Every Monday until August, first-year graduate students at the Yale School of Architecture are blogging about their progress building an affordable, accessible owner-renter residence in New Haven. Click here to read the previous posts.

Left: The interior of the house at the start of the week. Right: Installing SIPs on the roof, on one of the few sunny days of the month. Photos: courtesy the Vlock First Year Building Project

Some notes after a month on site:

I’m on the Thursday–Saturday afternoon crew. We were scheduled to work twelve days over the first four weeks of construction. We’ve been rained out for two, had one off for a school function, and skipped one because we were ahead of schedule and out of things to do. Plus I missed a day for my brother’s college graduation and another to visit my girlfriend. The Monday–Wednesday crews pretend to resent us.

I want to work more. I should work some doubles to make up for the shifts I’ve missed, but at this point I’m not sure if it will happen. When we are not on site we are in school, and if not in school we are trying desperately to make good use of our meager free time: pursuing independent projects, working out the details of the house, watching basketball. Read more…