To-Do List for this summer: Indoors becomes a priority again

As of early this year, we had put a hold on major indoor projects, because the outdoor projects needed to be finished before the summer heat took hold. Now that we have raised beds, drip irrigation, no giant pile of branches next to the patio, and producing blackberry bushes, we can focus more on the interior work. The only major exception is a sun shade that needs to be installed over the tomatoes, but that will be 30 minutes' worth of work.

The interior work will consist of a few major projects and a bunch of minor ones. The major projects are
1) entryway/sitting room remodel - The project is almost done in the entryway, but I am not entirely happy with the results. I had bought the incorrect thickness drywall, and it doesn't look quite right. Since we are tearing out the drywall in the sitting room anyway, we may as well tear out the small parts that were installed incorrectly and redo those as well. Once all of that is torn out, I'll take stock of any additional termite damage, fiberglass insulation that needs replaced, and electrical rerouting to be done before closing the walls back up and painting them. Further, there is still a small piece of footer that needs to be removed in the new entryway opening, and a row of wood flooring needs to be added to cover the hole.

2) Trim - Since we tore out the wood paneling, much of the baseboards and the trim went along with it. This needs to be remedied, and will be replaced after the entryway project

3) Cozy Room Fan - I hated that fan so much that I tore it out before having all the materials needed to replace it. We have a new fan, but I want to rewire the outlet to have independent fan and light switches. This will be a relatively minor project, but will involve traipsing around the attic for an afternoon.

4) Mantle - Ever since we ripped out the old mantle, we've been looking for a new one. We'll look to find something to serve as a mantle this summer, and install it once we find it.

5) Paint and resurface various pieces of furniture - Lauren's main solo project this summer is painting and resurfacing a few chairs and cabinets that she has found at sales and flea markets.

Beyond the main projects, we also have some side projects involving plumbing, patching holes in walls, replacing light fixtures, massive amounts of portrait/picture/painting hanging, and rehoming some furniture. We are planning for a garage sale in August, so it's hard to find temporary storage room at the moment. We're hoping to remedy some of that, but it would be nice to hang some shelving, clear out the shed/organize it, and find final homes for much of the stuff in the house.

Planting and Building

It's the time of year when people start thinking about warmer months and the taste of fresh tomatoes on the vine.

Here in Texas, that's especially true! Last weekend it was sunny an 70 degrees, and led to a hankering for a garden to plant.

As I alluded to in the last photo post, I was working on an outside project last weekend (among other things). I knew that some of my fruit and vegetable plants were on their way, so I needed to prep for them!

Using this guide as inspiration, I prototyped a raised bed built solely out of cedar pickets. Why cedar pickets? Because I'm cheap! I had done some calculations to see how much it would cost to build 8 raised beds for my vegetable garden, and was astonished. Here were the approximate results:

1. 2x6 cedar or pressure treated wood - ~$450 for 8 beds

Spending nearly $500 on wooden boxes to hold dirt was waaaaay out of the question. That's just ridiculous!

2. 2x4 cedar or pressure treated wood - ~$200 for 8 beds

Now we were getting down to ballpark reasonable prices, but I had some concerns about the look of building everything out of 2x4s and it was still a bit expensive.

3. 6' cedar fence pickets - ~$100 for 8 beds

There was my winner! I had to compromise by going with a 3'x6' raised bed design, but it's well worth it to cut the price to less than half, and still get a good look out of it.

Cedar is somewhat important down here, as it's a natural bug repellant, and we have all sorts of creepy crawlies who are more than willing to steal the fruits of ones labor (pun intended). Besides that, it really looks great, and holds up well to the weather!

After prototyping the build, and being satisfied with the results, I have earmarked next weekend to finish the build of 3 more beds, and I will document the process for later on!

Beyond that, I have 4 trees in the ground right now, an almond, a peach, a pear, and a nectarine. I just got more trees in the mail yesterday, including two plums, two apples, another peach, and more! The orchard is officially started!

Quick Update - Our 2014 Goals

At the beginning of the year, I laid out our goals for this year, and after a month and a half, it's time to see how we're coming along so far.

1) Finish up the entryway opening ASAP!!!! -  DONE! The entryway opening is sealed up, and awaiting paint.

2) Scrape the popcorn ceilings in the living room. - Unofficially started. When taking down some of the tarp from when we painted the living room, I "accidentally" took some of the popcorn with it. 

3) Remodel the kitchen (summer). - May or may not happen on schedule. We're looking to see whether we want to save for the kitchen, or use the money for something else.

4) New flooring (before Christmas). - Will happen after the kitchen.

5) Raised beds for the vegetable garden (February). - Have the materials! I'm just waiting on a weekend when I have enough time to build the beds.

6) Drip irrigation for the garden (February/March). - Waiting on the raised beds.

7) Plant an orchard (February). - Trees will be here in a week or so!

8) Fix the broken sprinkler system (spring). - I have the sprinkler head to fix this, but I'm thinking about completely replacing the system with a drip irrigation system. This would remove us from having timing restrictions for when we can water.

9) Replace the mantle - Looking for a good piece to use as the mantle.

10) Curtains - Waiting to get curtain rods.

11) Host Christmas 2014 -  Still on track.

12) Move out of the apartment and into the house!! - The out of the apartment part is DONE! The into the house part is still in progress. We're hoping to use the next few weekends to continue unpacking and moving in.

NEW GOALS

13) Hang both bikes in the garage - I already have one hanging, and it's an easy task, but it needs to be moved to a better place once the garage gets cleaned up. The other bike should go up nice and easy.

14) Put up a dog run - After a few escape attempts, I have propped up some logs at every conceivable exit point. However, it will be nice to get a dog run built so that we don't have to babysit the dogs every time they're in the yard.

15) Put a cat door in the shed - The cats currently get into their home via a log propping the front door of the shed open. If the wind gets bad enough, it pushes the log away and swings the shed door wide open, scaring the cats and exposing them to the elements. I have the cat door, but I just need to get the jigsaw and cut the opening.

16) Get the lawn mower up and running - It is soooo close, but not quite there yet. Now I just need to get it over the hump or take it in to the dealer to fix.

I was framed!

After a long hiatus that consisted of a trip up North, and moving out of the apartment, we are finally (mostly) moved in!

The last thing I was able to accomplish before moving day was framing up the new opening to the entryway.

I checked, and the wall is not load bearing, so the giant 2x10 that was there previously was massive overkill. It just so happens that framing it up with 2x4s took about 15 minutes with the miter saw, and was up and in the wall in about 10 minutes more. I just had to trim some lingering nails from the old arrangement, and the new opening slid right in (with a hammer tap or two).

However, the ease of the framing was to be completely counteracted by plumbing issues. First, the apartment flooded for the second time in 6 weeks. However, that was not the end of the issues with plumbing. Next, I noticed a small drip coming from one of the outdoor spigots. I tried to close the valve back up, and the thing fell apart in my hands! It was now at a full flow out the top siphon relief valve.

Here's how I fixed it:

First, I twisted on the spigot, hoping that it was a threaded pipe. The spigot head came off in my hand, with twisted (obviously damaged) copper on the end of it. Next, I needed to get to the spigot from the inside. There was a lot of insulation, so a screwdriver couldn't get all the way through to the drywall. I found a metal tube that was from my grill, and started to push it in.

Finally, I felt it push through, and left it there to find out where it poked through on the inside. We thought that it would be somewhere in the master closet.

Close! But no cigar. It was about 3 inches outside the closet, under the vanity in the master bedroom.

I just went at the drywall with my hands, and with a pocketknife.

I widened the hole enough to where I saw a copper elbow (bottom of the hole in the above picture).

I then cleaned out the area all the way from the brick to the drywall, allowing some space to install the new spigot.

I cleaned out some of the foam around the pipe to expose enough to desolder the elbow and replace it.

I wanted to replace it with a compression fitting.

I got at the elbow with a propane torch, but it wouldn't budge.

After 15 minutes of trying to heat the elbow and pop it off the copper pipe, I gave up. It was just stuck to the pipe. One trip to the home improvement store later, and I had a pipe cutter. After some sanding to get rid of the melted solder, I cut the pipe and removed the elbow assembly.

From there, the rest was easy. I shined up the end of the copper pipe with a tool (which I broke while I was using it), stuck the compression fitting on the end of the pipe, teflon taped the threads of the new spigot, and made sure I had a good seal as I threaded it into the elbow. It took two tries to get the threaded joint to not leak, but it worked out fine! Then I just filled the foam back in, and called it a day!

Next plumbing issue occurred when we tried to wash a load of laundry. We came home to a puddle of water on the floor and pouring out of the garbage disposal! It turns out that there were tree roots blocking the line, and causing the overflow. As we were waiting for the plumber to come out, we figured we'd at least dry the clothes. No such luck! The dryer was a 4 prong plug, while the house had a 3 prong outlet! After another trip to the home improvement store, we got the right cord, and Lauren installed it.

As if that wasn't enough, the day after the plumber cleaned out the tree roots in the plumbing under the living room, the toilet in the master bath started acting up (not flushing)! As we tried to diagnose what was going on with that, we still had shower and sink capabilities. That was, until we got word from the next door neighbor that we were turning the side yard into a pond! That's right, the sewer was backing up into the side yard. It turns out that the cleanout cap had blown because of a clog somewhere between the street and the house. One emergency call to the city later, and I had a picture of another root ball, about 20 feet from the house in the main sewer line. The next day, we had the same plumbers out with a roto-rooter to clear that out of the line.

Thankfully (knock on wood), we haven't had any more water issues. In fact, besides a small tv/internet outage, we haven't had any issues since then.

I ended up having to move the bird feeder line, which was originally between a tree and the corner of the house. It was pulling out on the soffit, so I redid the line between the two trees. I like the results.

From here, we have a few things on tap for February.
-Setting up the garden
-Redoing the sprinkler system as a drip irrigation system
-sanding and painting in the living room
-More unpacking