Learning from a project "Post-mortem"

                Recently, and by recently I mean within the past year, my partner and I purchased our first home. It’s a beautiful split level in a rural part of Maryland with a large back yard, pool, screened in porch and a fireplace. We love it. It’s a perfect first time home for our little family of four (us and two fur babies). The house was practically move in ready with the exception of some cosmetic painting that needed to get done before we could unpack and decorate. The previous owners loved, and I mean LOVED, Pinterest and you could see examples of that all over the house. They weren’t bad, per se, but not our style. There was, however, one huge eye sore that needed some love and attention now that the weather was nice; the shed.

                This became my Fourth of July weekend project. I had been thinking about updating and painting the shed for about two months and finally found the time to get it done. It’s old, pieces were falling off, the handles were rusted and sharp, and the sides had turned green from years of neglect and pollen. It was, for lack of a better term, hideous and I had to do something about it. So I went to Home Depot and I picked out a color sample. I brought the sample back and painted a swatch to see if it worked, which it did! Before returning to Home Depot I measured the frame of the door and the molding around the doors themselves to determine how much wood I would need. I also measured the flashing on the sides of the shed so that I could replace those as well.

                I went back to Home Depot, bought a gallon of blue paint, a quart of black and a quart of white. I grabbed a pack of rollers, two new handles, a latch, the new flashing and some black spray paint for the hinges (I planned to reuse them). I had also planned to buy ten 1x3’s to frame the door and add the molding back to the doors themselves but they didn’t carry pressure treated 1x3’s so I settled with 1x4’s instead. That was all the planning and preparation I did. Looking back, this was where my headache started.

                I got home and began to take the hardware off the shed, carefully prying the molding off the doors so as not to ruin them since I had to put them back up I began to realize the extent to which this shed had aged and been exposed to the elements. The door bottoms were almost completely rotted and had very little consistency to hold the screws in place, let alone friction to unscrew. Once I had all the hardware and molding off, I proceeded to power wash the entire exterior of the shed before applying the paint. As I finished, my partner began applying the blue paint to the crevices of the wainscoting while I began to measure and cut the 1x4’s for the door frame and doors. My headache gets a little stronger here. I don’t own a table saw and decided that it would be okay, for this project, to use my circular hand saw to cut the pieces in the lawn.

                 I used my lawn chairs as saw horses while I cut the pieces. This worked okay but probably wasn’t the safest or most efficient way to accomplish my task. Once all the wood was cut, I decided that I wanted to use the shutters from the “old” shed and repurpose them into window boxes so I could plant flowers in them. Again, I used my circular saw to cut pieces to attach to the back and spent about an hour making two boxes (one for each window). I then moved on painting the shed with the roller in the blue paint. As I did that, my partner started painting the molding for the door frame and doors black and I did the edging of the shed white. I also replaced the flashing at the corners of the shed with the new ones I had bought. This brings us to about 7:30pm and it’s a perfect time to pause for dinner while the molding dries.

                At this point, I am going to tell you about the finished product and what I think could have been done better or differently to get to where we are now. First, I love the way my shed turned out but I think it could have been a completely different experience had I used my knowledge and experience in instructional design. As designers, we use a systematic approach to any learning project we create so that we ensure the final product is effective and well thought out. I should have realized that my shed project could have benefited from this same type of systematic approach. I should have started with a full analysis of the shed including an inspection of the wood, the surrounding area, the materials on hand and the measurements of everything needing to be replaced. Had I done this, I would have discovered the rotted wood, made plans to replace it and not had to improvise during the project. In addition, had I inspected all the materials that I needed compared to what I had on hand, I wouldn’t have been scrounging for nails and screws in my tool box and would have purchased new ones at Home Depot. In project management, this would have been my project initiation phase by which I would have figured out what I knew and didn’t know about the project, determine what I needed for the project, set cost and scope for myself, and determine an ultimate objective (Allen & Hardin, 2008).

                After doing a thorough analysis of the shed, I should have executed a design of what I wanted to accomplish. I had a rough sketch in my mind of what I wanted it to look like, but when push came to shove, I didn’t have the materials or ability to make that vision a reality. In project management, this would have been solved by further developing a statement of work, project objectives with SMART goals, a scope of the work I wanted to complete, accounting for unknown variables, and using some form of technology to build a blueprint for myself of what the project would ultimately look like (Portny, et al, 2008).

                If I could go back and do things differently, I certainly would. Following a systematic approach to any project makes for better outcomes, and less headache along the way. At the end of day two, our shed was finally finished, not one hundred percent to my liking, but it was certainly a huge improvement from when we started.  To anyone thinking about updating their shed, I highly encourage you to plan and use a systematic approach to your project; or just hire someone else to do it!

Best, Dennis

References:

Allen, S., & Hardin, P. C. (2008). Developing instructional technology products using effective project management practices. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 19(2), 72–97.

Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.