Throughout the design, planning, and building process of our dream house we definitely learnt a lot. Not only have we overcome many obstacles, but we had to use our problem solving skills and also had to be extremely creative when it came to dealing with bumps in the road.
We found the hardest part of the project trying to fix the problems we had caused by the lack of thought of our original plans. In hindsight, we would have definitely looked over our initial idea with more consideration, this way we could have avoided problems that were extremely difficult to fix once in the building process. Such as the door issue, when we tried to build a cam and follower for the door we soon realized it would not work, as the gravity wouldn’t pull the follower back into place, leaving the door open. We decided this wouldn’t work, but not before we had already glued in the intermediate with only two holes and none for the third output. Like all our other problems, it was fixed and we soon learnt that it was even more satisfying to fix a problem than to get it right on the first try.
Overall, we definitely consider this a learning experience. We now understand how to use a drill press and the meaning of “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade” since we had to work with what we had and make-do with it, problems and all. I think we both had a lot of fun, though sometimes frustrating, we enjoyed the project as a whole.
