During our project we faced some challenges which needed overcoming. The first being the uneven flooring which became an issue because we wanted to place the table in the middle for children to use during lessons and for their lunch. We originally planned to flatten the whole area by digging the higher section out, but soon realised this is a far bigger task than we first thought.
With research and assistance from friends who are landscapers, we decided to leave the ground uneven and place boards around the pergola. This meant that when we filled the pergola with bark (was originally stones) it was level because we used the boards as a marker. We were glad we did this because it creates a level working environment for the children.
The next challenge was putting up the pergola. This caused us great difficulty because it did not come with any instructions. We decided to have a look at all the parts we received and tried to figure out what went where. We got the four legs then proceeded to look at the struts and how they all joined together. After half an hour of working out how to build the pergola, we managed to figure it out and then started to build the structure. We overcame this by looking at images online and from the parental assistance.
Distance was an issue throughout the project as Roberto and Jack live 45 minutes away from the school, whereas Harvey lives an hour away. We overcame this by planning to go the school for a whole day, and by working hard to complete all jobs. To do this we had to be prepared and we needed to ensure that we had everything ready for when we went to the school. This involved ordering everything on time and ensuring other assignment work is up to date.
On our penultimate day at the school, we had many jobs to finish off. One of these was building the fence at the front and back of the area. It took us a long time to complete this task because we had to make sure that it was level and that it was safe. This was a challenge because we needed to dig a 1 foot deep channel in order for the fence to be fully level.
Another challenge we faced on this day was building the table. After looking at the instructions, we started to build it as the image showed. However, jack noticed that the image was incorrect as the seats did not line up correctly. This involved us dismantling the table and rebuilding it.
Putting the bamboo on top of the pergola was an idea we had in our minds for a while. When we came to putting it up, we thought we had ordered enough to cover the top (4 metres) however, when we measured it we soon realised it was too short. We cut the bamboo into two pieces to see if it would cover the pergola. We then discovered that the bamboo was overlapping each other, so we were able to cut this and use it to cover the gap.
Overall, we faced a variety of challenges whilst completing this project however, by work as a team and our using ingenuity we were able to overcome all of these successfully.