Mike and Jeff's New House

The guest bathroom is done, done, done!!!!!!! The plumber finally showed up and did his thing and we are in business.....There are three other bathrooms in the house, all of them need a bit of work to be declared `done'....One weekend at a time....we're getting there...

Jeff drilled holes in our kitchen and laundry room sinks and installed under-counter soap dispensers in both. In the kitchen sink he also installed a deck-mounted air switch that is used to turn on/off the garbage disposal....it's darn handy...

We live right next to an eight lane freeway...it's LOUD out there....To make the problem worse, we're going to add more noise and attempt to divert ones focus.... We'll have 4 speakers in our narrow freeway-side garden. Hopefully it does some good.... All the conduits are run and will be ready to go when we have the walls and patio installed....

We ran gas lines to both the future greenhouse and to the end of the sunny patio in case we ever want to hook up a BBQ or do a gas firepit....In addition to that we had three exterior outlets switched from inside so that we are able to control features like lights or fountains from inside the house. All of those conduits are now in place as well...

This area is right outside the dining room/kitchen and it will be covered in large concrete pavers soon....We're looking for a long narrow table that can seat 10....We may make it ourselves and use light-weight concrete...this area will have one of two fountains, lots of landscape lighting, and speakers....

This area will be the sunny patio (at least for a couple of years, then the redwoods will shade it most of the time.) It will have one of two fountains and speakers galore to attempt a futile effort at reducing the noise from highway 50.

Right between these two redwoods will be a hottub and an outdoor shower.....I guess that means I have to find a new place for the compost bin.....

We now have water, electrical and gas lines run to the location where we plan to install a small greenhouse next year.....It will be on the right side of this photo....In the foreground are the irrigation pipes for what will be two raised beds for vegetables....At the east end of the beds will be a small orchard area right next to the alley...

Before we put the driveway concrete in we installed a couple of 4 inch conduits under the driveway so that we could run water and electrical from our irrigation manifold and electrical box. We should have put in three....

The tile is finished in the guest bath and the shower curtain rod (a high tension steel cable) is installed...Once the plumber shows up to change out one of the fittings, we'll be back in business...

We rented a B.A.T. (big ass trencher) a couple of months ago and spent a weekend digging trenches all over our yard....The draining pipe is installed in this trench, the water pipe is in this trench, and the electrical conduit is in this trench. This coming weekend we'll finish up by installing the gas piping, the low voltage wiring and the control wiring for the irrigation valves....fun stuff....

Last summer as the house settled, the light green glass tiles that we used in our guest bathroom started to crack. After going round about round with the tile folks, we ended up installing the same limestone that we used on the floors on the tub surrounds and just covered up all that cracked tile.......Like so much of life, random things like this reminds us of how little control we really have...

That blue box in this photo contains a steam generator....At the click of a switch in the bathroom, it pushes steam into the master bath shower stall.......kinda cool....

At long last we have hooked up our hot water solar system. The tank on the left is not a water heater, per se. It is a hot water storage tank, the heat exhanger (that black U shaped thingie on the outside of the tank) is a double walled pipe that takes heat from the loop running up to the roof and foists the heat off onto the water inside the tank......The loop coming off the roof brings in 180 degree water.....Needless to say, taking a long hot shower no longer feels quite so indulgent...We worked with Heliodyne in Richmond to procure all the parts, they were very easy to work with. http://www.heliodyne.com/

Today we started the process of getting our landscape started. Our tree guy (Bob from Busy B. Tree Service) came and took out the scraggly sycamore in front of the house. The city forester approved it for removal and they are going to replace it with a Dutch Elm Disease resistant cultivar named `Prospector'. Find out more about this program here: http://www.cityofsacramento.org/parksandrecreation/urbanforest/elm.htm It looks a LOT different:

Our tree guy also took out a redwood tree today....It will be replaced by a greenhouse, hopefully in this millenium...This view is from the back of the house on the second floor looking out over highway 50 and the alley.

The South side of our house has 5 `Dynamite Red' Crepe Myrtles that I planted last summer. They made it through the winter great and have really started to take off, they should be in full bloom within a month. Right now the entire south side landscape is covered with California Poppy...Our state flower does incredibly well here in the Central Valley...

The stucco and wall caps have been applied to the courtyard wall in front of our house....Now to get to the underground infrastructure (irrigation, 110, low voltage for lighting) so we can get some plants in the ground...

After several months of no blog posts, I thought I best put up some new pics....We spent the winter and spring not doing much work on the house...It was a VERY nice break, alas it is time to get back into gear and crank out the final big projects and the landscape... One of the things we finally had installed was the countertop in the bedroom..Stokes Granite and Stone installed them and they were GREAT to work with. Highly recommended.... Above is a pic of the built-in bedroom cabinet, the built-in headboard above our bed has the same granite counter top...

Our first Christmas in the new house was a lot of fun. We had a 10.5 foot tree....Next year we're going for 12 or 13!