Ryan O'Malley - Yestermorrow School of Design

This past fall has been a surprisingly busy one. On top of working full time at South Mountain Co., I helped a co-worker with side work on afternoons and Saturdays, and did caretaking for an older couple on Sunday mornings. I would say by this point that I'm fully enveloped in a very hands-on and sometimes fast paced learning environment. September and October were spent working on various different projects. We were busy wrapping up and siding on the new SMCo workshop/warehouse space. I spent most of the summer here and was able to participate really early on, from raising massive 13 foot walls, to scooting on some pipe staging a seemingly endless amount of time finishing the vertical siding and the final pieces of trim on, I had a lot of fun and felt fulfilled knowing that I am gonna use this space for years to come. Starting in late October my crew and I joined a new renovation and addition in Katama. This project was to add a few extra bedrooms and provide more living space in an existing guest house. This house was built by SMCo some 20 years prior and thus the modern energy retrofitting it receiving has proved challenging at times, but provided me great experience air sealing and flashing houses in general. One of the trickiest parts of this project was in the demolition, trying to save as much existing wood as possible. This meant that pine boarding, windows, interior trim, and beautiful roof overhangs all will hopefully be re-used in the finished house after we insulate and resheathed every outside surface. The careful extraction part I definitely have room for growth on. I may have said many choice words to innocent pieces of trim as I unjustly mangled them! I'm still working on this house now in January. We have finally migrated off the roof and are nearing completely sealing off the outside. I'm excited to eventually change gears and do finish and interior work, for it offers a different pace and approach than the insulation process. I would like to thank MVYouth for their contributions to my education and career. I hope to continue learning and growing and potentially apply to a timber framing course sometime in the not too distant future.