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having just gone through this I can help you out here. Regular pvc is slightly larger so the fittings on the central vac hookups wont fit. That said there is a fix. I found a place that sells adapters to transition regular PVC to central vac pipe - Central vacuum stores they are online just google them. They also sell an inlet that hooks directly to PVC. Another well priced source for central vac parts is northside service company in danville ca. they have a webstore and an ebay storefront. I found the people at both places to be knowledgible and helpful.

If you are reasonably handy, yes, you can plumb a water softener. One issue is what type of piping (copper, PEX, CPVC, etc.) to use to make the connections. CPVC is probably the easiest, soldering copper takes a little skill but is doable (it's all in the prep work), and PEX requires tooling that you probably don't have and don't want to buy ($$$). You've run conduit as an electrician, so you should be able to transition to water-based conduit. lol! When you buy the softener, be sure to know what the pipe fittings/connections are going to be. Probably most accept threaded pipe or adapters, some are sweat-soldered. Plan for a bypass valve setup either on the softener or in the supply lines. Do the softeners come ready to install? Most don't, which requires one to assemble a few items and put the resin in the tank. It's not hard. You only need a twin tank softener if you will be using soft water in the middle of the night (when a typical softener regenerates). The computerized on-demand control valves can predict water usage and maintain enough reserve that you won't run out of soft water before the unit regenerates. Do get a softener that regenerates based on gallons of water used (demand type). It will save salt $$ in the long run. A good valve to consider is the Clack WS-1. Just google it for some softener vendors. It has a computer chip that does a lot of nice things for the softener. Fleck has a model to compete with the Clack (Fleck 7000??). A big issue is how big a softener do you need? Most softener vendors figure on 60 to 70 gallons of water usage per day per person. You will have to use some sort of adjustment factor to estimate your dog water usage (based on people). You probably want to bathe the dogs with soft water,but if you can replumb and use hard water for the dog drinking and kennel washdown water, I think you would be way ahead.

I think if you have too much gray you may want to brighten it up, and if it were me, I'd do blue. You can do "blues" in different shades, but I'd go medium bright. I think the Pantone color of the year for 2021 is gray with a bright yellow. You can google that. But again, I would just prefer to live with blues around me than bright yellows. IMHO, I think browns and taupes will just make everything seem pretty dull.