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Office Conversions
Office Conversions
Dover Street, Portsmouth, NH, United States
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Office Conversions
Dover Street, Portsmouth, NH, United States
Working for builder Dave Prescott during summer 2011, I got practical experience in renovation construction.
Converting an old storage structure into an office involved strippint the intire building down to the stud frame and concrete pad, then rebuilding from there. Skills I learned: Stripping asphalt roof shingles; removing old dry wall and insulation; pounding and removing lots of nails; using a saws-all; jack-hammering concrete; cutting and installing new rigid insulation; cutting and installing new vinyl siding; digging trenches for proper site drainage; and lots and lots of site clean-up and organization.
We also converted an old lower-level garage into an office space for my dad. I helped with the finish work, and learned the following skills: priming and painting a wall; setting nails in ship-lap wall boards, filling and sanding holes; sanding and finishing wood with water-based polyurethane; and sheet-rock installation and finish work.
There are three major things I will take away from this experience: 1) even the simplest things in building are incredibly time-consuming and require skill and patience to do well (example: making a “boring” white wall!); 2) even with the best builders, unforeseeable delays arise constantly and everything takes longer than you expect – patience is essential!!!!!; 3) I have a better understanding of the nature of modern-day residential construction: it is layered, composed of many parts that are then hidden behind finishes that give the appearance of solidity and uniformity; it is inexact; and finishes serve the purpose of absorbing the accumulated errors and give the illusion of perfection; and keeping out moisture is the primary concern of much of what goes on in building. I am going back to school with a greater understanding of the longing of modernists to precision-engineer buildings, to do away with ornament, to expose the structural or even mechanical logic of a building, in the hope that this makes for a more honest, high-quality architecture. At the same time, I long for the simple building materials of old, when things were made from solid materials – a stone wall was stone all the way through, not just a facing; beams were solid wood, not laminates or many boards nailed together… a level of material simplicity, quality and honesty that seems to be economically impossible for virtually all modern-day construction.
Converting an old storage structure into an office involved strippint the intire building down to the stud frame and concrete pad, then rebuilding from there. Skills I learned: Stripping asphalt roof shingles; removing old dry wall and insulation; pounding and removing lots of nails; using a saws-all; jack-hammering concrete; cutting and installing new rigid insulation; cutting and installing new vinyl siding; digging trenches for proper site drainage; and lots and lots of site clean-up and organization.
We also converted an old lower-level garage into an office space for my dad. I helped with the finish work, and learned the following skills: priming and painting a wall; setting nails in ship-lap wall boards, filling and sanding holes; sanding and finishing wood with water-based polyurethane; and sheet-rock installation and finish work.
There are three major things I will take away from this experience: 1) even the simplest things in building are incredibly time-consuming and require skill and patience to do well (example: making a “boring” white wall!); 2) even with the best builders, unforeseeable delays arise constantly and everything takes longer than you expect – patience is essential!!!!!; 3) I have a better understanding of the nature of modern-day residential construction: it is layered, composed of many parts that are then hidden behind finishes that give the appearance of solidity and uniformity; it is inexact; and finishes serve the purpose of absorbing the accumulated errors and give the illusion of perfection; and keeping out moisture is the primary concern of much of what goes on in building. I am going back to school with a greater understanding of the longing of modernists to precision-engineer buildings, to do away with ornament, to expose the structural or even mechanical logic of a building, in the hope that this makes for a more honest, high-quality architecture. At the same time, I long for the simple building materials of old, when things were made from solid materials – a stone wall was stone all the way through, not just a facing; beams were solid wood, not laminates or many boards nailed together… a level of material simplicity, quality and honesty that seems to be economically impossible for virtually all modern-day construction.
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