Another busy week in Building Construction Technology class gets us one step closer toward our goal of building a tiny office, not to mention the upcoming Skills USA competition in Chattanooga in April!

We started out the week with more shingling to finish off the “exterior” of our break room, which is actually inside the classroom. To be honest, all that shingling was the first thing that has ever felt monotonous in six months of class. Memo to self: Don’t major in siding.

Look at these GQ guys taking a break from shingling with a few issues of Family Handyman Magazine.

I’ve been collecting old metal trophies and turning them into wall hooks for my kids to hang their coats and backpacks. Here’s my latest creation. It looks simple, but this tiny project requires the table saw, miter saw, router, sander, and an assortment of drills, so it helps me get comfortable with the power tools. For some reason, there is a surfeit of old bowling trophies on Nashville’s estate sale circuit.

Here’s our instructor taking a picture of the group, while I take a picture of him. Caught in the camera crossfire is a wooden bench and coatrack that a classmate built as an anniversary present for his wife.

We’re still working on installing some very large and heavy doors between the classroom and the workshop, in an effort to confine the sawdust and fiber cement particles. Everyone is pretty sick of dusting off desks before taking tests. (Meanwhile, everyone is also pretty sick of taking tests.)

With the break room almost complete, we started converting a storage closet into a computer lab, where we will start working with CAD software.

The week wasn’t all glamourous. Building generates a lot of waste, and with all the fiber cement trimmings, I spent an above-average amount of time inside a dumpster this week. (Emptying the trash, which can mean lifting hundreds of pounds of scrap wood, siding and coffee grounds overhead, is the only chore in the workshop that has really been physically challenging for me.)

And finally we completed the break room! Just in time, too. After all that shingling and dumpster-diving, we need a break.

It starts all over again tomorrow. I can’t wait.