Senior Project Day 8

 Day 8 Blog - Tuesday 5/16

Written at 1:45 pm

This morning I woke up eager to start my painting project at the Martin Field dugouts. I went to Michael’s crafts store at 9 am to shop for my materials for the spray painting. I purchased white spray paint, adhesive, and painter’s tape before realizing that I could purchase stencils rather than making my own, which is what I had originally planned on doing. It took me around 30 minutes to track down all of these items and purchase them in the store. I then went to the field and arrived around 9:45 am. Before starting my spray painting project, I put up “No Smoking” signs that one of the youth softball coaches asked me to put up. There were 4 of these signs and I needed to figure out the most visible places to put them up. This process took me 30 minutes due to the several issues that I had with faulty zip ties. 

Around 10:15 I started measuring and figuring out how I would organize the letters on the dugouts. I then measured how far apart the letter should be and how far from the roof they would be located. I completely forgot that I would need a level to figure out if the stencils were completely in line, however, I luckily was able to use an app on my phone for this. Next, I secured the stencils by spraying the adhesive on the back of all of the letters and numbers and then taping over them to make sure they would not move. Once everything was in place on both dugouts, I decided to do a test with a letter that was not needed in a less visible location. I did the same process to secure this stencil, however, I faced some challenges that I had not predicted with my research. I didn’t take into consideration that spray paint could paint outside the stencil, leaving more traces of white paint than I wanted. Additionally, the spray paint dripped off the stencil and onto the wood, something else that is more difficult to prevent than expected. Luckily, my mentor was with me and we brainstormed another way to do the labels on these dugouts. Rather than using spray paint, he suggested that I use a paintbrush and outdoor oil-based paint. We decided that this would be easier to control because there is a much less possibility of getting paint outside the stencil. After doing over 2 hours of work it was frustrating to me that we had to completely change my plans, however now if I want to do a project like this in the future I will be able to weigh the pros and cons with personal experience. 

At this point, it was about 12:30, my mentor and I did around 30 minutes of strategizing the new plan with regular paint rather than spray paint. We decided to keep the stencils taped to the sides of the dugouts so I don’t have to redo all of the measurements tomorrow. I left the fields and went to Home Depot to purchase the oil paint and a small paintbrush. When I got there, I decided to browse and see if there were other options for stencils, as I am not sure how sturdy the ones that I had purchased at Michael’s are. I ended up finding better stencils that I think will look better anyways. In retrospect, I think that I should have gone to home depot in the first place because maybe the issue with the spray paint bleeding had to do with the cheap quality stencils that I had originally purchased for $2.00. This shopping trip took me about 30 minutes. After this, I was done for the day. 

Today I experienced some more frustrating failure, I had done hours of planning and research for the spray painting project and purchased materials to experience some unpredicted problems when I actually went to carry out the task. I am happy that I figured out an alternative solution and am confident that it will work out tomorrow when I return to Martin in hopes of successfully labeling the dugouts. 

Today's Hours: 9 am - 9:30 am, 9:45 am - 12:45 pm, 12:30 pm - 1:00 pm (4 hours)

Project Total: 32 hours and 20 minutes