It’s Time to Get Moving!

What a week it has been! I’ll give you the tl:dr version up front, because I know some of you just want to know how this week’s inspections went. Well…

As of today… We have occupancy!!

Back in March of this year we were clearing trees and branches. In April we closed on the construction loan and we broke ground in May. All along we had in mind that we hoped to be in by Christmas. This weekend we will have made that goal with 2 weeks to get in and get ready for the holidays!

This week started with an electrical final inspection, which I only partially passed. There were a few things that I thought were optional, like in-use covers for the outdoor outlets. It turns out… no, those are required. On Sunday while cleaning up in the kitchen I looked at the end of the peninsula and I thought, I should really put an outlet right there. The inspector apparently agrees, because he said I was required to put one there.

We finished up the list of items Monday night and passed the reinspection on Tuesday, along with the insulation inspection for the basement and attic. Both of those went smoothly. I had scheduled a plumbing inspection for tuesday also, but somehow that one got missed by the people doing the scheduling so they didn’t show up. We rescheduled plumbing for this afternoon, along with mechanical and final. Today I had 3 inspectors all at once poking around at all those things. I ended up getting a full approval for plumbing, and partials for mechanical and final.

The mechanical partial approval was to be expected, since my HVAC guys aren’t actually finished yet. We got bumped from their schedule a couple times and they are now trying to play catch up. They will be wrapped up by the end of the week, and we’ll be able to get that crossed off the list.

I still have a fair bit of trim to finish up and a few other details, but for the final inspection all I’m missing are some handrails on the front steps and guardrails on the back slider doors until I can get a deck or something built.

Oh, and apparently you’re also supposed to have tempered glass if you have a window near a bathtub, which we do. So, oops on that one. They tell me there’s a plastic film you can put on the window that will do the same job, so I just need to track some of that down.

While I’m working on those things, I have a temporary certificate of occupancy. Once I have those things in place we’ll be able to get the final and be all done with inspections! Now, that’s an exciting prospect.

Once we are done with our building permit, we’ll be able to start another one so we can put more bedrooms in the basement. The main floor of the house only has 9 bedrooms, so that’s not going to cut it for very long!

The last month has been kind of a blur. The closer we had gotten to finishing the more pressure there has been to try to finish. One of the good things about this part of the project is that the house has become livable recently, so it’s a lot easier to bring kids along with us. In the last month we got a little bit of furniture, the kitchen has come together, and the bathrooms have gotten plumbed in and are working. No more stopping work and bringing a child to Wesco every time they have to go to the bathroom!

We put 2 of the countertops in on Thanksgiving morning, just in time to have Thanksgiving dinner in the new kitchen! The double ovens make a huge difference when preparing that much food! One of the nights we were at the house with all the kids we had frozen pizzas for dinner, and we cooked 8 of them at one time. It’s such a time saver to cook them all at once instead of trying to feed kids in shifts!

There are so many things that have come together to make this dream possible, and we’re so grateful for everyone who has helped and served and contributed to make it a reality. There are many evenings I finish working on a project at the house and before I leave for the night I just look around in amazement.

We actually still have a long way to go. There are lots of details to finish in this phase 1, and phase 2 (the basement) actually needs to get underway sooner than later. There are reasons for that, and I’ll try to share some of them soon.

There are a lot of details and lessons that I’m hoping to share here in this space, and one of these days I’ll put the house projects aside long enough to share them with you all.

Also – I’m thinking about putting together a virtual tour soon that I can share here, so look out for that. Possibly an open house also to be able to see the whole project in person.

We’re going to start the process of moving into the new house this weekend, taking it kind of one day at a time. We will move things up as we need them rather than trying to do a big moving day all at once.

This story is far from over. In many ways it is just finally getting started.

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