New carpet Finally

I know that I have been just terrible about the whole blogging thing. I am addicted to facebook and just never seem to have time to blog. I guess if I didn't feel like I should post pictures all the time then I could blog more. Posting the pictures is what takes so long. Anyway, I thought I would give a run down of what we are currently doing in our house. We, actually I, am in project mode again. Chris and I are finally going to be able to put some new carpet/flooring in our house. We are having the master bedroom, living room, and stairs recarpeted. The carpet goes in the Monday after spring break. Yeah! We are also putting laminate(same as in the kitchen) in the dining room. So, all this means that I am painting!. I am currently working on the living room. I have one coat on 3 of the walls and hope to finish the second coat and work on the 4th wall. It is behind the entertainment center so we have to tackle moving that first! We will eventually have all the main walls in the house repainted, foyer, stairs, hall etc. The question that remains is will I do it or will we end up paying someone? I will attempt it and we'll see where we go from there. I have to have Chris home for the most part because I'll need to get on the extension ladder. We'll see what happens. It may take me a year to finish. Who knows? Well, that is what I am up to. I am hoping to get me house back in some sort of order this weekend. I really want to go outside and work in the yard, but given the current weather situation, I guess I'll be in the house painting(which I need to be anyway) and not having to feel guilty about not being outside tackling the major spring yard clean-up!

Finally! It's Done

Yes, I finally fixed the sprinkler system. After over 2 months of messing with this thing the war is finally over...and I won! I now have a very long(about 50ft) whole in my side yard, but aside from that (which will be covered up tonight) it is fixed. I do have to reattach the two heads that I moved, but that is a minor issue. So, it turns out that in one of my(or my sprinkler friend from work) digging quests to change out the heads on my side yard, I managed to cut the electrical wires which send the electricity from the automatic time to the system to turn it on. After digging the whole back up and finding the cut wire(a relief in itself) I mended that problem only to discover that it still didn't work. I ran a wire from the timer in the garage to the timer in the front and got nothing. Then I ran the wire from the garage to the hole where the wires were cut and got power. I'm not sure what happend, but somehow the wires between the garage and the side yard were fried/not working whatever. Anyway, I dug a very long whole from the hole in the side of the house to the hole in the yard under the kitchen window, bought the electrical wire and then fed the wire thru the hole in the garage to the hole on the outside of the house(actually my neighbor did this...I think that the complicated things got in the way of this simple task! Thanks, L). I pulled the wire and reattached and walah(sp). we have automatic sprinklers going off---after replacing the fuse that my husband discovered was blown. Job completed. Thanks for your endurance of my stories and complaints etc thru this whole process. My friend J. from work says now it is time to move onto another project. No thanks...I think I'll stick to the things I know how to do for awhile.

Sprinkler System

Okay, so this was what I would call an imcomplete project. I have been wanting to "play" with the sprinkler system lately and try to "tweek" it a little bit. So, what better time than when my mom and Vicki are around to keep the kids in check. So, I took off one morning with the intent of digging up and moving two of my sprinkler heads from the side flower beds to the yard(while I was supposed to be helping my mom in the back yard). Every time the sprinkler system would go off these would create huge gullies in my flower bed and it just really needed to be fixed...First let me say that if I had had the heads moved BEFORE I had the flower beds created 7 years ago I would not have been doing this... The first two heads were moved after much digging, a huge, deep, whole I might add!!! Aside from the difficulty digging, the moving wasn't that much trouble and I was quite proud of myself. My mom offered to turn the system on after watching me running back and forth from the garage to the yard trying to adjust the heads. I was soaked afterwards, but this was a definite success. Next, I decided that since that was such a success I would work on the other side of the yard9a different day). I dug another big, deep whole and changed one head from a mister to an oscilator and then decided I needed to work on the ones at the end of the side yard. I capped off two in order to get more pressure and then proceded to dig up another near the fence and try to change the head out. I had been told that in order to get the best coverage on the side yard I would need to actually move three of the heads to a different part of the yard. This was going to require lots of digging in our wonderfully, hard Georgia clay...not going to happen by this woman. So, instead I decided to change from misters to oscilators and see what happened. As I dug up the one at the fence and I finally got to the 'white' pipe, I became aware of a great problem...It was connected by two pipes, one from the back and one from the front yard, both at different levels. This proposed quite a challenge in reconnecting them since they were two different levels. After much force and my mom's help, I reconnected the two and checked to see if there were any leaks. No leaks at the connection...YEAH! However, problem number 2 results...the sprinkler continues to have a steady flow of water from it even after turning off the system.... So much in fact that the big, deep whole filled up with water and created a muddy mess at my fence. At this point my mom tells me that while I have done a wonderful job and should be very proud of myself, it is time to cap it off and call for help. I obeyed with reluctance. After talking to my help, I came home and decided that maybe if I tried a different location this would fix the problem...(what was I thinking). So, this time I made Chris come out and help me redig up one of the ones that I had already capped off and recovered with dirt. Again, Georgia clay presented quite a difficult digging project. We finally dug up and got to the white pipe, again I tried to reconnect(a different day) with a different connection to accomodate an oscilator rather than a mister. This time the connecting was rather difficult and when I turned the sprinkler on the next day, the connection leaked and the sprinkler head still continued to spray a steady stream of water after being turned off. I've decided at this point that I am out of my league on this one. I have turned it over to my HELP and have asked for him to come and fix it. I could keep trying this and that based on his instruction, but I believe that I have given it the old college try and will gladly turn this one over. Now, for all those who are bored out of your gord after reading this, I am sorry. You just had to be there to understand. I am very proud that I even attempted and for the most part I can replace and maintain this thing, but this time I think it has gotten the best of me. The muddy mess!

Sorry, no other pictures available because I don't have any on my camera. Mom, if you see this then send me some more and I'll post them.