The Patio!

This is what happens when your wife decides to be spontaneous:

This...
Becomes this...

And who was behind this crazy fast (unplanned) transformation?
Yep.

The whole project (about 90% done) actually went really fast. I think the actual brick laying only took a couple of hours to get all but the last 6-7 rows. Morgan and my dad (my buddy John took over later for Dad) put down the mortar and pavers. Dad on the mortar and Morgan laying the pavers.

My Mom had the job of actually moving the pavers around for everyone. She took them from the stacks on the side of the house and made small piles around the edges of the courtyard so that Morgan and Dad could just reach over and grab a brick when needed.

(Mom was just too dang busy and quick to take a picture of her....maybe she used to be a ninja!)

Before all the fun could happen, I had to remove and flip one of the gates over so that it could swing out and not into the courtyard. The removal and flippage was pretty easy but the dang latch kicked my butt for a little while....don't worry, I won in the end.

After I was finished with the gate I became the mortar guy. Not a bad job until the drill battery died and I had to mix the last 20 or so batches by hand, ugh.

The plan is to finish up tomorrow night after I get home from work....stay tuned :)

We also decided to keep track of how many miles we walk around LOWES... if I had to guess for the past two months I would say at LEAST 5 miles. I Maybe we'll get to be in a commercial like that Jared guy and Subway.

P.S.
Have a great flight back to the States Phil...I got a beer in the fridge with your name all over it!

More House stuff

I know I haven't posted the final sprinklers pictures but there coming soon I promise. I need to pull them off of the camera and then I'll post them. I would pull the off right now but tomorrow we are going to be taken some before and after shots of our courtyard....yep, before AND after pictures!

Today was a day of cleaning up! We borrow a large trailer from my folks and took all the old kitchen mess (broken tile and sub flooring) to the dump today. It had been hiding along the side of the house for the past month and today was finally the day to get rid of it. Because we had the trailer and some room left we decided to tear out the wood covering the courtyard....it was old and nasty and needed to go.

I think we waited in line at the dump for at least 30min before we finally got to dump our junk into the giant hole in the ground. WE back the trailer up and Morgan emptied the whole trailer by herself while I watched smiling. Yep, I made her empty the WHOLE thing all by herself. The trailer is hydraulic and with a simple push of a button, the whole trailer tilts up and dumps! There are always other dumpers that get jealous (while hand unloading their trailers) and I even heard one lady say that she wanted one too.

After the dump we got some lunch and went to our "third place" ... Lowes. What did we buy this time you ask? 1080 pavers. We were going to wait until next summer to lay pavers in the courtyard but we said, heck we have a week until the housewarming, lets do it!
The guys at Lowes loaded the two pallets in the trailer and then our friend Eric helped us unload all the pavers by hand...Thanks Eric!

Tomorrow we will layout our layout and then start laying 'em down! Check back for some pictures!

Sprinklers...almost done

We have been busy busy busy the past few days. Day by day we are working our way down the list to to-dos that we have. It would be much easier to get things done if we could just focus on doing one thing at a time instead of having to juggle so many different tasks. In the past few days we have finished a desk for Morgan, installed/repaired a sprinkler system, killed some wasps, hosted a baby shower (Morgan), and countless number of "small" projects like washing windows and hanging blinds.

As I'm sure you can guess, the sprinkler system was mine to tackle...and tackle it I did! For this round, we only were focused on the front yard which is divided into two zone. looking out the front door, zone 1 is on the right and zone 3 is on the left by the tree.

Zone 1 had a busted pipe, a cracked pipe, 2 broken heads, 1 missing head, and 1 head that didn't really work right. There were also 2 heads on zone 3 that I wanted to be part of zone 1.

Zone 3 had 2 broken heads and was missing 1 head. Plus had the section that should have been on zone 1.

To start, I dug up and exposed all the broken pipes and around each head. Since I was going to be moving some heads (old heads we in really random spots) I had to decide where I wanted the new heads to go. Once I decided, I dug new trenches (4 total - good thing I learned to dig holes in the Army) and decided where I was going to tap into the old system with my new pipes.

We picked up the supplies: 40ft 3/4"pvc, glue, 9 new heads, 9 connectors, a cross connection, a T connection, 4 straight connectors, and a handful of caps to cap off the old heads that I abandoned. *I LOVE Rainbird products when working with sprinklers and I only recommend their systems*

We made our cuts, and glued everything together and then after a few hours we fired the system up to check out how we did. Zone 1 worked great! I need to make a few adjustment (need to cut back a few of the heads so the don't spray as far) but other then that, it works like a charm. Zone 3 would have worked just as well as zone 1 except that I have a "T" connector with a broken abandoned pipe in it that I am having a real hard time capping. The cap system I had didn't work but after talking with the plumbing guy at the hardware store and then my father-in-law, I have a game plan. I am going to try and get it all finished up right after I get home from work today.

Wish me luck and check back tomorrow and I'll have some pictures up!

An the Answers are...

1) How long did the Hundred Years War last? 116 years

2) Which country makes Panama hats? Ecuador

3) From which animal do we get catgut? Sheep and Horses

4) In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution? November

5) What is a camel’s hair brush made of? Squirrel fur

6) The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal? Dogs

7) What was King George VI’s first name? Albert

8) What color is a purple finch? Crimson

9) Where are Chinese gooseberries from? New Zealand

10) What is the color of the black box in a commercial airplane? Orange (of course)

How did you do?

Quiz Time

I found this quiz this morning and thought I share it with everyone. I will post the answers tomorrow. Good luck and be sure to share your answers in the comments!

WORLD’S EASIEST QUIZ

1) How long did the Hundred Years’ War last?

2) Which country makes Panama hats?

3) From which animal do we get cat gut?

4) In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?

5) What is a camel’s hair brush made of?

6) The Canary Islands are named after what animal?

7) What was King George VI’s first name?

8) What color is a purple finch?

9) Where are Chinese gooseberries from?

10) What is the color of the black box in a commercial airplane?

Ideas

I am an Idea man. For as long as I can remember, I have been full of ideas. It seems that I am always thinking of different ways to solve problems (that may or may not exist). As I go through the day, these different ideas are just bouncing around in my head waiting to get out. The problem is that I have so many that sometimes they block out my ability to focus on what I am suppose to be working on at the time (like right now).

Another problem with so many ideas bouncing around is that I am always looking for someone to share them with. I love to just sit down with people and bounce ideas off each other. I could do this everyday but I have to remember that not everyone discussing ideas all day, and really not when there is real work that needs to get done.

We had dinner with some friends of our (also our neighbors) and after dinner, I got to share some ideas. One idea that has been going around for sometime between us is building an automated dispatching program for utility companies. We had been waiting to back from one local water company but last night we decided to be a little more aggressive and move onto the next stage of development without hearing from them. We also agreed that we should start going after other utility companies as well.

The other idea that we talked about was moving forward on setting up a community WIFI network. Ideally this would be high speed internet for the whole neighborhood for about $5-$10 a month. when you connect to the network you would be directed to a community happenings page that would be updated by everyone in the network. We want to have things like a community calendar of events and a community bullition board for haves/needs/trades.

What would you like to see on a community website? What would help you to better connect with your neighbors?