A Sky-Collared Guy: Catching Up on My DIY Projects: A Garden Amphitheater, a Custom Greenhouse, a Bathroom Remodel, and More

What’s halfway between white and blue? I’m a software guy, I sit at a desk all day and engage the world with a keyboard. That sounds an awful lot like a white-collar job, but I hate the idea of being a purely white-collared guy. Because in truth, I’m a builder. I think if that’s the one thing I had to say about myself, it’s that I like making things. I enjoy creating content, developing software, and building things in real life too. I’m a craftsman. I enjoy painting and other smaller art-craft, but I also find joy in larger craft too, like remodeling a bathroom or kitchen, building a greenhouse, and tending a garden. I’m not really a blue-collared nor a white-collared guy. I’m sky-collared. The Ph.D. who can build software and wire a house.

In my youth and earlier life, I didn’t experience the craftsman side of myself much because a house wasn’t something I ever owned for myself. It wasn’t until I bought my own house that the constructive gears in my head started turning. That feels natural to me though, and here’s another thing: I like to write a lot about how in games like Stardew Valley, we as players focus on the goals of survivability first, and then aesthetics once the roar of survivability has quieted. It’s the same reason most animals never seem to possess any form of character until you’ve adopted them and given them a comfortable home. Once the roar softens, personality and soul can truly start to develop. Once I had my Ph.D., and a stable job, and a family, then came the quieter times in life where I could truly take a look around and decide what I wanted to do.

I’m a builder - even if the prices of hiring a contractor to do most things weren’t the reason. I can optimize a genetic algorithm, surely I can wire a new ceiling fan. The first steps were gardening - and that’s not so unusual either - especially for engineers. I think most of us enjoy making things, and gardening is us, making things - either the garden itself or the plants that grow to maturity and produce ripe fruit. A garden takes patience though, and not all of us have that. I built boxes for my gardens because I live in the high deserts of Nevada. The soil is on the high side for alkalinity, and having boxes meant I could fill them with the right mixture of soil. Some kind of Triple Mix from the rock yard does well - or some bags of Miracle-Gro from Home Depot too.

The Garden Amphitheater 2019 - 2022, ongoing

When I bought my house, the first thing I did was survey the land with my eyes and get the brain gears turning, searching for ideas. There was a slow rolling corner of the yard with a hill, and I started having the first visions of “The Garden Amphitheater”. This took three years to build - but eventually it was complete - twelve 4’ x 8’ box-gardens, on three stepped tiers shaped like a triangular amphitheater. I used “Windsor Stone” retaining wall blocks to build each layer, and half of my boxes are stone-masoned with bricks (the other half are still built out of 2” x 12” lumber boards). All of the gardens are equipped with automatic drip systems, including places for extra pots by each box. I installed cattle-wire (16-foot by 4-foot wire panels) that I curved into archways over a few of the boxes. At the top of the amphitheater are three such archways for things like pumpkins, cucumbers and squash.

A single new lumber garden box set into bare, dug-out dirt, with a wheelbarrow of gravel in the foreground and mountains behind — The Garden Amphitheater, from the first box to full summer6 photos · click to enlarge

Four lumber boxes stepped up a dirt hillside on block footings, with stakes and string marking out the rest of the slope — The Garden Amphitheater, from the first box to full summer6 photos · click to enlarge

Funny story: when I first started building the gardens, I wanted to rent a tractor and raze the land, and start shaping it. But there was a family of quail with quail eggs living in the zone and I didn’t want to disturb them. So I started to dig by hand, just me and my spade shovel. By the time I had the first few boxes ready, I really couldn’t fit a tractor where I needed to anymore. So I continued digging by hand, wheelbarrowing hundreds of loads of dirt away to other places on the property. Some of it went to building up a larger hillside for the pool area, and some went to help build a better-sloped roadway out the other side of the yard. The quail still frequent the gardens, and I usually leave an especially grassy area just for them.

Bathroom Remodel May - June 2021

I also completely remodeled my bathroom. This project completely stripped the room down to its bones: I left the plywood flooring, which was fine. I took the old metal bathtub out (which must have weighed at least 300 lbs). And I redid the plumbing as well. Tiled floors and tiled walls were the goal, in addition to a new toilet and sink with vanity. With a project like this, preventing mold and barriering the water appropriately is paramount.

The bathroom before: beige vinyl tile floor, an oak vanity, and a tub with a plastic surround — The bathroom remodel, from before to finished8 photos · click to enlarge

Demolition: the tub walls torn open to the studs and insulation, the old tub still in place, tools on the floor — The bathroom remodel, from before to finished8 photos · click to enlarge

The bathroom remodel is when we found Princess Leia. On our umpteenth trip to Home Depot, while sitting in the car discouraged at how many trips this was taking, Leia jumped right up into the car. We tried to find her owner: we walked around Home Depot, and drove all through the neighborhood behind the shops. We did all the due diligence: we put up messages on social media and called around the local shelters, but no one was looking for her that we could find. And I wasn’t really about to take on a new pup. But a few weeks in, her behavior, her temperament, and the way she fit in with our household and our other pups changed my mind. We never did find her owner, so we adopted her and named her for the day we found her - Princess Leia, on May 4th. May the Force be with you.

The Dining Room Nook September 2019

We wanted a dining room area that looked a little fancier, and because chairs are difficult in the corner where the dining room table was, I built a bench. My wife sanded the table and chairs, stained and painted them, and also furnished them with decorative padding. The bench itself was basically just boxes with siding, and you can lift the bench top for storage. The only complexity over and beyond was a furnace floor vent: the bench would cover it, so I built an extended vent of sorts that feeds the forced air up and then out the front side of the bench, still near the floor.

This was probably my first real “project”. In retrospect, solving this one was in a way my introduction to home improvement at all, at least inside the home, with wood and furnishing. I had installed floors before, and up to this point had already installed new hardwood floors in this house as well. But for some reason, the dining room nook felt more like a real project than anything else to that point. Not that it took that long or was that hard to do.

An empty dining room corner with wainscot panels leaning against the wall, a floor vent at their base, and a box fan nearby — The dining room nook bench, from bare corner to built6 photos · click to enlarge

An L-shaped base frame of 2x4s on the tile floor along two walls, framed around the floor vent, with a beagle peeking in from the side — The dining room nook bench, from bare corner to built6 photos · click to enlarge

The Greenhouse January - May 2024

The natural extension to the garden amphitheater was a companion greenhouse. I had been wanting one for a while now, and was considering whether to build or buy. Nothing in the shops was quite the shape and size I really wanted, and I was good at designing and customizing something to my own style anyway. This was easily my largest construction project. I did not follow any online plans or anything, although I spent more time researching and nitpicking over details than I care to admit.

This greenhouse is anchored to the ground, bolted into concrete footers that are about 3 feet deep. The walls are double-top-plated, and sheeted with twin-wall polycarbonate panels, which allow plenty of light inside without sacrificing much structural integrity. The doors are also custom: I thought I might want to bring tall trees in and out of the greenhouse, so the doors are ten feet tall, and together they’re six feet wide. Building the doors alone was almost a project of its own in terms of complexity.

I also wired the greenhouse for electricity so that I can add lighting and heating, and run fans. The electricity is wired in a portable way, per code, and not in the usual permanent way. I installed a sink with a hose inside, and also a French drain filled with rocks and a sloped trench that runs outward about 20 feet. The floor is just rock, because it’s a greenhouse and bound to be dirty (and wet).

Stakes and string lines marking out the greenhouse footprint on bare dirt, a beagle sitting in the middle looking up — Building the greenhouse, from string lines to finished doors9 photos · click to enlarge

Concrete footers set in holes with a stained timber base frame across them, a cement mixer and patches of snow behind, a beagle standing on one footer — Building the greenhouse, from string lines to finished doors9 photos · click to enlarge

Overall, I’m more than happy with the result and continue to make little improvements over the years - the slot to the right of the sink is where a bin full of soil goes. The pups certainly helped, and don’t let anyone say otherwise! Reese is a good puppervisor, and together with Leia, they help keep “squirls” away!

A Small Trailer March 2021

I found a neighbor who wanted to part with her old junk trailer. The metal frame was still good, so I took it off her hands and went to work. I removed all the old wood, and sanded as much old rust off as I could with my angle grinder. I primed it with a couple layers of spray-paint primer, and then painted it black. Then I added a wood floor with walls, which I painted with an especially durable outdoor waterproof paint. This trailer helps me get larger objects from the local nurseries, and larger loads of wood from Home Depot. I don’t have a truck, so having a trailer around the yard certainly proves more than useful.

An old utility trailer with a rusty frame and a dirt-covered plywood deck, sitting in a dirt yard — Rebuilding a junk trailer5 photos · click to enlarge

The bare trailer frame, stripped of wood and painted glossy black, propped on timber blocks on gravel — Rebuilding a junk trailer5 photos · click to enlarge

That’s where things stand for now. The kitchen remodel, the office remodel, and the Mr. Cool DIY mini-split are still waiting on photos, so they’ll get their turn a little later. I’m still finding ways to challenge myself with projects around the home, and when I do more, I’ll add their stories and photos here.