The 2nd Master Bed/Bath project
How to build a shower pan

Then, with the help of Beth and John, we built the dry rock retaining wall out of quartzite.

In late October, I had the electric service to the house upgraded to 200 amps with 70 amps of 220v run out to the workshop. The workshop panel would then feed the hottub and outdoor lighting/outlets of the back yard. While I had the trencher, I installed a 7-zone irrigation system that is controllable by the X10 house automation system. In theory, my computer server will be able to check the weather forecast for the day and change the irrigation patterns appropriately. I also installed a drip irrigation zone for the front and back yards.

I planted grass seed in the fall and come spring-time, I had a lawn! This summer, the irrigation system is doing a pretty good job of watering the grass. There are a few spots that are getting brown due to unexpected deficiencies of sprinkler radius.

By March I had completed final plans for the back yard patio and structures. My neighbor Ruben helped me tear out the existing patio (luckily there was no rebar in it). We took 15 cubic yards of concrete to the dump that weekend. The next weekend I started digging my trench to run electrical conduit under the patio. I also had to do a lot of elevation measurements with a laser level to try to figure out how to manage rainwater runoff. My dad clued me into the idea of "if you have a 100 year water event, where will the flooding occur and can you get it to naturally flow to the street?" Originally, I was planning on a dry water basin to catch the rainfall and have it seep in to the ground slowly. But it wouldn't work because my soil is mostly clay and the surface area of rainfall would require a gigantic basin. So with more laser elevation measurements, I decided that I could slope the patio towards the fence and pour a curb at the fence that sloped towards the front of the house. Initially I thought I'd have a problem with that because there is a palm tree on the way to the street, but as long as the water stays on the surface, it'll flow right around that tree.

In May, I hired Squires Lumber and Fence to replace the fence on the left side of the backyard. They did an excellent job for a reasonable price (reasonable for the Bay Area anyway). It was up in two days. It was interesting that they left the post concrete dry until they had the entire fence up. Then they tweaked it to be perfectly straight before pouring water into the concrete footings.

Two days later, I hired Willson's Concrete to pour about 1500 sq ft of concrete. This included a new patio and side walkway, a gazebo pad, a hottub pad, and a pad for the back corner of the lot where I would build a gardening shed of sorts. I wouldn't really recommend Willson's Concrete because within a week of the pour, the concrete was cracking already. I think that the base rock wasn't compacted enough. The real challenge will be to see if it holds up to tree roots. Anyway, many thousands of dollars later, I have a new patio. This fall I'll install flagstone on top of it and the gazebo pad.

I have this concept of a garden shed that looks like an overgrown pergola. I'm not sure I can pull it off and keep everything inside dry in the winter, but we'll see. I've built a pergola with a lexan roof, but it's open to the air on the sides. I still need to install the rest of the cedar shingles on the gazebo. The patio pergola is finished.

And then in July one morning I had a steady stream of water running into the street. The 1" Galvanized water mainline to my house had broken somewhere under the brick and concrete front porch. It was pretty stressful dealing with the possibility of having to tear up a bunch of concrete to fix it. A better option was to just leave the old one where it was, cap off that entry point to the house plumbing, and dig a new trench in the front yard to bring the new mainline into the house's subfloor.

A short review of All-Star Plumbing San Jose 's business model. Here's how they work: They have lots of trucks and lots of plumbers. They are first on the scene of something like this and they give you a rough quote. If you want to get other quotes, the plumber makes you talk to his 'boss' on the phone to see if there's any way they can make the deal happen right then and there.. the classic used-car salesman approach. At which point you might negotiate for a better deal and feel good about it and call off the other plumbers who haven't arrived yet. The problem is that All-Star Plumbing's quote was extremely high to begin with. So now you've waived your right to cancel the contract because it's "emergency work" and you're stuck. To be fair, the guy did a good job, but it was an expensive life lesson. My recommendation would be to not call All-Star Plumbing until you have other quotes in hand. This would give you a good negotiating position.

Now there are three bedrooms with attached bathrooms in the house. I was going to pay to have the plumbing done for the bathroom just because it involved a lot of sub-floor work. All the old galvanized needed to be ripped out and replaced by 3/4" copper not to mention some minor waste work. But the plumber couldn't get to it in time, so I enlisted the help of Grumpy Tom and we did it ourselves over 2 days of very hard work. (Thanks GT!)	Finished Bathroom Sink.
Nov 24th, 2004: It's been a while since I've updated this. I finished the new bathroom in July, but never put up any final pictures of it. Visit this page for more detail. I'm very happy with how it turned out, but alas it's time to remodel the rediculous bathroom configuration on the first floor. When I moved in, there were two bathrooms separated by a thin doorway. There were toilets on either side of the doorway and the shower was in the deepest bathroom from the hallway. So you had to go through one bathroom to get to the shower in the other. Troy nicknamed the configuration the "racing toilets" because you could race your friend and hand magazines and toilet paper back and forth. I had a new furnace installed that could actually heat this size of a house. It turns out that the old 40,000 BTU furnace really was only powerful enough to heat the upstairs. So the new one is 110,000 BTUs and makes the bedrooms nice and toasty. I bought a new thermostat made by RCS that is X10 controllable, so it's easy to program via a computer in the house.	Finished shower in downstairs master. Finished sink in downstairs master.
Dec 8th, 2003: Last week I mounted the ethernet switches and routers to the new wiring closet door. With a couple of used rack-mount ethernet port panels, the ethernet cleans up nicely. I still need to move the battery backup (uninterruptable power supply) into the attic to power the closet and replace the outlet in the attic with a GFCI outlet. There's lots of room for ethernet expansion on this door. I've mosetly given up on the back yard until I can get this room/bathroom done. I spent the entire day Saturday at Home Expo figuring out what kind of sink, shower, tile colors, lighting, etc. Mary helped me narrow some things down a bit. I now have two colors that I'm going to try out on a wall. The plumbers are here today running the sewer pipe and are working very hard. I don't wish I were doing that job since it involves a very complex fitting to get the vent to tie into the current vertical stack to the roof. If they work an extra hour today, they might get it done ahead of schedule. The next step will be to run the copper.	Finished Wiring Closet.
Nov 24th, 2003: A couple of weekends ago I ran a wiring chase from the heater closet (soon to be wiring closet) to the vertical chase next to my bedroom. I ran 80 pound test line through the tube so that I could pull cables through easily. You can see the plywood I put down first to avoid falling through the ceiling. The exposed wires in the pic were first run by Rich without the help of plywood. I don't know how he did it. The battle with the neighbor's tree continues. I've built a firewood rack to hold the more substantial logs that I'm cutting out of the tree. Anyone want to take bets on how long it takes that green wood to dry out? A month? A year? I also built a wood rack in the workshop/shed for storing construction materials.	Wiring chase in attic.
Nov 3rd, 2003: So much I want to do. This weekend a storm brought the temperature down enough to turn on the heater. I waited for the PG&E guy to show up and find the gas leak in my heater closet. I was looking at the joints with soap water, but didn't find the leak. The PG&E guy said this was the most fun he had all day because I really did have a gas leak in a cracked 90 deg elbow. It takes a long time to heat this house up a few degrees, which is surprising since it's very well insulated (relative to most California homes). The 7 skylights are probably working against me, but ultimately I think it's just a big house to try to heat. I repaired the PVC plumbing in the garage that I broke a few months ago, so now the hose in the backyard works again. I also tried out my new leaf blower/vac in the back yard. It sucks up the leaves just fine and mulches them. I think the leaf thing is going to be a losing battle for the whole backyard.. I'm going to focus on the areas I can see from the back patio and not worry so much about the other areas until I landscape. I also started tearing out more of the ceiling of the 2nd master bedroom. Here's a pic of the shed with workbenches installed. This happened a couple of months ago, but it's a big change. I now have nifty storage for the new air compressor! I'm actually looking forward to framing out a new closet and bathroom ceiling for the 2nd master so I can use a framing nailer.	Workbenches Finished.
Step one: buy a house. Oct 6th, 2003: Well here's where we start to document the house project. I hope that these pages will reveal a whole revolution in how I view the home-ownership concept. Right now I'm enthusiastic and full of energy. Anyone care to take bets on how long before I resign to the fact that it's really only a money pit? I bought this place in July which is turning out to be right at about the bottom of the home loan interest rates. The news says that August turned out to be one of the hottest real estate months ever because it is starting to look like interest rates really have hit rock bottom. I've learned a lot from this process... things like always check the background of your real estate agent. You don't want to be his first sale... trust me. Oh the stress. But now it's bought and I'm satisfied and we've had a couple of months to settle in. Already the grandiose plans are growing to rediculousness.	The Front (garage off pic to left, 2nd story visible behind).