Capstone Project Proposal Draft

Name of student: David Mok

Date: 2/27/2023
Teacher: Ms.Lacroix
Capstone strand I have chosen is Occupational strand
Proposed title for my project: Save yourself thousands of dollars by renovating your
house by yourself

What is your inquiry question that interests you for further research? It should be a question that
connects with a purpose, passion or personalized area of interest for you. This is a question that
you cannot just google an answer for. Please see examples from your Capstone booklet.
My inquiry question is:

Does renovation make houses more affordable and if so, how could I help?

Rationale/context: Detail your reasons for choosing this inquiry question. Explain WHY you are
choosing to investigate this topic as a major area of focus. How does this area of inquiry connect
to your passion(s), purpose? Why is it of personal interest to you?

Houses in Canada are extremely expensive in today’s market. A house that costs two-
hundred grand in 1980s is now be worth over one million dollars. If the prices of houses keep
going higher, how can people be able to afford rent with minimum wage. People might also be
damaging the place they are renting and might have to pay hundreds of dollars just for a
single hole in the wall. If people know how to fix the damage themselves, they would only
need to pay for the material used to fix the wall.

Background: What background knowledge/connections/prior learning do you have in this

area of inquiry?

I have learned wood-working in school, and have been tasked to clean the pipes and drains in
my night job. I have also fixed a wall in my bedroom and painted it all by myself. Although I do
not have proper training at the moment, I believe that I would persevere through these
challenges if I committed myself through the trainings.

Career connections: What is your intended career area at this point in time? What
connections does this inquiry question have to your life, academic and/ or career goals?

My intended career is to be an architect, so I could design houses for a higher evaluation on

my property. I also want to learn renovation so I can save money doing the renovation myself

0
 and gain more profit. I also want to learn renovation because I do not want to get scammed
fixing something like a pipe for way cheaper money. The more knowledge I can obtain about
houses, the better I will become at making profits in the future.

Interdisciplinary and core competencies connections: What subject areas and core
competencies will be connected with your project? Outline and explain the connections.

Core Competency Reflection

Personal Awareness & Responsibility

Strengths:
1. I am personally responsible, self-motivated, and can advocate for myself.
Throughout my childhood, I have always learned to be motivated and be responsible for my
academic work and personal life. I had always wanted to become better than the rest. Every
time someone brags about being better than me, I would silently swallow my pride and
improve to take back the victory that I desire.
2. I take personal responsibility for my choices and actions.
I have always made mistakes in my life. I do not make excuses for my terrible behavior.
Whenever I mess up, I would always patch up the holes I create and punish myself to not do
this again. An example is when I had an argument with a teacher, I would apologize
afterwards. It does not matter if I was right or wrong, I need to make up for the mistakes I
make.

Weaknesses:
1. I am learning to take care of myself.
I believe taking care of myself is my weakness. I would clean up other people’s mess, but I
rarely clean my room. Another problem I have is that I have terrible time management. I am
always late for school and work, which is a massive problem that still needs to be fixed.
Social Responsibility
Strengths:
1. I have positive peer and intergenerational relationships.
There are lots of people that have a positive relationship with me. My friends, their friends,
their parents all have a good relationship with me. I know what kind of person my friends are,
and so they too are people I know I could spend time together with.
2. I can identify and appreciate different perspectives on issues and use and evaluate

1
 strategies to resolve problems.
There was a time where I had no idea what was going on in English class. The worst part about
that event is we had to be assigned to random people we have not met before. Thanks to their
perspective on the problem, I was able to understand the assignment and together we
developed a strategy to resolve the problem.
Weaknesses:
1. I am aware of my community, environment, and work independently and
collaboratively for the benefit of others.
I have no idea what my community is doing. I do not know who they are, nor do I know of
any connection to them. Everybody around my neighborhood is just relaxing and hanging out
with their family. If there is a problem, then I would have an exceptionally low chance of
knowing it. I also have my own problems to deal with. Unfortunately, I do not have the luxury
of helping others too significantly.
Critical Thinking
Strengths:
1. I can analyze and critique my work and my learning.
I always find flaws in my work, even if they are good. In fact, the easiest way for me to learn is
by seeing what I have done wrong and knowing exactly what to improve on. I could have
studied beforehand and not made mistakes that could have been prevented, but I am too lazy
and will only learn after the damage has been done.
2. I can ask good quality questions, gather relevant information, and come up with well-
developed conclusions.
I ask the most crucial questions in all my classes. Other people either do not speak, or they ask
stupid questions to pass the time over. I ask things like deadlines or ask to simply questions
that other people might not know how to solve. I also gather relevant information from other
people to form a better understanding of the concept we need to learn.
Weaknesses:
1. I understand the purpose for my work and consider my audience.
I absolutely understand the purpose of every work I do; the difficult part is to consider my
audience. I do not have enough experience to understand my audience. I have no clue what I
must do to captivate my audience. Every person is different, and hard to consider. I do wish
that one day I could have the ability to entertain a crowd.
Creative Thinking
Strengths:
1. I can use the environment around me, including others, and my unconscious mind to
generate new ideas.
When I played sports in the pass, I have always used to environment around me to set up the
court. For example, I used the squares in the ground as the base, and whenever the ball hits

2
your “square,” and bounces out, you are now out. This shows that I do have a creative mind
when it comes to the environment around me.

2. I can persevere and understand that failure can be productive.

On tests, I would fail some questions and then I learn how to do the questions. I always use
failure to learn what I have done wrong and know what areas in my life to work on.
Weaknesses:
1. I can create new and unique ideas that may provide new perspectives that influence
how people think about topics.
Whenever I create new ideas, I only see them from my perspective. It is difficult for me to
consider other options on my own. Hopefully soon, I will be able to advance my thinking and
become a creative thinker like Einstein or Newton.

Communication
Strengths:
1. I can listen, learn to contribute meaningfully to discussion and debate, consider
different perspectives, and build consensus.
I love to debate with others. I asked questions that made others question their ideas. For
example, when there was a debate about whether money is the most important thing, I
answered no. They said things like family, or love, are more important than money. I
considered their ideas, then thought of a counterargument. They were speechless after I spoke.
2. I can work with other students to plan, inquire, and solve problems.
There was never a time when I could not work with other students that I have been partnered
up with. Due to my virtuoso personality, I can fill in parts where people do not excel at. For
example, I can be a planner while the other students are the workers, or vice-versa.
Weaknesses:
1. I can reflect on the processes of learning and share what I have learned.
Unfortunately, it is hard for me to share what I have learned. I am still a student and on the
verge of learning myself. I cannot explain in words how to instruct other people.
Personal & Cultural Identity
Strengths:
1. I can define myself in terms of my relationship to others and to the world.
I know what I am and my relationship with others are. The relationship I have with the world is
that I am one of the billions of people who are here to survive and help our species.
2. I understand what is important to me.

3
 I believe that living a happy life is the most important thing to me. There are also other things
that are important to me as well, but there are too many to put onto this list, but I do know what
they are.
Weaknesses:
1. I understand how to use my strengths and abilities to my advantage and I can explain
how I use them to contribute to my community.
I understand how to use my strengths and abilities to my advantage, but I do not yet know how
to use them to contribute to my community. I am not in any community, not even the ones in
my neighborhood. How do I contribute to a community I am not a part of?

Capstone Presentation medium: select one or more project mediums you wish to use to
present your project. Outline and give details about how you will present your project once
completed. You may use a combination of mediums.
o Electronic portfolio: Prezi or PPT
o Physical portfolio
o Website
o iMovie presentation
o YouTube channel

I believe a mix of PPT, iMovie, and YouTube is a good combination medium for me to present
my project. Throughout my PowerPoint, I will introduce my YouTube channel, picture
evidence of me working, and my contact information for those who want to have in-person
training.

Description of my Capstone project. Specific Project Details of the Capstone Project: what
will you research, create, study, produce, solve, investigate? What product will be produced
at the end of this project for evaluation. Write a one-page description outlining your
proposal.

Description of my Capstone Project

For my capstone project, I will be investigating renovation that could be done to the
house. The area of focus on this subject will be on how to renovate the house, how to become a
contractor, what legal limits are there for renovators, and the benefits or why people should be
renovators. I will be creating YouTube videos for beginners as a novice worker to let people
know that renovation does not need to be a challenging task for people. In the future, I would

4
 love to create a company where I could instruct young people like me to be renovators.
In my house currently, I have had tenants where they destroyed the entire room. The
doors were destroyed, walls are broken, water flooding the floors. It was a nightmare to watch
this happen in front of your eyes and not be able to do much about it. All I did was clean up the
mess, but I could not fix anything. Thankfully, my father knew some basic skills about fixing
these things. I wished I could listen to my father, learn to do some renovation online and help
him. What is worse is that if my father were not there, and this had happened to me, I might
have been bankrupt paying people to fix the house for me. That is why I want to learn how to
do renovations. I also want to be able to share my experiences with others who have suffered
similar situations that I have, so they would not need to waste their time and money on
something they know how to do. The first part of renovation I want to focus on is fixing the
damage. As mentioned above, fixing things costs too much money. Important repairs such as a
broken wall, creaking stairs, floor, loose doors, broken windows are just some of the things I
want to touch on.
Not only could people learn how to fix their house, but this is also an important skill
where they could be hired to fix houses people do not know how to do it. According to
ca.indeed.com, the average salary for renovators is $33.36 an hour. You can use renovation to
earn money, to fix your own house, or to save money flipping houses. Renovation is a versatile
skill and is quite desired if you are a Jack-Of-All-Trades. They can just hire a single person to
do all the work, instead of hiring a bunch of different people which takes more time and
require more steps.
The final project should be a straightforward guide for beginners to follow. I also want
to display my learning in front of others. To show people that I want from this terrible
newcomer that does not know what he is doing, to someone who is reliable and can be called
on whenever disasters strike. If possible, I also want to create a company for those who are
interested in renovation, however, that would be a long time before I get there and does not
seem to be possible with the brief time limit of the capstone.
In conclusion, learn as many renovation skills as possible, and teach people how to
renovate. Include contact information for more in-depth learning. If possible, create a company
for renovation.

Resources/ Technology/Skills: Make an assessment of the resources, technology and

skills you will need to be able to complete this project. What is your plan to be able to
access/learn all of the resources necessary to achieve completion of this project? Detail
your plans.

I will need tools and materials for this build. I will also need to edit the video for guidance
purposes. My dad has basic knowledge over renovation so he would be helping me plan out
some of these steps

5
Mentors/Community Connections: What types of mentor(s)/community connections will
you need to help you complete your capstone project? How will your mentor(s) help you?
What is your plan to access the mentorship/community connections necessary for this
project?

My dad should have some friends who are able to mentor me. I just need my mentor to give
me a job and some basic instructions for me to work on. Anything I don’t know I will slow down
and see how others work on the project. I just need to see them do it once and I should be
able to do it.

Project limitations: What are some project limitations and potential obstacles that you foresee
that might affect progress with your Capstone Project?

The hardest part of this project is the start of it. Finding a mentor about renovation is the
hardest because most people would just do renovation themselves instead of hiring people to
learn how to renovate.

Other considerations: List and detail any other related information/ considerations about
your project that you feel should be included in your project proposal.

If I could just get a mentor, everything else should be fine. I have experience in woodworking
and that was pretty easy. Renovation should require less strength to work on than renovation.

References:

Attach a REFERENCE LIST. Your list should be written using correct APA formatting.
An example is provided on page 21 of your Capstone booklet.

General+Contractor salary in Canada - average salary. Talent.com. (n.d.). Retrieved

February 28, 2023, from https://ca.talent.com/salary?job=general
%2Bcontractor#:~:text=The%20average%20general%20contractor%20salary%20in
%20Canada%20is,year%20or%20%2434.17%20per%20hour. 

6
7
8