Ding Dong the Ditch is Done

It is a little different doing the blog now that we are both up here full-time.  Sometimes we do things during the week as part of our normal course of events, not even thinking about posting it here.  But here is an update to at least complete our ditch story.

This past month we have been getting into a normal routine and still organizing ourselves in the house.  We also had our first weekend of being in the Valley for a family function that required us to stay in a hotel for a couple of days.  It was like a mini-vacation.

As for the ditch, we have finally completed it (as the title states).  After our first round of laying the rocks given to us by our neighbor, we found we needed more rocks to complete the task.  Our neighbor did come up with a few more in the past few weeks, but not as many as the job required.  So we took the Jeep out into the forest behind our neighborhood and went rock shopping.  The first time out took us awhile to locate a good rock-picking site, but eventually we found one and filled the Jeep.  "Surely this should take care of the project" were the famous words we said to each other on each of the four trips to the back area, but it was only true on that fourth trip.  It is now filled in and hopefully the weed barrier will help to control the weed population as advertised.

The ditch is complete thanks to a helpful neighbor and the Town of Payson

Mike has also been moving some items between the two sheds.  The newer, larger shed is the future home of his workshop, but all the items we started storing in the new shed have to be swapped with his tools in the older shed.  Each night he swaps a few items before Laurie gets home from work.  It is about 85% complete, but as he was moving items, he realized having another loft in the new shed would be very beneficial.  He picked up the parts needed from Home Depot and over a couple of nights and an afternoon (and without any finger injuries), built a second loft.  For now, we are using it to store construction materials until we can get the two sheds organized.  The cost for both lofts was about $200 and Tuff-Shed wanted to charge that for just one loft. Not a bad deal.

The support rafters are installed and ready for flooring

Just about half of the workshop moved and the 1st loft has Reflectix boxes stored

Most of the tools are gone, replaced with storage items

The 2nd loft is complete and housing extra wood to make room below

Stats: 4 Home Depot trips; 3 Walmart trips
Remodeling expense 4/25/16-5/22/16: $X
Remodeling expense to date: $52,629

Time Off for the Move and Ditch Part Three

To give ourselves a jumpstart on the move from the apartment, Mike took the week off (mostly - he did put in a few hours of work during the week).  After completing the walk-through and getting the apartment signed off, he packed the truck and trailer for the drive to Payson.  Once he arrived, he unloaded all the stuff into the house, including what had been packed in the car as Laurie  was too tired to unpack when she got home LATE Sunday night.  Now our living room was stuffed with boxes and items that needed a home all over AGAIN!  We keep going through this cycle.

Mike planned two activities at the house this week that would take some time and put us in a better position for storage.  We had bought a product awhile back called Reflectix to use in the crawlspace of the house.  After further research, we found it would be better to use regular insulation and plastic.  Now we have all this aluminum bubble barrier product that we have had too long to return (though Laurie did consider it).  Since the shed ceilings are not insulated, we decided we could put it to use there.  The main concern was the older shed where we were already using the attic for storage.  Mike was able to move the items around and get the Reflectix installed. Due to having stuff in the attic already, he decided to run the Reflectix strips (4ft wide) in the direction of the rafters.  It wasn't the best way to do it, but still turned out well.  He used our electric stapler to attach it to the rafters and then the special aluminum tape to seal the seams.  It now looks like a UFO room, though he did notice the next day how much better the temperature up there was with the change.

Reflectix insulation barrier on the ceiling of the older shed

Still cannot think of what this actually reminds us of, but looks UFO-like

The next project was a storage loft in our new shed.  You can buy the shed with lofts, but we thought it would be cheaper to do it ourselves.  We wanted a loft instead of an attic so it would be open (the older shed has a pull-down ladder which goes into an approx 2' wide opening) and we could store bigger boxes up there.  To start, he bought some hurricane brackets to use on the rafter boards since they were only toe-nailed into the frame.  He only did the rafters that would be covered by the loft, but will do the rest later.  We planned to do a 6'x10' floor (if we need more space, we will do another one on the other end), so we needed four 2'x6'x10' boards for the supports and two 4'x8' tongue and groove OSB floor boards.  We were able to use one of the leftover 2'x6'x10' boards that was not needed for our deck to save on cost.  It was already stained, so Mike placed it in the back of the loft so it was not as noticeable.  The loft went together fairly easily except when he tried to join the two floor boards.  They would not completely join and he tried every way of pounding them together (which led to multiple finger injuries) just to find later that some rocks had gotten into the groove on one board - ARRGGHH!  Another issue he ran into was when he went to use the two cut pieces from the 4'x8' sheets for the 16"x6' space; the boards did not line up with the joists (did not think that one through very well).  In order to finish the job he had to run to Home Depot for another 4'x8' OSB board, but this time he had them cut it to size.  It fit like a glove and then he got to play with his nail gun and compressor, which he has not used since the early days of the remodel.  That was the best part of the installation.  The loft looks great; now to put up the Reflectix and then start storing stuff.

The completed loft from below...

...and from higher up

Mike spent the rest of the week doing various projects to help alleviate some of the clutter made by the apartment items.  He reorganized the pantry, installed a shower head (from the apartment), fixed our shoe racks, rearranged all the items in the new shed (we can now walk into it) and his clothes.  Our closet space is not very big and he went through all the clothes he has kept but not worn and made a pile to donate.  He had about 160 articles of clothing to give away and was able to fit everything he kept in his dresser, nightstand and his half of the closet.  During the week, he even had time to do his normal chores and take a day off on Friday, which he needed after the loft install.  At night, when Laurie got home from work, we spent time putting away items that needed her direction and we made quite a dent in the apartment pile.

Mike rearranged the new shed as we could barely walk into it

He also did it to clear space so he could install the loft

Mike had this shower head at the apartment and it was better than the one we had

Mike added insulation tubes to shoe rack rails to keep shoes from slipping off

Mike's clothes that he set aside to donate

To finish the week, which included a stop at the Pine thrift store to drop off our donations on our way to a friend's retirement party, we worked on our ditch project (yes, part three).  We had to get the rocks our neighbor gave us out of the grassy (actually more weedy) area as it was starting to get overgrown.  We had to smooth out the ditch just a little after all the cleanup the town workers did and then we were ready for the weed barrier and rocks.  It was like a big puzzle trying to find big rocks to put on the bottom and flatter rocks to put on the sides.  Many of the smaller rocks were hard to find in the weeds.  In the end, we think we did a fairly good job of covering the area, but ran out of rocks.  Now we need to make time to go into the forest and find more, unless our neighbor discovers more in his yard.  That will obviously give us a part four.

A good start to the rock project

Mike found it easier to sit and hold the barrier with his feet while placing rocks

Need more rock to fill in the empty spots (Laurie in the distance)

Last, but not least, Laurie's Mother's Day mini-rose bush survived another winter and is starting to bloom again.

Laurie's Mother's Day mini-rose bush from Walmart has survived two winters

Stats: 3 Home Depot trips; 0 Walmart trips
Remodeling expense 4/18/16-4/24/16: $0
Remodeling expense to date: $52,629

What's a Saga Without Part 2

This was the first week of Mike going into Phoenix for his "Monday in the office" day.  Since we still had the apartment, he went back on Sunday night to pack up some of the apartment items.  We had brought the guest bed mattress and box springs on our last trip up from the Valley, but left the frame behind as it would not fit in the truck.  On Monday night, he brought that up along with whatever else he could fit in the truck.  That still left plenty of work for us to do to clean the apartment out.

As the title states, there was still more to come on our ditch situation.  As Mike was working in his office again one morning, he saw more workers out in the front yard.  They had come back to clean out the culvert under our driveway that was half-filled with dirt. They used a high-pressure hose to shoot water into the pipe and then used a vacuum to suck up most of the water and dirt.  This kept our ditch from filling up again.  Now that they have completed their work, we have no excuse for not finishing our project to put the rocks in the ditch, except time.  So eventually there will be a part 3.

Town of Payson workers showed up on their own again

The orange hose was high-pressure water, the silver tube was a vacuum

Just a little water left in the ditch from the work

The culvert tube is clear and free to flow water

Since we acquired our house in 2010, we have accumulated four bed sets.  Two for the Valley and two for Payson (guests need to sleep somewhere).  The apartment in the Valley we leased a year ago had two bedrooms, so we just moved the two beds from the house to there.  Now that we will have only one house, we really only need two beds.  Mike made an agreement with his work to re-visit the working remote situation in six months.  If at that time it is determined that it is not working for the company, we will look into getting another apartment.  If this happens, we do not want to move a bunch of extra things to Payson, store them and then move them back. So we opted to get a storage facility near the apartment to store items in the event we need them again.

So what does this have to do with the bed situation? Well, one of our four beds will be placed in storage leaving us to deal with only three beds.  Mike's mom had mentioned some time ago how well she could sleep in our guest bed in Payson, so we decided to give it to her and replace the Payson guest bed with the Valley guest bed.  The bed problem was solved!  As part of this transition, Mike disassembled the Payson guest bed and packed it in the truck to take back to the Valley on Friday to deliver to his mom. He then put up the bed and frame he had brought up from the apartment.

Guest bed disassembled and removed

Temporarily stored before moving to the truck for trip to Mike' mom

Starting to put together the guest bed frame from the Valley

New guest bed ready and waiting for guests

Once Friday came, Mike hooked up the trailer to the truck, packed a couple of things we would need in the Valley for the weekend, and picked Laurie up from work.  We swung by Mike's mom's place to drop off the bed. We weren't able to put it together due to a dinner commitment, but Mike's nephew was planning to stop by to help and we heard later they got the beds switched just fine.

This was our last weekend in the apartment and everything that remained had to be packed and either moved to storage or up to Payson. We had looked for a storage unit nearby to use, but this past week we received an email from the apartment complex about available rental garages.  We found they would still let us rent one even though we were moving out and one was available very close to the apartment.  Even though it was bigger than we needed, and more expensive, it was VERY convenient and, if Mike needs to rent another apartment in six months, it will make the move much easier.  By Sunday night, we had the car packed to the hilt for Laurie to take back (had to be back for work Monday morning) and everything else was stored or held for loading in the garage.  Due to the walkthrough Monday morning, we could not have anything in the apartment and it was too worrisome to leave items in the truck and trailer overnight.  So Mike put the stuff going to Payson in the opening of the garage so he could pack up after the walkthrough.  Mike stayed at the apartment Sunday night on an inflatable bed and worked on cleaning the apartment for the final inspection.

Stats: 0 Home Depot trips; 0 Walmart trips
Remodeling expense 4/11/16-4/17/16: $0
Remodeling expense to date: $52,629

The Culvert Ditch Saga

We have not updated our blog since the beginning of February because there really has not been a lot going on at the house.  Weather, colds, visitors, etc. have all made house updates slow these past two months.  But there have been some recent activities that are worth writing about, so this post is a little longer than normal to cover the last few months.

First we would like to report the status of our water filter system.  Our last update mentioned the final leak on one of the connections that seemed to be correcting itself.  Over the past many weeks, we have continually checked that connection and found no leak.  So the water filter install is done and now put to bed.

As the title indicates, we have another ongoing story that deals with our culverts and ditch.  Our front yard has a u-shaped driveway and each entrance has a culvert tube to allow water drainage and between them is a ditch.  This ditch is a pain to maintain due to the weeds that grow in it over time.  In the last year or two, some of our neighbors have lined their ditches with rocks.  It does not control the weeds, but it makes the ditch look much better.  We decided awhile back we wanted to do the same, but, before laying the rocks, we wanted to put down a weed control fabric.  We bought the fabric a number of months ago and just needed to get the rocks.

One of our neighbors has tried planting a garden in his backyard, but it never turns out well.  He found he had a lot of large rocks under his soil and bought a backhoe to remove them.  He told us we could have whatever we wanted and he would even dump them in our front yard.  That sure beat going out to the forest and scavenging for them.  So now we had the weed barrier and the rocks, time to prepare the ditch.

During one weekend in the past two months, another neighbor was taking care of his weeds - both in his yard and ditch.  He uses a propane flame torch and was working on and off all day.  Late that day Laurie was outside and, in the course of their conversation, he offered to burn the weeds in our ditch.  Mike did not want him doing this alone, so went outside to talk to him.  After awhile, Mike was able to take over and then finish the job.  It was hard to tell how well it worked since it was now dark outside, but Mike told the neighbor he would clean it up the next day.

As Mike was removing the burnt and non-burnt weeds the following day, the neighbor who gave us the rocks came out to inspect our ditch.  He told Mike our ditch was not deep enough and even showed him that the culvert closest to his house was half full due to water backup.  He offered to use his backhoe to dig out our ditch (yes we have awesome neighbors). That week when Mike was in the Valley, our neighbor started to dig it out and stopped because it was making the ditch too unlevel and he wanted Mike's assessment on how to proceed.  When Mike came up the next weekend, he too was concerned about the grade and worked with the neighbor to dig out the rest of the ditch.  Mike was recovering from a cold and helped to move some of the dirt as the neighbor worked his backhoe, but after a little while he was too tired to continue.  So we asked our neighbor to loosen the rest of the dirt in the ditch so it would be easier to dig out later.  We did move some of the dirt to two large holes in the front left from dead trees we removed and used the rest to help reduce the grade of the slope going to the backyard through our double-gates.

Neighbor's first attempt at digging out the ditch, very deep hole on left

Mike and neighbor working together to dig out ditch

After awhile, we just had the neighbor dig up dirt and leave it in ditch

Partially dug out ditch and a lot of loose dirt that needs to be removed

There was a large hole here from a dead tree when we bought the place

Though the slope is not to bad for the trucks, it is steep for the cars

To add to the story, we found out indirectly from another neighbor down the street that we should not be lining the ditch with rocks as the Town of Payson is responsible for maintaining the ditches and does not want rocks in them.  So we contacted the town offices and found they were OK with us using the rocks as long as we continued to maintain the ditch.  At the same time we asked if they would inspect the ditch to be sure we had the proper grade for drainage.  They said they would send someone out to look at it.

Due to other activities and some travel, we were never able to complete the ditch clean-out and no one from the Town of Payson came by to do an inspection, until this last week.  Mike was given approval at the end of February to work remotely as our apartment lease in the Valley was coming to an end in April.  This was his first week of the new schedule and, while he was in his home office, he noticed men and machinery in the front yard.  In talking with the men, they said someone complained about a culvert being plugged on our street and they saw our partially dug up ditch and the half-filled culvert.  Mike gave them the whole story and they said they do not like the rocks in the ditches.  If something does go wrong with drainage, they would have to remove the rocks to correct the problem.  Mike reiterated the information we got from their office people and they were not surprised.  Regardless of the rock situation, they were there to clean out ditches and used their backhoe (actually used the back of the bucket) to remove the excess dirt and put the correct grade in the ditch.  They said they would be back later to remove some of the dirt from the half-filled culvert, but no one returned that day.  This was one case where procrastination (though not intentional) paid off.  We did not have to do any back-breaking shoveling of dirt or find places in the yard to put the excess dirt.  It was a definite win-win.

Town workers bright and early on a rainy day

Looks much better than the picture above with all the loose dirt

Even though the workers do not want the rocks in the ditch, since the town office was OK with it, we will go ahead with the plan to put the weed barrier and rocks down.  This will make it look nicer and help control the weeds better as originally planned.  We'll provides updates as this project evolves.

One other project we completed a few weeks ago was installing a dog door for Zena.  During the initial remodel, we had planned to put one in and even bought the door.  We opted later not to install it after big storm in which we saw how muddy Zena got in our gravel back yard, but we still held on to the door all this time (isn't that a surprise).  We have been able to either board Zena or someone (Mike's mom usually) has been at the house to watch her if we have been gone.  At other times, we have been able to leave her alone in the house for as long as 12 hours, but we try not to do that too often.  So we decided we needed a better way to handle her when we have to be gone for a longer timeframe, esp. as she gets older and may not be able to "hold it" for long periods of time.  We also had a trip planned with some friends that would require us to be gone close to 14 hours and getting Mike's mom to watch her would require 2 trips to the valley to pick her up and take her back home.

So we bit the bullet and installed the door.  The best place for it was in the kitchen just as we had planned years ago.  The kitchen has vinyl flooring, so it will not get damaged by her being wet or muddy, and, with the PVC fence/gate Mike built, we could keep her penned up in that area just to be safe.  With a combination of our rebuild pictures and Mike's new stud finder, we found the right section in the wall to use and made the scary cuts into the drywall.  The placement was perfect but, after getting into the wall, Mike found a short 2x4 placed sideways against the outside wall that did not show in pictures or with the stud finder (was not close enough to the drywall to be detected).  Mike completed the drywall opening to fit the door before starting on the exterior.

The only place on this wall that fit the dog door

Mike did his best to properly mark the outside to match the inside opening, but after making his cuts and some holes for the joining screws, found he was slightly off. He also had to cut off about an inch of the sideways 2x4, which was not an easy task since it was not well secured.  In the end, he had to use a hand saw to complete the cut.  Once the 2x4 was cut and the outside holes re-adjusted (luckily the dog door frame covered it all), we were able to get the door to install correctly.  This was the second "cut a hole through the house" task (first was stove vent) that Mike had to do (and hated every minute of it) and still survived.

Mike cutting away exterior excess

More trimming from a different angle

That odd sideways 2x4 that could only be cut by hand

Completed door on the inside

Completed door on the outside

It only took a little bit of coaxing to get Zena through the door and she went back and forth with no issue.  With each passing day, she uses it more and we find she likes to stay outside most of the time.  We set up the kitchen the day of our long-day outing with her bedding/crate, secured the PVC fence and off we went.  She was sure happy to see us when we got back, but there were no accidents or damage to the kitchen - a success.  Now we can be more comfortable when we have to be gone for a long day if the need arises.

Zena's first time going through

Some other miscellaneous jobs included attempting a hose bib repair and installing a driveway sensor.  The bib under the back porch had started leaking awhile back and Mike could not tell the source due to the insulation around the unit.  When he removed it, he found a split in the metal tube.  A trip to Home Depot found they changed their stock of hose bibs and only carry 1/2 inch male connector types instead of 3/4 inch.  Instead of buying the 1/2 inch with an adapter to connect to our 3/4 inch sharkbite, he decided to try a new repair tape they carried.  He followed the instructions to the letter and, though it no longer shoots water from the split, the water seeps through the repair tape like rain - failed!  We have ordered a new 3/4 inch unit from homedepot.com.

Failed patch job, even though the directions said it would work

We already have an external camera that Laurie can access through her phone to see people at the front porch, but sometimes that took too long for her to get to and she wanted better forewarning.  We bought a driveway sensor on sale at Harbor Freight and placed in on one of our posts in the yard.  When something crosses its path (like a car or person) in our driveway, we get a tone on the receiver in the house.  Seems to work well, but the first weekend of it being on, we had the neighbor kids riding through our yard and had to shut it off for a awhile. It also goes off multiple times some nights - we think a free-range neighborhood cat may be triggering it.

Outdoor driveway sensor pointed across our entrance

The interior receiver that sounds like someone entering a small store

Apart from the work above, we spent some time setting up Mike's office area for him to work remotely (bought two new monitors), signed up for cable TV from Suddenlink and Laurie started a new job with the Payson area Board of Realtors.

Mike's new work setup

On one Sunday, we took a long ATV ride up Doll Baby Ranch Rd.  The ride was to determine the ATV mpg as we had planned a 60+ mile trip with some friends from Chino Valley to Jerome on the old Perkinsville Road and wanted to be sure we didn't need to take gas with us (as Jerome does not have a gas station).  We found that both quads got about 30 miles to the gallon and have 4+ gallon tanks.  Good to know for future trips.

Our turn-around point on our mpg fact finding ride - not good at selfies

The Jerome expedition was a blast! Some of the trip was on the Perkinsville Road; another part was on an old railroad trail (it used to be an actual rail line to Jerome from Chino Valley, but the rails have long ago been removed). This made the ride more exciting since the main road is just a flat gravel road.  So some of the trip was fast moving and some was slower, going over the unimproved trail.  Over all a fun trip with friends, lunch at the Haunted Hamburger and a stop at the Verde River near the Perkinsville Ranch.

Some great friends at Haunted Hamburger, Jerome, AZ

Looking back towards Cottonwood from Perkinsville Road

Another group pic by the Verde River not far from Perkinsville Ranch

Stats: 4 Home Depot trips; 8 Walmart trips
Remodeling expense 2/2/16-4/10/16: $0
Remodeling expense to date: $52,629