Installing Irrigation

After fixing the well and demolishing everything in the backyard, it was finally ready for some new irrigation. The Engineer had it all planned out and was more than ready to get the system installed and running.

The pump had already been relocated around the corner after we pushed the fence a few feet.

It might not seem like much, but since we were putting in new piping from the well to the pump there wasn't any reason why we shouldn't put it where we wanted it. The new location put it out of sight from the majority of the back yard and pretty much eliminated any noise from the pump from most areas of the back yard.

Then The Engineer started trenching. We could have rented a trencher, but after tilling a lot of the roots were cut or loosened. Since we were only installing irrigation in the back yard, we figured digging by hand wouldn't kill anyone. The Engineer dug two trenches along the two long sides of our yard for the main lines.

He then started piping from the pump through our manifold and along the lines to the locations of the sprinkler heads.

We have the option for two other zones in the back yard with this setup and we know we will use one for the garden once it is built. For now, we are just running one zone to irrigate the grass. *Ahem, excuse me, future grass*

At the very end of one of his trenches The Engineer hit something substantial…he called it our biggest archaeological find yet because if you have been following our progress…we have found one thousand and one pavers buried in the yard!

But this was big.

Yeah, we didn't know what it was either. It appears that it may have been the anchor from a basket ball hoop or something like that. Unfortunately, we were determined to get it out. Partly because it was really close to the surface and the new grass wouldn't have much soil below it before it hit this thing, and partly because we were invested and we wanted to get it out of the ground for the sake of getting it out of the ground. Sigh.

We ended up with a 5-6 ft. hole and a concrete mass that was much too heavy for us to lift. We took a section of the old galvanized down pipe that came out of the old irrigation well, tied it to the  concrete mushroom, and used cinder blocks to make a fulcrum out of it. I knew it wasn't a good sign when I could hang on the end of the pole and it didn't move. So we tried to lift it together and bent the pipe!

Needless to say, there was no way we were getting that thing out without some serious lifting power. We decided to cut our losses and since we could wiggle it, we dug out the hole on one side and rocked it until it bent over enough for us to bury and have plenty of soil on top of it for the grass (just and FYI, that was an intense process!).

After passing that minor road block, The Engineer and his dad laid the pipes and installed the sprinkler heads.

And of course buried everything.

After a test, everything worked great! What a relief!

I then fertilized and leveled the yard because despite how it looks in pictures, it was not level at all! And I installed a new border for a path that would be much smaller than our old one!

Those were the last tasks we wanted to complete before our sod delivery and we were done about two days early! The only thing left is the easy part…laying that sod!!

Creating the Dirt Pit

The back yard is definitely moving in the right direction, which really means that it is looking more and more terrible. Gulp. You really do have to make things worse before making them better. Our backyard has been going through quite the journey…we had the

Irrigation Well Revival 

and

We Moved the Fence

Our next step was to pretty much remove, kill, or demolish anything and everything that was left. Ha! In order to get ready for our sod delivery we had to kill the existing weeds, remove the shell path (that was unnecessarily wide), till the yard, fertilize, and level it. No big deal, right?

We started with the shell path. We liked the idea of having a path to the shop and shed, but the white shell path really stood out, and it was huge! We were missing out on so much space for grass.

I can’t believe how much space that path took up looking back at these pictures! Really glad we ripped it up! First we took out the slate stepping stones that we will use later to make a patio where we will have our fire pit. We kind of have one now, but we are going to take all the slate up and pack the pieces much tighter and remove all the shell.

The slate came up very easily. All it took was a little nudge with a shovel and you could pick it right up!

We tried to be careful when taking the shell up because we were going to reuse it in two places. We planned to make a shell path on one side of the house and on the other side by the carport we wanted to make a pad out of shell for the trash cans. So we tried to take as little dirt as possible with the shell. As we moved along though, this proved to be less important. You see, the first layer was easy. We just raked the shell into piles and shoveled it into the wheel barrow.

After we picked it up it looked pretty good, a lot like dirt. 

Buuuttt, then it rained and washed all the dirt off the shell that was still there and made the path look pretty much just as it did when we started!

It took two more rounds of raking (rigorously) the path and shoveling the shell out until we were satisfied with the amount of shell left. We separated the shell from the top that didn't have much dirt in it and stockpiled that for the path on the side of the house.

The shell from the bottom layers went over to the carport since we just planned to use that under the trash cans, it didn't have to be as pretty. So that went directly down.

It looks a lot like dirt with a few pieces of shell in it, but after a spray down with the hose (or a storm, whichever came first!) all the dirt washed through and it looked like shell again!

We had a lot of shell so we were able to fill the entire area next to the carport with shell. This was great because we never planned on putting sod here and it really is just a utility area for us right now.

As all this was going on, we killed our weeds. We sprayed three times, but we only did the third application since it rained shortly after our second application. So we went from lovely weeds...

...to dead scraggly nothingness.

One of those classic it has to get worse before it gets better steps!

With the shell gone, the border ripped up (black border from the shell path you see above), and the wonderful weeds dead, we were ready to till.

We decided to rent a tiller because we knew we had a lot of roots in our yard and doing this by hand would be nothing short of miserable and backbreaking. The money was well spent because we did all the tilling one evening after work and it made small work out of all the roots.

We also tilled the side where our new shell path would go.

Yes, we still have our massive stock pile of pavers, but no need to worry, there are plans for those :) After playing pickup sticks with the roots, the yard and the well were finally ready for the irrigation instillation.

We are moving along fast, so more posts on the yard coming your way soon!

The Well Lives!

Our house had an old irrigation well when we moved in…

I realize this isn't the best picture, but I never noticed that I didn't take a good head on picture before we tore it apart. Oops! The pump was ancient, there was a large blue pressure tank, and a mess of pipes. Oh, and erm…it didn't work. 

We really wanted to use this to irrigate our lawn (yes, the one we don’t have…yet) so first thing first…we removed the pressure tank and old pump. We bought a new pump, and with not so high hopes, hooked it up and turned it on.

Nothing happened.

Not a huge surprise to us, but still disappointing.

After tinkering with it on and off for a while we enlisted the help of my dad. We had an enclosed well casing so we couldn't see down in the well. The boys ended up taking the cap off the well and finding a galvanized drop pipe in there and came to the conclusion that this pipe was clogged. So out that pipe came.

Way easier said than done! The pipe was pretty heavy (maybe 150 + pounds) and about 30 feet long! I ended up on the roof to support the weight at the top while The Engineer and my dad dead lifted it out the well a few feet at a time.

We finally walked it out and found that the check valve at the bottom was indeed crusted shut.

Ain't no water getting through there! At least we knew what the problem was and could get a move on. We roughly hooked it up to make sure the system would work and finally got water!

This gave us a green light to go full steam ahead and we started putting everything else together. We fabricated a new drop pipe out of PVC (instead of galvanized pipe) and dropped it in the same way we took the last one out...from the roof. 

The Engineer trenched to the new pump location (we moved the fence back a few feet which made room for the pump around the corner....which I talked about in this post) and glued all the piping from the well to the pump.

After a two hour stop at Home Depot we came home with a bunch of PVC pipe and fittings, sprinkler heads, timers, manifolds…you name it, we had it. We were working each evening after work so The Engineer got to work trenching and laying more pipe while I was working on moving the fence and finished digging up our shell path so we would be ready to till the yard before laying sod.

We are beyond happy that we were able to revive our old well without digging a new one for our irrigation. Next task is laying the new irrigation system!

Make Way!

The backyard is coming along. Even though forward progress at this point may look like exactly the opposite, since we have killed everything, converted our shell path to dirt, and dug numerous holes and trenches…it actually is forward progress. Our first peek at something that genuinely looks like an improvement was the fence on the side that we tore down and rebuilt a few feet forward. Not don’t get overwhelmed, this wasn't a lot of fence, only one small section and the gate…15 feet or so.

We realized (and I credit this one to The Engineer) that we had a few feet on the other side of the fence that were entirely useless. Between the fence and carport was about three feet of space that was an absolute barren wasteland.

It only made sense to move the fence up to the carport and include that extra space in our backyard where we could use it instead of keeping the barren wasteland. This enlarged the space we will have for our garden and also allowed us to relocate our irrigation pump around the corner where it would pretty much be out of sight. The relocation also cut down on the noise too. Double win!

The Engineer made quick work of the demo and I was all too happy to see the old fence go. It really was in rough shape.

Without the fence panel it is much easier to visualize where the old and new fences were/would be located. The old fence came right off the corner of the new house and we pushed the new fence all the way up to the concrete slab for the carport.

We worked late that night and set the new fence posts and screwed on 1x6 cross supports for the fence slats.

The next day I nailed up fence slats while The Engineer was working on moving the pump to its new home.

We measured for the gate and built it on the ground to make it easier and hung it pretty easily.

We then set two other posts to connect the new fence back to the old fence. We didn't reuse the old posts because we pushed the gate over just a bit to maximize on space so the old post ended up in the gate opening.

I then screwed in my horizontal 1x6’s and nailed the fence slats again. I did the short side first so the corner would look nice.

This way I could make sure there wasn't an odd gap in the corner since I butted the front slat directly to the back slat.

After nailing the rest of the slats on we were left with a much better looking fence and a little more space!

You can tell why we were excited about the fence being the first thing that looks like ‘actual’ progress because the rest of the after picture looks way worse that the before! The Engineer was working on the pump the entire time I was working on finishing the fence. I’ll be posting about our progress with the pump and irrigation soon!

Burnin’ the Midnight Oil

Part II: DIY Dry Bar Installation (Part I and Part III)

We have been so busy around here guys, I have lots of stuff coming your way...if only I can find the time to sit down and write about it!!

I shared the planning process of our dry bar and left off with a pile of boxes on the floor. When we got them in the door we immediately started ripping everything apart. We first had to clear the wall we would be working on. Fortunately that only entailed emptying our kitchen storage armoire and relocating it into the office.

With that out of the way we could start building cabinets.

Safety first: fire extinguisher at the ready! I was actually slightly annoyed that we were left with the holes from the fire extinguisher mount. It would have been nice if they were covered up, especially knowing how many holes we put in the wall…but I’m getting ahead of myself J

The very first thing we did was pull off the base boards because we assumed that the cabinets would be hitting the top and they would need to be removed for the cabinets to sit flush on the wall. Well, we were wrong on that one. The cabinets have adjustable feet and by the time they were high enough for the kick plate to be installed, the base of the cabinet was above the base boards. So we put them back on. At least we got to clean behind them. That’s what we get for thinking we were being smart and doing things in the right order!

We stared off with the easy stuff and assembled all the cabinet bases. There were 4 units so to speak and from left to right we had: a 12-in end unit (this was open shelving on the end of the bar), a 12-in pull out drawer that will house our new recycling can (yay!), one 18-in cabinet, the gap for the wine cooler, and one 30-inch cabinet.

With IKEA stuff it’s the same assembly over and over so this part went by really fast. We left the inside components of the cabinets and doors for later to make it easier to move things around. Moving to the wall portion, we built the one upper cabinet and while I worked on the door The Engineer started to hang its mounting bar. This is where we hit our first road block. It wasn't a major problem but it did cost us a trip to Home Depot. I think deep deep down we knew that this was a masonry wall, but neither of us really remembered. Thus, when The Engineer tried to drill pilot holes in the wall he didn't get very far. That was fine because we picked up the appropriate mounting hardware and bits to mount the cabinet, the floating shelves, and secure the lower cabinets to the wall. I also got some paint for another project J

Once we were back on track we got the cabinet up pretty easily.

(At this point you will have to excuse the grainy pictures…it was dark and our lighting was limited)

What wasn't so easy was dealing with those floating shelves. Granted, most of the problems we created for ourselves with our modifications.

These were 12” IKEA LACK shelves designed to hang by two screws from the back. That’s fine, but before we mounted them we had to attach our lights to them. We used the GRUNDTAL spotlights from IKEA which came in a 3-pack, so we bought three 3-packs. One light for each of the 6 floating shelves and two lights for the inside of the wall-mounted cabinet. We might by another single light so later when we finish the wine storage below the cabinet we can mount two more lights on the bottom of that. We like it bright at our house!

The first obstacle was mounting the top two shelves. We couldn't use the mounting brackets they came with since they were the kind you hang over a screw and pull down to tighten (you can see these in below photos). This would have left about a ¼” gap between the shelf and ceiling which was unacceptable. Our first idea was to cut the back of the shelf out and build a frame on the wall that the shelf could then slide on to. I've seen this trick on many DIY tutorials for floating shelves. This solution was still a little complicated directly on the ceiling and would require some precise measuring and fabrication time. Then we realized that we had to drill a hole in the bottom of the shelf anyway to pass the cord for the light through…so we could just go through that hole and screw the shelf directly into the ceiling. Bingo! This was such a simple solution and it worked perfectly since it was only supporting its own weight ant the weight of the light, which didn't amount to much.

With a 1” hole drilled in the bottom and back, and a small pilot hole in the top of the top two shelves, The Engineer got to work mounting the top two shelves while I drilled holes in the bottom and back of the other four shelves so I could string the lights in.

I had a 1” hole to run the cord through and two small pilot holes so I could screw the light on.

I ran the wire through the hole in the bottom and out the hole I drilled in the back. I could then attach the light to the bottom of the shelf. Running the cord through the shelf was pretty straight forward once you got it through the honey comb paper inside.

We planned on running all the wires for the lights through the wall but our masonry wall was still giving us trouble. The drywall is appropriately attached to furring strips that are attached to the block, but one of those furring strips runs directly across the top of the wall. In other words, between the drywall and block, the furring strips create a space that we could run the wires through. In the case of the top two shelves though, we were stuck hitting the furring strip and couldn't get to the open space. We tried to drill at the lowest possible spot that would be covered by the shelf but couldn't get below it. We sucked it up and decided we would run the cords for these two along the ceiling and the rest through the wall.

Bam! One shelf down.

For the rest of the shelves The Engineer measured and pre-placed the mounting screws with drywall anchors while I was working on building the inside shelving and doors for the lower cabinets since the two-man operations were intermittent. For each shelf we used a wire snake to feed our wires though the wall and came back out behind the lower cabinets.

This worked very well until we got to the lights in the center cabinet. About 6 inches below our hole we were hitting something horizontal. We soon realized a window was formerly located back there and we were hitting the top valance (this was originally an exterior wall and is now an interior wall). Yikes. We ended up snaking inside the wall under the mounting bracket for the cabinet, coming out of the wall over the window valance, and back in the wall behind the cabinet and then the rest of the way down. It got complicated, but it worked!

I told you we ended up with a lot of holes in the wall! Even more exciting was that all the lights worked after they were installed.

It was about this time that we hit a stopping point and pushed the lower cabinets back in and called it a night.

We are so excited with how the area is looking. We need to find the right wine cooler and we really need our counter top to be in stock and we will be onto Phase III of the install...coming soon!