Self Directed Project: School Improvement My first self directed project was a school improvement project where we choose a teacher's classroom, location in the school, or just a general place that needs fixing and build our project around that. I chose to install shelves into Jeremy's room, the school's art teacher. I made two shelves for above his sink to hold his paints.
I started by finding and planning out what materials I'd need, after that I went into the art room to measure how long the shelves needed to be. I decided to build them as "floating shelves" meaning there's attachments on the back which is why you can't see anything holding them up on the sides or underneath. I thought they'd look really cool without anything visibly supporting them. The first thing I did was cut all my pieces to fit together, after that I put the top over the sides and nailed everything together, then slid in the side pieces, the bottoms, etc. The backings were probably the hardest because they had to fit together perfectly, but once I got them and we put them on the wall I was relieved when everything fit together just the way it needed to. The hardest part was that this was my first project in the class using power-tools and whatever else I needed. My favorite part by far was finally taking it easy and painting them after hanging them up. I learned that the class was going to take a lot of patience and practice. But seeing the shelves up there and more bottles of paint being added on top of them made all of the challenges worth it.