and.concerning.work

let me take a quick second to fill you in on the architecture education/work system and hopefully clarify where i am. first of all when you decide to do architecture you have a decision to make from the very beginning. where school is concerned you have two tracks you can choose from. in architecture the ultimate goal is to become a registered, licensed architect and to ensure that everyone who gets to that point is qualified there is some serious quality control. there are guidelines set up to ensure that the schools teach what they need to and for schooling the first track is a 5 yr, and the second track is what we call a 4+2. in the 5 yr track you go to a school (like U of H for instance) for 5 yrs and when you graduate you get a "bachelors of architecture." this is an accredited degree and passes the requirements for schooling to move on to the next step. the other track, the 4+2, is what most schools are on (Texas A&M for instance) and you graduate from a 4 yr institution with a "bachelors of ___." depending on the school they call it a lot of different things. sometimes its a bachelors of architectural science, most of them call it a bachelors of environmental design, but there are a few others as well. either way, its an accredited step on the degree path, but its not what they call a "professional degree" enabling you to start the profession and move on to the next step in the process. (the 5yr is a professional degree) so then usually you move on to a 2yr graduate program in architecture. when you finish that you have a total of 6 yrs and a "masters of architecture" which is an accredited professional degree and then you're ready to move on to the next phase of becoming licensed.
so step 2. this phase is what's called IDP (intern development program). because the business end and real working world of architecture is so different from the core education you have to have as a foundation, you're required to get what amounts to about 3 yrs of practical work experience during this phase. now then, simultaneously, you can also be working on the 3rd phase, which is your licensing exams. depending on which state(co, tx, oh, etc.) you're in, you're allowed to start taking your licensing exams while earning your idp credit, although in some states you have to finish idp first and then take the exams in successive order. either way, once you finally complete all 3 phases, youre officially an architect(well after some paperwork and lots of cash). however, the 3rd phase is no cake walk, there are 7 exams(now, it used to be 9) all of which take about 8 hours to complete and cost anywhere from $150-300 each, and you must pass all 7 with an 80% or better if i remember correctly.

now then, at this point i'm in phases 2&3 now that i've gotten my masters of architecture and my bachelors of environmental deign - therefore equalling a professional accredited degree. i havent actually logged any of my idp hours yet (theres a hell of a lot of paperwork and process involved in logging your hours) but i have gotten close to 2 years of practical work experience (although all of it might not count at this point - per all of the nit-picky little rules for it to count). i havent started taking exams yet or even started studying, but maybe once things get settled down a little i can get going on that.

so all that to answer your original question - what am i doing at work? well at this point, because i have gotten my masters, my title is "architectural intern" or "intern architect." i know this probably sounds silly, but they're very very specific about who is allowed to actually use the title "architect" because of all the liability that comes with it (and well, hopefully a little respect and prestige). when youre still in school and dont have an accredited degree your title is either co-op or intern when you work at a firm. thats the lowest rung on the ladder. im in kind of the middle phase where i start getting more responsibility thats more on-par with the level of knowledge and experience ive gotten at this point. it depends on the firm and the supervisor as to just what all that entails, but at this firm im doing pretty well. they trust me to do quite a bit and theres no telling what all i'll be doing in the time between now and when im licensed. so right now, i work with contractors and coordinate drawings and specifications, i draft a lot of the time, sometimes i do 3d modeling, and it looks like at some point in the near future i may be doing some construction administration - which is a pretty big deal this early in the game actually. so im pretty happy with my circumstances. however, im not officially a full time employee at the firm yet. i had a summer hourly position when i started and i was supposed to be finished with that on the 8th. so now (hopefully later this week) i have a meeting with my bosses to negotiate the terms of becoming a full time employee and getting me on salary and benefits and such.

more to come soon, im sure.

the.second.one

just an update real quickly on the house:

we finally got a brick guy out friday and he gave us an estimate on the work of $7800. thats actually way better than we were expecting (i was assuming it would be almost double that) so we were actually starting to feel a little encouraged. also, the brick guy said he knew a roofer that he worked with pretty often that did good work for a reasonable price and could handle our job no problem, so if this all goes through we'll definitely be talking to him to see if we can get a better price on the roof issues. (also, saturday another brick guy finally called me back and hes going to do an estimate for free which is nice because then we'll have two estimates and we can start looking at how much wiggle room there is between the two guys and possibly negotiate a little with one of them.) so after we talked to the brick guy we immediately went to the realtor now that we finally had all our estimate and paperwork together to make our final offer to the bank. we discussed our options and ended up offering the bank half the original list price given the cost of repairs and that the house is actually now condemned and will have to be demolished soon if they dont sell it. well that was friday.

so saturday we decided that there was a very good chance that even if we did get the house, we probably werent going to be able to move in right away and we should probably figure out what we were going to do about that. we ended up getting a storage unit and taking a load of stuff from the apartment over there to start the moving process. we also found a washer on craigslist (because we dont have any appliances in the house) for a steal! its brand new, bought in 2006, the woman got it and then got a deal on a washer dryer set so shed only even used it a few times. well she got the set and this thing has just been in her kitchen since late 2006. brand new it was over $400 (and its still in that condition) we got it for $130 :) good deal. we also got this really sweet old dining set on craigslist saturday. its like a 50's diner-ish type set all chromed out and vinyl covered, its so awesome. very vintage, very cool. $75 for a table with a leaf and 4 chairs!

back to the house... yesterday (monday) the bank countered our offer. 33k and they pushed the closing date back even further. needless to say i was irate. i cant believe they are so unwilling to work with us! we've been completely reasonable this entire time, haven't tried to screw them or low ball them or anything. and this is what we get... so now we're having to seriously decide what we want to do. we've already dropped about $800 on inspections and estimates for 2 houses we've made offers on so far. we really do like the house, but our initial budget isnt enough to buy it at that price and do the repairs. plus im just angry and want to say "ef you" to the bank on principal alone. idunno what we're going to do, but i guess i'll let you know when i find out more.

the.first.one

so i think you knew about the first house we were trying to get. that offer expired and fell through, the bank that owned the property pretty much never got back to us.

well since then we looked for another house and found one that we just fell in love with, and from what we could tell it was in better shape than the first one. (it had intact ceilings and a kitchen for starters, lol!) well we put an offer on it right away and since then theres been a lot of interesting activity.
so all of this excitement started 2 weeks ago this last saturday when we put the offer on it (thats july 26th i think) 3 days after we put the offer on it, the bank got back to us with a counter offer for only 1000 less... yeah, so we countered that. then that weekend (a week after the initial offer, august 2nd) we got the house inspected and the inspection came back with a mostly positive results, but also a few things we knew going into it that were going to need attention. well the bank countered our counter again a few days later, this time for only 500 less than their first offer, what?? we were confused but decided that it was only an initial offer, and we were going to get to negotiate after the inspections anyway. so we signed that counter and scheduled some contractors to come out and look at the repairs we needed to have and give us estimates on the work.
on wednesday (august 6th) we had 3 contractors that were supposed to come out. the first was a window guy from home depot to give us an estimate on most of the windows on the first and second floor. he looked at everything and we discussed our options and the estimate was essentially 299 per window installed, which was a hell of good deal i thought. these are vinyl inside & out, double hung, double pane, low E + argon windows. very decent! and theyre all custom sizes at that! so anyway, for 14 windows (thats all but 2 in the front room that are ENORMOUS) the estimate was just under 6,000. not as low as we'd have preferred, but still a good deal.
the 2nd guy was a roofer and he showed up but took one look at the house and said he couldnt do it. it was out of his expertise and he didnt have the manpower for the job... hmmm, not good. so he didnt give us an estimate, but he did give us a few names of some people that could do the job.
the 3rd guy was a brick guy to give us a quote on a wall thats in pretty bad shape on the side of the house. well he just didnt show, didnt call, nothing, still havent heard from him. so we walked away that day not sure how to feel about it all and i got on the phone to schedule a few more contractors as soon as i could.
luckily i called another roofer and he got back to me right away and we scheduled for friday (august 8th). i also tried calling another brick guy and waited for him to get back to me. well friday came and we went out to meet the roofer (and still hadnt heard back from the brick guys) i called a different brick guy again and was waiting to hear back from him while we met with the roofer. this guy was cool, he knew his shit and was very thorough. he walked us through everything visually and pointed out every detail and gave us some rough numbers and then later he emailed me an official estimate. ouch, 25000 for the roof... hmm, not good.
well after we met with him, a brick guy finally called me back and said hed go over to check out the wall right then. so he did and called me back a little later that day (still friday the 8th) and we discussed what was going on. basically the wall was going to have to come down and be rebuilt, but there was a catch, the space between the wall and the house next to it was too small for his equipment. basically all the standard scaffolding he uses (and everyone else he knows for that matter) is either 5ft or 6ft wide. well the gap is between 3ft 6in and 4ft. so hes going to see if he can talk to some scaffolding companies he knows to find out if he can even get scaffolding that will fit and hes supposed to email me an estimate today. well i havent heard back from him yet, but hopefully i will soon. if i dont by around 2pm, im going to call him.
so if that isnt enough, when we were out at the house with the roofer on friday we found a notice to the bank that owns the house from the city inspector saying that the condition of the house was a safety hazard and they had 30 days to either repair the wall or demolish the house. woah! so we checked into it and it costs a lot of money to demolish the house, and as far as we know theres no one else looking at the property, so this definitely is going to help us out in negotiating we hope. lol!
anyway, so thats where all the house stuff is. if you want to see pictures, theyre up online. other than that i was supposed to go to denver this weekend (the 9th & 10th) to start my final semester of grad school to finish my second masters in urban design. and while i was there finishing that up, karen has to do a co-op for 6 months for her graduate program and we were just going to get her one in denver. and on top of that, for this to be financially viable i was going to need to be working nearly full time myself...

well obviously i said supposed to go.. i didnt. after seriously sitting down and thinking about how we were going to do this (i had no where to live once i got to denver and that was stressing us out) we started looking at the move from all angles. neither of us had been able to find a job in denver yet, and it was looking more and more like karen wasnt going to be able to and was going to have to stay in cincy to do her co-op for school. so now we're having to live in separate places for the next 4 months which means theres now the cost of both our living situations with food, rent, utilities, etc. and denver has a higher cost of living that cincy (and not just a little higher), then there was the cost of moving out there, the cost of school for the semester, and she has no transportation in cincy because id need the truck to move to denver.
so at this point we started questioning if this was really a good idea. we were estimating something like 20,000 + for that 4 months with all the expenses i just described, how much of a return am i actually going to get on this extra degree? so i started talking to people at work, my bosses, friends in the field, and essentially the judgment was the same. there was no immediate return on that degree. thered be no bump in salary and if it was going to benefit me, it would be on my own in my own practice as more of a marketing device and that might not be for another 5-10 years down the road, and even then its hard to say how much it would benefit me.
so in the end i came to the hard decision that i was finished with school. Ive finished the necessary requirements for my masters in architecture, so i called the school and discussed things with them, and so i have now officially gotten my masters in architecture! ill get my diploma in december, and thats that! i talked to the firm i work for here in cincy and it looks like theyre willing to give me a full time position, pending a few details, and thats good because the job market in denver has all but dried up. i know a number of people who are struggling to find jobs in this industry in colorado, and it really scares me. karen has now gotten a co-op here in cincy, so theres no issue there, and it looks like we made the wisest decision we could at this point. if not, ive discussed my options with the school and theyre very willing to work with me on finishing that urban design masters at some point in the future if i decide i want to, and at this point i think i probably will.

well, anyway, i just wanted to catch you up on things here in "the nati" and see how things were going in your neck of the woods.(sorry it got so long winded) hope all is well, and i hope to hear from you soon!

p.s. josh and cassie got engaged yesterday!