It's been a long, long time coming

Ok, I fully intended to post an update the weekend before last, but things have just been so busy around here that I never had time to finish my entry. Instead, I present something of a saga (sorry, I get a little verbose) of the past two weeks.
Week 1
It felt a bit like old times around here this week, as we were back to 90 degree days and the old crew was back out to work on the house. The inside is completed and our building company's work is done, so now it's up to us to finish things up and get ready for our final inspection. First up, getting in and out of the house. As of Thursday morning, the front and back doors looked like this:

front door

back door, with makeshift covered pallet step

My father-in-law came out on Wednesday night and started work on the front on Thursday. I went to work on the bathtubs/showers, soaking and scraping all of the drywall mud and other debris out of them.


My dad came out Thursday night and on Friday, while work on the outside continued, we got to work cleaning inside. We began by washing all of the walls, which were covered in dust from sawing and grouting, as well as splashed with black grout and tile cement. It was slow going and tiring, with lots of getting up and down and reaching; while the three dimensional bits came off, there remained a lot of staining that would have to be painted over. My dad cleaned all of the shelves and cabinets, while I continued with walls. Tres came home early and helped clean, which definitely made things move faster. To give you some idea of the scope of this project, here are the cabinets in the kitchen (each one is divided by a removable shelf through the middle, sometimes two):

By the end of the day, we had completed all but two rooms. In the afternoon, our construction manager came out and we went through our list of things that needed to be checked/fixed. It wasn't short, but many of the issues were cosmetic and none would be too difficult/time consuming to fix. He told us we should be ready for the final inspection Monday/Tuesday.


We finished cleaning on Saturday and moved on to touch-up painting. We spent the rest of that day painting, each room's stains needing 2-3 coats. I gave the floors a quick vacuum and Tres wrapped up the day by mopping the entire house. The floors were far from sparkling, but it got a lot of the dirt/dust from the grout up and moved us a step closer to having the house ready to move in.

the front steps

back steps

Sunday was time for more painting and cleaning. After a day and a half of painting, my dad passed on the last few rooms and moved on to filling nail holes in the trim and moldings and washing the windows. Tres and I continued painting and finished by the afternoon, moving on to filling moldings. His pop raked and cleared out debris outside (including hundreds of nails and screws and huge hunks of concrete he had to dig out of the sand with a shovel) and drove them out to the dump, put up our address numbers (required by the city, despite the fact that our house is not anywhere near the road, but I digress. . . ), finished the back step that afternoon, and then joined us on work inside the house. 

our snazzy house numbers

In other news, the sprinkler system (which has thrown us for more than a couple loops in this process) is finally completed! It still needs to be inspected, but we shouldn't need to have any more work done on it. It only took me 3 days to get the plumbers to send someone out to hook water up to it. Hooray!


Week 2
On Monday, the dads finished up the windows and put up the screens and Tres' pop loaded up the last bits of debris/garbage for disposal. I filled some nail holes and cleared a lot of our stuff out of the house, so there wasn't so much around for the inspection on Tuesday.


As predicted by our construction manager (and is typical), we did not pass inspection in the first go-round. Instead, we were met with a list of corrections. Most were neither difficult nor time consuming (stick up some insulation that was hanging down over the crawl space vents, post the length of the dryer duct, and revise the site plan to reflect the true set backs). He also wanted us to bring the grade around the house up about 6 inches, which was a bit problematic - I ended up calling him a few times to determine what exactly he wanted and how it could be done - but it was doable, with some extra work on our part, of course.

our dryer duct sign

The real kicker involved - big surprise - the bloody sprinkler system. You remember the sprinkler system, don't you? The one I said was finished just mere paragraphs ago? Every time I think we've heard the last of it. . . it's back! There seemed to be a bit of a disagreement about whose responsibility it was to inspect the system. The house inspector wanted an additional part installed, but when I contacted the fire marshal (who would be inspecting and officially approving the system), he said it wasn't necessary. This resulted in a few days of back and forth discussions, with no real resolution. Sigh.


On Tuesday night, Tres and I hit Home Depot and bought 15 vent wells and 6 bottles of caulk, to cover up the foundation vents, as the new grade would otherwise result in them being covered and subsequently filled with sand. While he removed our new front and back steps and generally cleared things out for the excavator, I went around the foundation and taped 3 inches under the siding all around the house, so the excavator could see exactly where the inspector wanted the grade to reach. The excavator came and moved the sand up and spread the rest of our gravel for the driveway on Wednesday and Tres came home early to finish putting up the vent wells. I cleaned some tile inside the house and tried to coordinate our various jobs to be sure that we could get everything done in time to have the inspector back out by Friday, as he was headed out of town the following week. By the end of the day, we were graded and vented and Tres' pop was back out to help us get things finished up. Whew!

 vent well, with finished grade

inside a vent well

Thursday was a parade of workers, as people from the company came out to do small fixes we had requested (the aforementioned insulation under the house, some inside cleaning, closet door adjustments, etc.). The sprinkler installer came out to test the system and everything looked good. The fire marshal met us for the inspection and . . . the bell didn't work. At this point, I really didn't have words. Everyone was super nice about it, but they wouldn't be able to come back until next week, which meant no certificate of occupancy or moving in this weekend. I was so disapointed and frustrated, I thanked them and had to sit for a few minutes in the shop by myself. I called the inspector and left a message, asking if he would be willing to pass our final inspection, even if the sprinklers hadn't passed. Next, I called the electrician and they sent someone out to look at the bell and the water heater, which had (excitingly) let off a large spark when the sprinkler installer had touched it with his wrench (not a normal or desirable occurrence). He worked for awhile and assured me everything was operational.


In the meantime, in order to fix the sliding door (which wasn't hanging properly), the workmen tore off the siding around the door, to adjust the framing. The day before our scheduled inspection. Holes in the side of our house. Oh, my head. My father-in-law put the steps back on the front and back and raked the grade up to the side of the house. I did some floor wiping and filled some nail holes, then headed out for a doctor's appointment. The inspector returned my call, saying he thought my plan was reasonable and that he would be happy to pass us on our final (assuming he approved our corrections), on the contingency that the sprinkler inspection passed next week. What a wonderful surprise!


I returned home happy and did a little more work in the house. The workmen had fixed the door and replaced the siding, although they had not yet sealed around it. I finally got a return call from our construction manager and he assured me that he would send someone to look at the water heater and that the inspector probably wouldn't worry about the lack of sealant around the door. He also mentioned that he hadn't called in for the inspection. WHAT? This was something we had been talking about all week. I had told him the inspector was going out of town. I had told him we needed to call in for Friday. What had happened? It was too late to call in for an inspection any more, so I reassured myself that the inspector and I had spoken and made plans and hoped that he would overlook the fact that I had not set up an official inspection.


We started off Friday with low expectations, hoping for the best. That morning, I received a call from the inspector. He didn't see me on his schedule: had I called in for an inspection? When I explained what had happened, he told me he had a busy day, but would try to fit us in, as we had so few items to be checked. I thanked him profusely and crossed my fingers. Lo and behold, just a few hours later, there he was. He went through our corrections quickly, but thoroughly and advised me to have a few areas of the yard (and when I say yard, I essentially mean sand dunes) leveled a bit, so they won't be an erosion issue. And that was that. Aside from the sprinklers, we were approved! While not as exciting as getting our certificate of occupancy, which would mean we could actually start moving in over the weekend, it was super relieving to get all of this worked out before the inspector left  for vacation.  The sprinkler installer stopped back out to check the bell and it still didn't work. Is anyone surprised at this point? A different electrician (read: one who actually knew what he was doing) came out and REALLY fixed the bell and the water heater, as in showed us what was wrong and repaired it, as opposed to saying: "everything looks fine, I don't know why you had trouble." We all did a little more work inside that day, then took the rest of the night off.


On Saturday, I worked on finishing up filling the nail holes while Tres and his dad moved the heavy stuff into the house. It's technically not really ok to do that yet, but there's no way we can move it by ourselves (seeing as I can't do heavy stuff these days) and we don't really have any resources here to help us, so this was the most convenient arrangement. It's pretty exciting to have even a few things in the house, as it makes this all start to feel a bit more real. It took us all about 6 hours to finish our jobs and then his pop headed back home. That night, we slept in the house for the first time. It felt a bit strange, both more enclosed (as opposed to the openness of the shop) and freer, as we weren't surrounded by all of our stuff. It's the first time we've been in our bed (as opposed to a mattresses on the floor) in over a year and it felt surprisingly more comfortable to me, perhaps just because it feels more permanent. Of course, being in the cool, well-ventilated house was really nice too.


On Sunday, Tres did a bunch of much-needed work in the garden and I took the day off. I didn't want us to move a bunch of stuff in, as we still didn't have our certificate of occupancy and the building company technically didn't want us moving in until we had signed closing papers with them. At this point, I really didn't want to rock anyone's boat.


(technically) Week 3, or this week
Monday dawned with high hopes. The sprinkler installer and fire marshal came out in the morning and we passed the test! I waited a few hours for the information to get entered into the system, then called the city to find out about getting our certificate of occupancy. The woman there was extremely nice and checked with several of the involved parties, before regretting to inform me that the inspector hadn't entered us into the computer. We could have someone else come out the next day to re-inspect . . . After some consideration (what if they were pickier and gave us other corrections?), we decided to wait until he returns. We met with our construction manager that afternoon, filled out our closing documentation, and got the keys to our house. Wow, we were really done! Upon returning home, we brought up some essentials and made dinner in the house for the first time.


It feels fairly anti-climactic to be this close and just short our certificate of occupancy, but things should get resolved early next week and I'll try not to spend too much time worrying that someone will change their mind or that we'll get in trouble for moving in before it's technically allowed.  Ok, that's my story. I'm off to fill up the car and  start moving stuff up here.