Hey! I thought this was a frugal renovation blog!

I'm sure you're starting to wonder--if you are going to save so much money by doing this addition yourself, how come all you've done so far is hire people?

A valid question, my friend.

The work that has been done so far has been the stuff we couldn't do ourselves because of the complexity. We don't have a backhoe, nor the skills to drive one, for excavation, and while we probably could have called in the concrete pumper truck ourselves, we don't own concrete forms for walls and such.

From here on out, most of the work will be done by Frugaldad with assistance from me and Frugalboy, who, at not quite 9 years old, has already proven himself worthy of pounding nails and moving sheets of plywood. The girls are quite adept at fetching water for the workers.

When we had the hole dug, we had to take out the valves for the backyard sprinkler zones. Once everything was all backfilled, Frugaldad rebuilt the sprinkler valve box. If he would have purchased a ready-made manifold, it would have cost about $40, plus it wouldn't have fit into the largest access box that they make. Instead, he went to the plumbing aisle and spent less that $10 on bits and pieces and built a custom manifold for the 5 sprinkler zones and a hose bib.



We were able to locate all the pipe for the zones, it was just a matter of reconnecting them to the new manifold and valves.