Pre-Restoration Drawings (1/12/15) - Emily

     Today we worked on construction and recording historic buildings pre-restoration. I was happy that I finally got to work on construction work even though it was only for about an hour. Though I wish I could do more construction work I'm excited to do more recording for our AutoCAD project. Ian's drawing group was able to do most of an elevation, and in the afternoon we finished the first room of a four room floor-plan, though one of the rooms is pretty dilapidated. It took a long time to get all of the measurements not just because we were doing a floor plan but because, unlike the other house, people were living there. Therefore all of their furniture, toys, clothes, etc. were in the rooms we were attempting to measure and draw. The family was also rather large, which was surprising for the size of the house and the shape it was in. There was a father, mother, older boy, two girls under about ten, two boys under about five, and a baby boy. So during the time we were measuring the house we met the family, the TV was going, they made dinner, and we had little kids looking over our shoulders. I really enjoyed getting to meet the family, and when I did meet them I was very surprised because after seeing the shape of the exterior of the house yesterday I didn't even think anyone was living there.

     My favorite part of our time in the house was getting to meet the kids. Iris talked a lot to the two younger boys about what cartoons they liked, since that was what was on TV. The two girls also played with Iris' and my hair when they got home from school later in the day and were amazed at how soft it was. But probably the thing that made me smile the most was when we were leaving. Even though we'd really barely talked to the children, relatively speaking, the two young boys and two girls got up to give all three of us; Matthew, Iris, and I, hugs before we left for the day.

     After visiting the house today I felt extremely blessed to even have my own room. Sometimes two sisters or brother share a room back home, but this was a house with three usable rooms and eight residents, that we met. Of those three rooms one was set up as a living room/kitchen and one was set up as a bedroom with at least one large bed; we didn't get to see the other room today but I'm assuming it probably contains multiple beds. None of these rooms were very big either, the one we measured was roughly 13x13 ft.

     All in all I thoroughly enjoyed getting to talk to the family and can't wait to go back tomorrow.