Story and Carpentry

Okay, so it’s damned hot, even now at about 9 on a Monday. Yet it’s been a little cool here at the weblog. The kitchen remodel has, of course, expanded to include the removal of two floors underneath the existing laminate, and some rethinking because of hidden pipes in the wall where I was going to add a stud and a 32 inch wall cabinet. The vent pipe from the basement curls out from the wall about five inches from the ceiling and was hidden by the old span of cabinets. But that’s the way things go with a house you didn’t build yourself. In addition, the old cabinets had to be removed with a reciprocating saw because they had been tightly framed around and attached to adjoining wallboard and studding from the other side of the wall. I have to carefully refit those cabinets in the garage. Anyway, drawers have been built, doors, and everything’s mostly square. The doityourselfer job I’ve clocked at about 70 dollars a cabinet (6 cabs in all plus a red oak floor and a new wall) minus the extra dollars for installation by a pro.

In addition to this, the kids are doing a bangup job on their digital stories, catching on quickly to the software’s keyframe concept and timeline, but the more important concept of the storyboard, I find, is the critical concept: having an idea of an entire project from its parts and the hands-on control of paper, pencil, and sequence. Again, back to planning, preparation, and simple sketches (pedagogically and logically, this is where the good stuff works itself out). People love to dig into the cool tools, but it’s the simple expression of visual planning that will make the timeline easier to deal with. Lots of server space for video is helpful too. We’re working with smart and creative highschoolers and liking it a lot.

2 thoughts on “Story and Carpentry

  1. susan

    What software program are you teaching?

    Sounds like your kitchen story is progressing by plot points of conflicting pipes and joints, building a steady tension with layers of flooring that represent time and a different space to offer interaction that seeks resolution in building a better arc.

  2. Steve Post author

    Story indeed: why that floor and that wallpaper! Lordy. How things HAVE changed.

    Basically, it’s a “cover up” vs my own style of making it easy and clean for the next owner or, even better, a sense that something may change, thus everything should be modular, removeable, and reachable. Perhaps the view of the prior owners reflects a sense that the home would be a permanent object for them. They could mess it up as much as they wanted without having to worry about that notion that someday we might want to take that out without having to demo a wall.

    Oh, and the software: a little adobe audition but mainly Premiere.

Comments are closed.