wa-wa-water

Since my presence on this bloggy blog has been sporadic, Let me give you an update on the house projects the last few months. 

Landscaping.  My front yard (and back yard) have been in desperate need of a make over.  I'm sure my neighbors are tired of my dirt yard and I try to be extra nice to them and bring the occasional pile of debris out on the street to show that I am (somewhat) yard conscience.  

So I was uber excited in JULY to get some landscaping plans.  I was so excited that I spent the month of AUGUST with my sprinklers running to soften the soil enough for me to plant

And then I came home from an early morning run to find this: 

So I had a plumber out (coincidentally the same day my termite repairs were finishing up).  

Diagnosis?  

Water Service - main line from the street to the house.  

60 year old galvanized pipes that run under 40 year old redwood trees.

  

The water was off for a week and I was sent chasing city permits and shoveling dirt and renting heavy equipment and ever so grateful for a handyman boyfriend who insisted on doing it himself (le sigh!)

Once we dug through the concrete and found the pipe, we found the source(s) of the leak

So the funny thing is the water main line replacement project turned into a sprinkler project for the back yard.  Considering we already had the heavy trenching equipment, I sent the boyfriend to the back yard to dig dig dig...

So we added another week of putting in sprinklers in the back yard...  

TODAY the plants for the front yard arrived...  TOMORROW I plant for the front yard.  It won't be 100% perfect, but hopefully an improvement!

Stay tuned for before and afters!!

  

Shell Chair Re-Do

One of the many projects I earmarked when I first moved in was to pretty-up this old Shell chair.  As we took it apart to see what we could do with it (and assess if there was rust damage), we saw that this chair lived through many transformations.  From Red to yellow to olive green to white....

But wait, we're not done!  Now its time for another. 

Initially, my amateur mind thought a quick sand down and couple coats of fresh spray paint would do the trick, but we took it a step further to give it a new beginning.  First we had had the multi-layers of retro (But colorful) paint bead blasted off... and then powder coated.  Hard to believe its the same chair!