Smoker's Corner

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Inspite of my course of study, I am, unfortunately, still, very much addicted to smoking. I tried to quit a couple of times but gave up on it as a new year's resolution this year.

One of my favourite smoking spots is in front of the study centre for medical students, conveniently called "The Dump".
Before the smoking ban here, smoking was allowed within the social quarters of The Dump (but not in the study quarters, obviously). Once the smoking ban was put to place, smoking indoors was restricted, so smokers are forced to go outdoors. Although smoking itself is officialy also forbidden on the yard outside The Dump, the college has approved it and was even kind enough to provide us with one of those massive outdoorsy kind of ashtrays.

Since I get along quite well with the group of students in charge of running The Dump, I have proposed, about a month ago, to organise this new "smoker's corner", making it more user firendly. The basic idea is to renovate the benches that have "magically appeared" :D in the smoker's corner once the smoking ban was put into practice, since they are deteriorating at an alarming rate (and hopefully, at some point in the future, installing some sort of a roof over it).

Renovation would include sanding off the old color (borring white, I call it) off the wood and the metal parts of the benches, covering the wood with impregnate that would protect it against insects, painting (I'm thinking light grey for the metal and a combination of blue and green for the wood) and finally putting an additional clear coat of polish over it all, to make the paint job last longer.
Additionally, I have come up with two other ideas. One includes signatures of everyone runnig The Dump be painted on the wooden parts before applying the clear coat polish. The other would be gluing on a massive poster of the view of the fjord from the smoker's corner at RCN... also before putting down the clear coat... Since I've been given complete artistic freedom regarding this project, I might just do both. :)

The reasons I took on this burden are basically me loving tinkering and things that involve resourcefullness, creativity and hand skills. Also, showing self-initiative has given me full artistic freedom, as mentioned, which I hope to use to implement a memory of one of my favourite spots at RCN into the design - the smoker's corner.

I have a whole host of exams in March, plus the weather has been kind of crappy so far and is just now starting to improve, so the renovation will probably take place sometime in April.
I'll try to post some pictures of before and after. :)

Cheers!