Directed Studies Project

I kind of promised my Aunt that this post would be up yesterday but .... um, ... well, other things got in the way. What other things you may ask? Well, sleep for one! Kids and housework and preschool emails to name a few more.

As some of you know, I have been slowly working towards my Interior Design Cetificate at BCIT (British Columbia Institute of Technology) since Marley was almost a year old. At the beginning of May I embarked on the very last course required to graduate - Directed Studies. Throughout the whole process I have heard various horror stories about DS. Let me just say that they were all true!! 8 weeks ago we were given our project and told to go at it. We had the opportunity to go in every week and show our progress to our instructor and various guest instructors and get their feedback but we were given no instruction on the actual realization/planning of our ideas. It was incredibly tough to find enough time to focus on the project with all the distractions in my life - 3 kids, one husband, one house, one preschool to run, etc, etc, etc. Speaking of the husband - Greg was AWESOME and took every Monday off for the 8 weeks to give me an extra working day.

So what was the project? We were given the following floor plan of the ground floor of a hotel in which we had to design a high-end retail store with a New York Nightclub vibe, a gourmet coffee shop and the hotel managers apartment. We were given a list about a mile long of all the requirements that had to be met - like the store needed a bar and sitting area plus 3-5 TV's in the storefront windows, and the apartment was to be 650sq.ft. with the bedroom and living room both on a window wall.

Anyway, fastforward 8 weeks and after forcing Greg to take basically an entire week off work and then pulling a couple almost-all-nighters and one complete all-nighter I presented the following 7 boards for approval:

The Floor Plan. Hard to see details I know, probably a good thing - it's a bit sparse in details.

The Reflected Ceiling Plan. Pretty basic really.

Four Elevations of the retail store. VERY lacking in details - at 4am it was all I could do to get some sort of colour on the board!

A Section through the retail store.

A Perspective of the bar/lounge area of the store.

The Furniture, Lighting and Materials board for the retail store and cafe.

The Furniture, Lighting and Materials board for the manages apartment.

Oh yeah, and then there was the AutoCAD Millwork drawings that I had to generate. Just squint a little to see past the great big watermark!! :)

Well, there you are! I will be picking up my marked assignment tomorrow. I think the presentation went well but won't know for sure until I see my mark tomorrow. Yikes!

I am now "free" and assuming I pass, have no immediate plans to continue on. Eventually I'd like to get my Diploma in Interior Design but for now, my family needs me to be 'present' and also start contributing to the mortgage!

Thanks for stopping by to check out my project. I will be back to normal blogging frequency and content soon! I imposed a scrapping ban on myself while this project was on the go so I'm itching to get back to it! Hope to have something new to show you soon!