Finished!...sort of...

A few days ago, I get a text from the contractor saying "We'll be finished by Wednesday." Huh. That's in about three days and we don't have...

1. A lawn
2. A working sprinkler system
3. All the drainage finished
4. The other half of the cement patio

In total, about 25% of what was left in phase one will be finished in three days. Instead of being amazed at the intended progress, I was suddenly worried they've forgotten that they still have to finish all of that.
Oh but they did it. Lawn in one day. Cement in one day. Sprinkler and drainage last day. Wow.
Despite the fact that our sprinkler system is so complex that even our contractor wasn't quite sure he'd set up the schedule right...seriously, it uses its own satellite to determine if its raining so it doesn't have to run. This is somewhat unnecessary given the current weather situation. Regardless, it's wonderful to just have it done. Sort of. Now that phase one is complete, its really obvious just how much of the backyard is left to do.

Phase two: Coming soon summer 2014!

A brief history of gardening beds

I can keep approximately 1-2 plants alive at a time. If the plant requires me to do anything more than give it water once a week with the occassional missed week, it will likely died. Adding to this the cats have greatly limited the number of plants I can keep alive inside the house. If a plant can not be safely consumed on a regular basis by a cat, it cannot go in the house. If the plant has flowers, it will be swiftly deflowered by said cats. If the plant is not strong enough to stand up to daily chewing by cats, it will also die. This means we pretty much just have bamboo in our house. Bamboo are extremly forgiving plants both in terms of living without regular watering and standing up to daily cat attacks. We do have one plant, affectionately called ceiling plant, because it is 10ft up in a cutout that the cats haven't figured out how to get to...yet. Ceiling plant is easy to ignore because its above the line of sight, and consistently expresses it's displeasure at being forgotten by drooping a large leafy stem in direct ratio to how many weeks its been since we've watered it. One leaf up is a bad sign.
Understanding this, I can't imagine what posessed me to request a couple of gardening beds on the side of the house so that I might grow edible food for the kitchen. I'd like to think that if provided with the tools to grow food, I could actually do it. I've done it before as a small child, but honestly I can't remember much beyond planting it and checking it once every couple weeks. I imagine that my magnificently remembered green beans had more to do with my mother's consistent vigilance than any effort on my own part. Still, I remember enjoying it, and so gardening beds where a must when designing the backyard.
Originally the plan called for some seriously structure with poured cement caps and stucco walls. Then I realized, hey, this is a gardening bed, not a pool, and we switched to a couple of pieces of wood and some decomposed granite around the boxes. It seemed simple enough, so much so, we briefly considered doing it ourselves. However the cost of putting in the garden beds was so small by comparison to the rest of the items in phase one, that it seemed more likely that we'd spend the same amount of money doing it ourselves and probably mess a few things up.
Surprisingly it took them most of this week to put in the garden beds (thus re-enforcing my suspicion that it was more complicated than it looked). While they are not the most impressive things in the backyard, I'm excited about them, and felt they deserved a post of their own. 

Day 70: Introducing the future graveyard of many a vegetable plant:

Honorable Mention: Ooooh Fancy. A new fence.
Long ago when the house was first built, it was completely fenced in from the side of the house all the way around. You've heard about the demolition of the back fence for home insurance purposes, but let me tell you of the front side fences...
While the right front side fence was still in existence when we moved in, the left side fence was gone without a trace. For a backyard that had the leavings of numerous mysterious partial projects, it seemed strange that the left front fence had been removed so professionally. In fact, we were unaware it even had ever existed until digging in the area yielded several cement holes where the posts must have been. It seemed natural then that we put the fence back in at that spot when the plans for the backyard were being drawn up. Yesterday the fence was completed...but now it feels odd to have a fence there. I am used to be able to see the front yard from the side yard and the reverse. Now when I look at the front of the house, all i see is this shiny new side fence looking considerably out of place with all the rest of the dated wood and landscaping. I'm slightly tempted to paint it a dark color to match the weather worn look of the rest of the fence, but this is clearly a "giving a cookie to mouse" scenario and eventually, I'd end up painting all 300 feet of fence around the house just for consistency. Then doing it again in a few years because its faded. No. I think I will just enjoy the haphazard coloring of our fence and hope in a few years everything looks equally as old. Except me.

Do I look that handy to you?

The fabled two weeks have come and gone without finishing but we do have electricity! This may not sound particularly exciting but when you understand what fancy pants sort of equipment the architect put in the plan, you too will be astonished.

When designing the backyard, we asked for lights. That was pretty much the entire conversation to the architect. "We'd like lights in the backyard".
Not "We'd like a triumph of spotlights carefully arranged so that our backyard shows up as the taj mahal from the freeway"
Or even "We'd like lights that anticipate our preferences and turn on without us doing anything"
Nor did we say "We get bored a lot and would like lights that we can easily move from one spot in the yard to the other without re-burying a lot of underground wire"

No, we said we'd like lights in the backyard. The kind so that we can see we're going when hunting for "what made that noise outside". Clearly this was not accurately communicated to the architect. When we got the initial plans back it included two massive transformers on either side of the house that would control the lights on each side of the backyard. Imagine this conversation if you will...

Architect: "The transformers will turn on the lights at a given time and then turn them off."
Us: "Ok, but we can just turn them all on or off with a switch inside the house right?"
Architect: <looks confused> "I'm sure an electrician could set that up if you wanted."
Us: "Ok, what about lights for the pergola?"
Architect: "The pergola will have six lights, one on each pillar."
Us: "Can we turn on just the pergola lights?"
Architect: <looks confused> "Well, no, half the pergola lights are controlled by one transformer and the other half are controlled by the other"
Us: "Well, can we change that?"
Architect: <heavy sigh> "If you really want..."

Is there anyone out there that can offer me a good reason why you'd ever want to turn on the lights for the left side of your yard and not the right side? Unless you have structural divisions like "pergola lights" versus "lights near tub", something logical to that effect I could see, but apparently we look like the type of people that would just turn on the lights on the left side and say "eh...we don't really need to look at the right side of the yard".
Not to mention we clearly want our back yard to light up every night promptly at 6pm automatically, so that our neighbors can bask in the glow that is our magnificent backyard. We are definitely those people. Not the kind that bicker about how many lights are on in the house. The phrase "do you have any idea how much the electric bills was last month" has never been uttered in our house....

Clearly there was a difference of opinion in what we were looking for in a lighting system, but after a few tweaks it seemed reasonable. That is until we gave the plans to our contractor and found out more about the light system that our architect had designed.
Apparently there isn't a good way to put a switch inside our house that would control these transformers. (Everyone reading this who can turn on a light in their backyard from a switch inside the house, please take a moment to feel grateful to the none neurotic person who designed your house/apartment/condo) We could get a switch in, but it'd be a little more complicated (read: expensive to fix when it breaks).
In addition, the light system was apparently this top of the line system that uses less electricity (yay!), is really easy to move or replace (double yay!), and very expensive (knew there was a catch there somewhere). The contractor still recommended it because they also last awhile, so in favor of the long term benefits, we didn't change the system. We also complicated this a bit more by adding fans to the pergola as a late design addition. 

Given all these fancy pants systems going in, when the electrician showed up to do all the installs, I was on him like another shadow, asking questions. Despite how obnoxious I'm sure that was, he was very nice, and after we got to talking a bit I found out he doesn't usually do work on houses. He normally does large scale server rooms and businesses. He explained it was working on this because the switch that he was installing acts like a remote control for the transistors so you have to program it by computer (think garage door remote).
After installing the transistors, setting up the switch, he started putting up the fans.
I'm going to disrupt the story to mention that we had to run to home depot the night before to buy these fans because the contractor forgot to tell us he needed them the next day for install. The only instruction we were given was find outdoor rated fans.
Now, as the electrician is working on getting the second fan up, he calls me outside to show me something. Apparently, even though the fans we got are outdoor fans, they are meant to be flush mounted to a structure. In the case of the pergola, the bars aren't wide enough to form a perfect seal, so there is a gap on either side where water could get into the electrical components of the fan. I explain that we weren't really given much instruction on what to get from the store, and offered to run down real quick to buy new fans. He looked at the one he already had up and said, "No, it'll be fine. Here's what you need to do..."

I could see the thoughts in his head as he looked at the fan he already had up. Something along the lines of "I don't want to take that back down and be here longer to put up new fans. I'm sure they can just put in some spray foam and cocking to seal that up." And that my friends, it what he instructed me to do.
I still remember standing in a yard where people are doing all this construction work for me, thinking "Do I look handy to you?" Sure, just some spray foam and cocking. How hard can it be? Stupid back door.

Day 65ish: We can now turn on and off our fans from inside the house. Have attempted to follow instructions to make the fans "really outdoor rated" but am somewhat thankful for the drought going on now...

huh. that's big.

The pergola is finally up, though not finished being painted, and, well, its big. really big. way bigger than we anticipated.

When you see the dimensions on the blue print you don't really get the same feeling as when its finally up and about the size of your house. As daunting as the size of the pergola is, everything is coming together very nicely. They have almost completed work on the dry creak bed but there is still a whole lot more to do before phase one is finished. It's hard to believe that they're going to try to finish everything in the next two weeks. Next up, a lawn!

No you can not stick your hand in the wet cement... and other stupid questions

I'm surprised that had to be clarified, but with a child-like gleam in his eye, it was hard to say no to my husband. Honestly it had more to do with the awkward conversation I'd have to have with our contractor than any desire not to have a hand-print in our new walk way.
Yes, a few days ago, the cement was poured, and then started the most insane cold snap to hit the area in a few years. It was so cold that it actually snowed at our house in the middle of the day with the sun out. This may not seem shocking to most people who live where it regularly snows, but where we live this is almost equivalent to it snowing on the beaches of Hawaii. It just doesn't happen. Luckily the weather had little effect on the fresh poured cement and while it made it particularly unpleasant to have a job that required you to work outside for the next week, some more progress with the laying down the sprinklers in the grass area got done. After approving the design for the pergola with the subcontractor (again) it seemed like things were really moving. Until I got this call from the subcontractor in the middle of the day at work. Kept in mind this is two days after we've already approved the architectural diagram for the pergola....

Subcontractor: "Hi, We were just calling to confirm some details about the pergola before we order it."
Me: "Yeah, sure."
Subcontractor: "So I see you have six polls in your design". Pause.
Me: "Yes."
Subcontractor: "Great. And they are square?"
Me: "No. They're round. Like in the design."
Subcontractor: <sound of shuffling papers> "Well I guess you could kind of say they look round in the design, but I'll go ahead and firm that up as your choice."
Me: "Okay..."
Subcontractor: "Now the color. You wanted maple correct?"
Me: "Oh, actually I didn't right down the name of the color. He just had a block of color samples with no names and we picked one out."
Subcontractor: "Does maple sound right?"
Me: "I don't know. Do you have the colors on your website or the manufacturers website? I can go there and confirm for you."
Subcontractor: "No. Are you sure it isn't maple?"
Me: "It was a grayish color that matched our house. Does that look like maple?"
Subcontractor: "I'm not sure. I really should order this today."
Me: "I took a picture of the color we chose. I can text it to you. Do you think you could tell by that?"
Subcontractor: "Maybe. Why don't you send it to me and I'll call you back."

Now, he never did call me back. I ended up leaving work early to drive to the showroom which closes at 5pm in an especially sketchy section of a nearby industrial area. Confused the heck our of the secretary when i burst in breathless two minutes before they closed, babbling nonsense of "The durawood colors....<pant, pant>... Where are the durawood colors?" Once I explained the entire situation to her, she was very helpful and we did eventually find the color chart...only to discover maple was correct. Hooray. Much ado about nothing!
A few hours later, the subcontractor did text me back saying maple was the right color and he had submitted the order. At least he did get back to me. Eventually. They called again yesterday to say they would be installing it on Monday. I sent the info on to the contractor who seemed surprised by this, so I don't feel too bad. At least they suck with their communication to everyone and it's not just me. Now let's see what shows up on Monday!

Day 55: feeling more finished

Life Size Blueprints

The backyard was initially estimated to take two months and today marks the two month point. Let me show you our finished backyard...

there's the patio and the pergola...

the planter boxes...

and, of course, the grass...

No, of course, they aren't finished, nor did I expect them to be. In my experience, I have found that contracting estimation dates are 25% experience, 25% luck, 45% fixing others mistakes, and 5% acts of god. It seems this is true no matter what the contracting industry. We've been lucky so far that the weather has only interrupted a few days during the construction, the fiasco with the permits only delayed us about a week, and the mighty lizard gods have decided against sending us a wrathful Godzilla.
We're actually at a very exciting point in the construction process: they have framed out all of the cement areas. Now we can actually walk around the backyard and see exactly how everything will be laid out - sort of like a life-sized blue print. I'm very pleased with some of the design changes we argued for - they look like they are coming out exactly how we envisioned. Come Monday, they will actually be pouring all the cement! With most of the underground work completed at this point, it seems like all the next steps will be building the visual aspect, so things will be changing more quickly from here on. Stay tuned...

A Recommendation for Getting an Engineering Degree

Among the many strange things left by the previous tenants of our house is a partially working security camera system. There is a camera in back and in front. When we moved in, we didn't know if they worked because the place they go to had all the cables slashed (as if someone were removing a DVR in a hurry). This was one of the many things that the police insisted on verifying when they searched the house our first week there. Strangely I had a hard time convincing them there was no recording equipment or DVDs in the house when we got it ("Oh yeah, all that incriminating evidence. Yes, I kept it right here officer. We watch it sometimes when we get bored, very instructive.")
After a few months, my brilliant husband put that engineering degree to good use and fixed everything to go to a monitor so we could see that the cameras did actually work (kinda). The only one that worked well was the one in the back yard and over the course of the next year he got an entire system set up and re-routed into the house so we didn't need a monitor in the attic to see the cameras feeds. Its kinda neat, but sort of creepy at the same time.
However, its usefulness finally outweighed its creepiness! Last week we were on vacation, which was unfortunate, since the first concrete was suppose to be poured for the pergola pillars sometime that week. We were really bummed that we'd be missing this. Then, that genius husband of mine figured out a way to securely stream the camera feed so we could take a look each afternoon after they finished to see what happened the day before. The result ended up being a really cool time lapse:

Husband +2 points