We chose a darkish blue, called “Running Water” by Behr.  It doesn’t come across in pictures very well, but imagine somewhere between the above picture and the below picture.

Even the crappy old carpet is gone (and the odd red strip in the back of the closet).  So, once that was done, we decided the new closet needed a frame (excuse the fisheye, and the trendy macrame lamp).

Then, we decided it would be a good idea to sheetrock and mud the new walls.  The plug in the back of the closet was eliminated, in favor of running through the closet walls, up around with the light (to be placed) on the inside of the closet wall.  The hell of it all is that almost all of the wiring in this house (being a mid-60′s house) is aluminum.  You have to put a tar-like anti-oxidizer into the wire nuts if you want to join copper and aluminum without galvanic corrosion.  If I were more industrious, I would tear all that old crap out of there, but the aluminum is of appropriate gauge, and everything is in good condition, so I’ll just keep on truckin’ with what I have.

At that point, I decided it might be a good idea to add lighting and a fan to the room.  The lighting comes from four 5″ cans with black baffles, and a 54″ Hunter Standford.  Fortunately, I’ve gone with a somewhat more sane approach for this wiring job – a whole new branch circuit, run from the breaker box, with brand new 12-3 copper wiring.

My helper:

your host, opening up a hole for a can light:

It’s a bit hard to see there, but there is a strip of red carpet along the back of the former closet.  I don’t know why they would have bothered with this 2-tone disaster of carpet laying, but hey, there are lots of decisions made in this house before we lived here that I can’t understand.  In any case, all the carpet is coming up today.

As soon as I’m done digging, I’ll put drip in, and plant some tall grasses and some low-water flowers.  Down in front, I’ll put some yuccas.

The wall will move back to meet with the edging, and about 3 foot back from the sidewalk.

It looked like this:

Unfinished.

So, I picked up some 16 foot cedar 2×6 (2×6 was the best deal per board-foot in cedar), and ripped 6 1x2s out of each.  48 rip cuts later, I started attaching them to the arbor, and ended up with this:

I’m growing a nice trumpet vine, hopefully it ends up going up the 4×4 into the arbor.

…and, for the soft focus finish (I think the boy smeared boogers on my lens)

Still to do:

1. Remove the tree in the corner of the back yard (it’s been cut down numerous times, to no avail)
2. Move the block wall in front back about 3 feet
3. Cut out the stump of the juniper in the front yard
4. Put edging in around the grass, which will allow me to cut the sod outside the edge of the yard
5. Put the drip irrigation down to the stands of tall grass outside the edging in the front, and down in front of the block wall
6. Plant yucca in front of the block wall
7. Put rock around the yucca and grasses and along the side of the house in the front

Oi, looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me.

Now, if only I could get a few weeks off from work to finish the rest of the landscaping…

I’m a little late seeding.  For Fescues, I should probably have started in May after the last freeze.  Cross your fingers, hopefully they’ll sprout up.

So, we took our Government Stimulus Keep The Economy Going™ check, and went down to Ewing Irrigation.  I picked up a monstrous anti-drainback valve, good for at least a small golf course, because it was cheaper than buying five anti-siphon valves to put in the manifold at each valve.

I also ran 1 inch CPVC from the mainline (also now 1″ CPVC) to the valves.  I did the manifolds by hand.  Protip on manifolds, though: if you’ve bought threaded valves, do yourself a favor and put unions in before and after the valves, so that you can get them out without having to rebuild the manifold every time.  I am going to have to dig up my valves to do that.

Forgive the dirt, it’s been pretty dusty out here without grass to hold anything down.  The valves I bought are Hunter Industries PGVs.  The brass valve you see is a drain for the whole system, so that I can drain it in the winter.  The valves will open with or without pressure behind, so there’s an easy way to drain.

Since I have pretty lousy flow and good pressure (around 15 gallons per minute, but about 75PSI of pressure), I decided to go with a lower flow sprinkler head.  Ewing sells Hunter products, so I went with the MP Rotator.  They’re relatively low-cost, require next to no flow, and throw an extraordinary distance at high pressure.  In the front, I went with the 2000s around the perimeter, and in the back, I went with 3000s on the perimeter, along with one 360° 3000 in the center, and an MP Corner next to the deck.

I ended up with 5 zones: one for the front sprinklers, one for the front drip system, two for the back sprinklers, one for the back drip system (shown above, watering the new trumpet vine.  To control all of it, I needed a good computer.  I ended up with a Hunter Pro-C valve controller.  It will run up to three concurrent programs, and is expandable to 12 zones.  I bought a single expansion card, which means that I only have 6 zones available, but that ought to do me fine.  Eventually, I ought to consider buying the rain sensor, but that’ll wait.

After all the digging, gluing, and filling, I am sunburned as hell.

I figured up to that point that it was simply the trees creating a de facto septic system out of my sewer line. This was a reasonable assumption at the time – the trees have been assaulting the sewer line for some time (as evidenced by my predilection for calling the plumber to clear the tree branches out of those lines). As my water bill kept going higher and higher, though, it became obvious what was really happening.

So, I dug down, and found a 1″ galvanized pipe leaking like a sieve when the water was turned on. Initially, I tried cutting out the leaky section and putting a PVC compression fitting on, but this proved ultimately futile. Cutting the section simply shook more rust out of holes farther up the pipe.

So, I rented a trencher.

Making the assumption that the 1″ pipe was the main house feed turned out to be something of a poor one. It actually turns out that the 1″ pipe fed my sprinklers, branching down near the water meter (with no anti-siphon or drainback valve of any sort, of course) from the 1/2″ line that fed the rest of the house.

That’s right, the entire house was fed by a 1/2″ galvanized line.

It’s bypassed now, in favor of a 1″ PVC line running next to where the galvanized line used to be (barely within code of entering the house 1 foot away from the sewer line’s egress. Of course, this had the unexpected side effect of hosing my sprinklers. As a result my economic stimulus package went to stimulating Ewing Irrigation.

My son enjoyed “helping” me over the course of the whole 3 day ordeal.