shopclass

Post-Frame Lovers

March 7, 2022

This Spring has been busy for our 3rd-year team! Scroll down to see what we’ve been up to with Rosie’s Home, Woodshop, and History!

Studio

First off, our team has begun our study of Rosie’s current home with interviews and a series of empathetic drawings that we will continue to work on throughout the semester. Each of us has chosen an element of the home to study that will help us to make informed choices about the design of the new home.

We are using our findings from these drawings to begin the process of adapting the floor plan of 20K Turner’s Home to Rosie’s needs.

As we continue to create iterations of these plans, the team has also begun our foray into creating full-scale wall section details.

Construction Progress!

Recently, construction began on our post-frame structure. Our team helped bolt together the truss system while the sub-contractors implanted the posts and lifted the trusses into place. Afterwards, they attached the purlins to the truss system in preparation for the metal roofing to come.

My First Woodshop

For our first adventure in carpentry, each member of our team was tasked with designing and making a cutting board from a set amount of wood. In the span of a couple weeks, we learned a lot about woodworking, sanding, and staining, and ended up with a striking variety of cutting boards.

Our next goal is to begin the process of testing ways to build our chair precedents. For the next few weeks, we’ll be testing out different methods for the construction of their components.

History and Watercolor

We have visited several historic homes in the past month, such as the (pictured below) Carlisle Hall, Bluff Hall, Lyon Hall, and Tasso House. It is so interesting to learn about the details of these buildings and the reasoning behind their construction, along with developing our sketching skills on site.

Bluff Hall
Carlisle Hall
Tasso House

We also just completed our first watercolor assignment, a study of light and shadow in a monochromatic painting.

Check back soon to see how we’re makings strides on floor plans and post-frame home details!

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That’s a Wrap

May 27, 2021

Our spring 2021 3rd-year students finished off their time at Rural Studio with a bang! The last couple of months in Hale flew on by, taking nine students away with them.

History Class

As the semester wrapped up, so did the seminar with their professor, Dick Hudgens. Students toured a few more pre-civil-war homes and Dick held final reviews for the students’ work. Out on the Spencer House front porch, each member of the class presented three months’ worth of sketches from house tours, watercolor work, and historic housing “Design Problems.” Thanks to Ian Crawford for attending the review and providing his wise-as-ever advice and expertise!

  • a pencil sketch of an antebellum home
Examples of exemplary student work

Shop Class

Students worked diligently until the very last hour, oiling and installing cabinets. Plywood cabinets finished with tung oil and paste wax were designed and built this semester for the following spaces in Ophelia’s new home: the kitchen, nook, utility room, bathroom, and bedroom. That’s a lot of cabinets! Nineteen, to be exact.

Cabinets are nearly ready for use!

Yes, they also built a house!

During the past few months, a lot happened at Ophelia’s Home. The remaining pieces of ZIP System sheathing were nailed into place by the Enclosures Team; Ashley, Juyeon, and Logan. Then windows, doors, and joints were meticulously taped.

After Ophelia chose a siding color—burgundy—the team got to work installing the corrugated metal cladding. By the end of the semester, these three students of the Enclosures Team were mastered cutting and installing metal panels.

a group of people gather to watch a woman present some color options
Pick a color, any color.

Remember those funky exterior design charrettes? The ones considering tricks-of-the-eye and optical illusions? Well, those design discussions came to fruition during siding installation. The metal corrugation runs in two directions, which helps enhance a new proportion on the front faces while disrupting the front corner of the house.

a view of a burgundy house in a big yard with a green-colored house in the background
Where does the porch wall terminate? You may never know.

The MEP (Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing) Team—James, Kirby, and Wendy—spent their days putting together the many parts and pieces that give a house running water and power. These three students installed the entire MEP system for Ophelia’s Home from scratch! Because there’s so much that goes into these systems, they spent a whole lot of time driving to Lowe’s and back… and to Lowe’s and back again.

  • a man in a hard hat kneels down to hammer a blue electrical box into a wooden stud
  • three students wearing hard hats take a selfie from below
  • a man in black lays pvc pipe in the crawl space underneath a house
two students load a cart with pvc pipe in a hardware store
Gotta have plenty of pipe

While MEP and Enclosures Teams were working away, the Interiors/Rough Framing Team–Austin, Drew Haley, and Sadie–was steadily constructing the back stoop and front entrance to the house. They also put the finishing touches on the inside of the house. First, they tackled the back stoop: digging holes for three posts, constructing a platform, decking the platform, and building the stairs.

a set of wooden stairs lead to the door of a partially-clad house
Dang, that’s a nice lookin’ stoop.

The team then moved inside and recruited help from members of the MEP Team to paint the walls and ceiling and install laminate flooring.

a woman kneels over flooring boards while she hammers the pieces together
Tap, tap, tap

For Ophelia’s front entrance, this team built the formwork for and poured the concrete ramp! Many thanks are due to Andrew and Steve for helping with the ramp’s design and construction.

Ophelia’s Home: All Ramped Up

Pig Roast

The semester concluded with an “in-house” celebration of the Studio and the incredible body of work accomplished this year. We’ll miss these students dearly, and hope they return to Hale again soon (5th-year, perhaps?). Once a part of Rural Studio, always a part of Rural Studio.

Bye for now!

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Building a Book in Shop Class

April 9, 2020

rendering of kitchen cabinets' design
student’s rendering of Ophelia’s kitchen cabinetry design

We’re now in the home stretch! Students are vigorously working toward a quickly-approaching end of the semester. We have just about one week left. Everyone is pitching in to fine tune their drawings and produce a book that will explain the process of building cabinets for a Rural-Studio-built home.

The class has drastically changed over the last month: a woodshop class is now unable to actually work in the Studio’s shop. So, the class determined that next best thing to real fabrication is to build a virtual instruction guide that will help the future Rural Studio cabinet builders.

All the great work that was done prior to the COVID-19 Pandemic is now enabling everyone to work from their homes, whether they be in Alabama or even South Korea. Zoom video calls are amazing things! Students are working to create a book that includes in-depth drawings and instructions on how to build a set of cabinets. Stay safe and stay tuned for a more in-depth look into the final book!

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Route it Out

February 28, 2020

As assigned, the teams have been diligently working towards their cabinet designs.  As part of their assignment, the teams built physical models, or mockups, of the cabinet itself.  This is a very common practice at the Studio, which is used to test the fabrication process.

This means that the students finally get to build something in a shop class! Because a large component of this course’s assignment is using a CNC router, instead of traditional shop equipment, a number of the students ventured back to Auburn’s shop at Dudley Hall and CNC’d the cabinet pieces. 

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Welcome Aboard the Storyboard

February 18, 2020

  • utilities team presents their storyboard
  • kitchen team presents their storyboard

This week, the students’ five cabinet teams have been working hard on the design of their cabinets and of their fabrication process. To help students determine how their cabinets will be constructed, Steve and Chelsea implemented a design tool called a storyboard, which is a guide or instruction manual that documents the process, or evolution, of a built piece of work.

Storyboards flush out the order of procedure and give the students a method for testing the actual process of construction from start to finish. All of this work is helping the class move toward the fabrication of a built mockup, or prototype, of their final cabinets. These mockups will be reviewed as their midterm during the next weeks!

Auburn’s woodshop manager Jon Byler teaches the students how to use a CNC router

We had another special guest this week, this time from Auburn! Jon Byler, who operates the shop at CADC’s Dudley Hall, kindly took the time to pay the class a visit in Newbern. Because he’s an expert on the CNC-routing process, Jon is helping the students coordinate using the router to fabricate their millwork pieces. CNC-routing is a new and exciting adventure for the Shop Class, and Jon was incredibly helpful in giving an in-depth router tutorial along with some great advice on design and process.

Thanks Jon!

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