I love repurposing the old sprinkler base and the cement bucket base, too.
I had to give up on the black tubing idea. Too much debris would get things clogged. Every once in awhile. I bump into some old black tubing when digging in my yard. I now have a perimeter two long garden hoses around 85% of our back and front yard. Using male/female end repair kits I have customized the different "shooters" that come off the hose line. At the end of the line is hooked to a standing hose handler that has a Y spigot attached to it so I can hand water in the most remote parts of our back yard and hanging plants if I want. We have a small back yard. But only one spigot from one side of the house is suppose to reach all areas. We have 4 spigots coming off the one with a timer on it. Our yard gets automatically watered from an above ground system
In the far corner sits a Rain Bird on an adjustable tripod It covers 2/3's of the back yard.
Recently I resodded an area that didn't have any sprinkler reaching the area in the front. Probably why it died in the first place! DH and I spent about 30 mins and $7 rigging up a pop up sprinkler normally used for an in ground sprinkling system, and pipe converters to fit into our garden hose. Now the area has a nice tall fine spray about 18" above the sod.
