly frustrating because I wanted to get everything perfect, and I spent a lot of time agonizing over small details, proportions, and shades of color. I wasn’t very satisfied with those pieces. On the third day, I realized that focusing on overall shapes and values would be a much better use of my time. Instead of scrutinizing the scene I wanted to draw, I squinted my eyes and tried to get a general idea of the scene. Drawings became much more fun after that, and I was much more pleased with how they looked.

I had a lot more time for poetry this week, which I really enjoyed. I went further in the Kay Ryan book, and started on Shakespeare’s Sonnets this morning. I’ve been trying to memorize “How Birds Sing” from the Kay Ryan book, because even though it’s written in free verse, it has a lot of rhymes and slant rhymes, and it’s short. I think I’ve got the majority of it committed to memory now! I was feeling a bit intimidated by Shakespeare, so this poem was a good warm-up to that.

I wasn’t able to have an Arabic lesson last Saturday, but my next one will be tomorrow.

The last two weeks have been very productive and informative. I have learned about a lot of things I am interested in doing and not doing. The job is very fast paced and always evolving which I like. I do not want to sit at a desk or have the same job everyday. You might have your entire day planned out but you will get calls from clients or have problems with properties that you have to deal with immediately. Out of the Box Properties was started about 3 months ago so they are just getting started. They want to have multiple diffrent outlets. This includes traditional real estate agent services (supporting a seller or buyer), flipping houses, non-tradtional housing (tiny houses, container houses), and more. After shadowing them around for the past 2 weeks I have learned I am not interested in the traditional real estate agent job. This is more showing houses and writing contracts. I was very interested in looking for distressed houses, going to look at them and possible flipping them. This still includes writing contracts and buying/selling but it is for your properties. When you are dealing with clients you can get caught up into legal battles and lots of diffrent road blocks. Overall it was a very productive time.

Thursday was filled with meetings. In the morning we had a meeting discussing how they could make their adulting 101 seminars better. Adulting 101 is a free seminar they have once a month to explain the process of buying a house to first time buyers. In the afternoon we had another meeting with a local flipper and friend wanting to get into it. I found this meeting very informative because I want to get into the business of flipping houses some time.

On Tuesday I walked through a couple houses that were in the process of being renovated. Some had just started and others all the dry wall was up and painted and just needed to be furnished. It was interesting to see the renovation side after I had seen houses before that stage. In the afternoon we had a meeting with their broker. A broker is the person who legally holds your real estate license and is legally responsible for all your deals. Anytime you write a contract, officially it is the broker’s contract.

This week I got to start a pallet for the Oscars. I picked out some finishes we already had in the interiors library and also got to order some samples from material bank. I also had my first in person product update. This was cool because it was out side in the trunk of the reps car. I worked on some projects such as commerce bank, SCAD, project sunshine, Saint Louis County Public Library Head Quarters, and wildhorse village. I learned how to use Revit.  Revit is a building information modelling software for architects, landscape architects, structural engineers, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineers, designers and contractors.

This week I’ve been at Underdown Trenching. They do directional boring along with many project involving utilities. Since everybody plans out the day before the suns comes out I have to get up at 4:45 which is something I haven’t really done before. Once you get to the office, everybody gets to work figuring out which crews are going where and when. A lot of what I’ve been doing has been with David and we drive out to sites. David goes to jobs before the crews do and makes sure that everything is listed at the job site exactly how it is on the map. Then he marks down where he needs locates which is to protect against hitting anything under ground. Locates are the 1-800 call before you dig commercials if you’ve ever seen them. Here is what a job looks like after David marks everything for the crews.

I have been doing a lot of office jobs this week. I made binders and printed window stickers today. I am always cleaning a car or taking photos/videos when I am not doing office jobs. I cleaned another Ferrari, a Lamborghini, a Bentley, and a Maserati today. One new concept to me is doing your job independently. For a lot of the office jobs, I just got sent a passcode and username and was told to figure it out. As long as you do your job, you’re fine. You don’t have to ask to do anything, you just do it.

For the real estate internship, I sat in on a few phone calls. Even though I sell shoes, I did not translate the process to real estate. We were talking to a person about potentially selling his rental unit; however he was concern about what he was going to net. Some of it was going to fees, then it was going to be taxed. We briefly discussed a 1031 exchange option. Then we showed a Rosebury Ave apartment (for the 5th time this week). Thursday I will go to an inspection on a trailer park. I have done very little on the management side so I look forward to it. Yesterday, I sat in on 3 hours of phone calls and listed an apartment on 5 or 6 different websites.