Let's see, where did we leave off. First, the electric. Jeff came on Tuesday and replaced the plastic box for the stove outlet with a metal one. It was re-inspected on Wednesday and a green sticker replaced the red one. That will work.
Not working out so well was the rough building inspection. This was inspected Tuesday. We went to the house Tuesday night to find a gigantic orange sign on the garage wall. It appears the inspector took exception to the damage done to our silt fence and driveway stone when the sewer hookup was installed and informed us that if these were not fixed by Friday we would be prosecuted. How nice.
This led to the purchase of 200 feet of new silt fence at Lowe's (fortunately, only $30 per 100 feet, not as bad as we feared considering how much Darren Travis charged us for installing the original fence - that was mostly labor, it seems.) It also led to what has got to be the most unpleasant part of this project, which is calling out the subs for this mess. Paul left the message for Rich to ask him to bring enough stone to fix the driveway. Rich called back in the morning and got Paul on the phone. There was a brief argument, after which it still wasn't determined whether Midwest would supply the stone or not. We thought they would, but we guess we'll find out eventually.
Paul started to install the silt fence tonight but the head snapped off his Harbor Freight sledgehammer and it was too late in the day to exchange it. So that didn't work out so well.
Anyway, the building inspection. We went inside and found the orange sticker for a failed inspection. The note simply read "Will fax list". Oh great. Too many to write on the sticker?!?!
Paul called in the morning. Jeff, the building inspector, faxed the list. There were four items on it. Oh. That's not so bad.
Item 1 was the aforementioned erosion control problems. Item 2 was the fact that the fireplace vent wasn't installed. Hmmmm. What to do about that. Item 3 referenced the fact that some housewrap was missing on the north side of the house. Hmmmm again. Item 4 was that some plywood needed to be installed inside the ceiling of the front bedroom where it vaults up to make room for the window. Okay, that's definitely a Shawn thing.
We'll skip the sordid details about the many, many phone calls that were made Wednesday morning to the city, Midwest Plumbing, the carpenter, and Bob from President Homes to determine who would be responsible for what. It's too painful to recount and Paul would rather just forget the whole thing because it really wrecked his day. Suffice to say he wasted most of three hours dealing with this. Long story short, we needed to bring in a fireplace installer to take care of (2). The siding guys would handle (3) as they were siding the place where a little Tyvek had fallen off. And Shawn would do (4) either Friday or Saturday. A building company from Menomonee Falls will be installing the fireplace either Friday or Monday. Dale Anderson is the contact, and we'll talk to him again tomorrow after he reviews the plan Paul dropped off on his way home from work.
Okay. The main point of concern for us was that we were missing some Tyvek on the front of the house, and this was part of the reason the inspection had failed. Why this was a concern was that the siding crew started today. If the Tyvek wasn't inspected and found good, we were concerned the city would make us pull the siding guys off the job until the inspection was done, and that would have really been bad news. Paul left a message for Jeff the building inspector to ask about that, and finally on the way home at 4:30 Jeff called back to say that he would let the siding continue if the siding guys would fix the Tyvek problem. That was a HUGE relief. Now the problem is whether the fireplace and framing will be done in time for an inspection to be done in time for the insulation sub to start on Monday as scheduled. We think that doesn't look too good. Paul will have to call Allied Insulation tomorrow to have them wait two days, and then tell the drywall guy the same thing. So that isn't great but it is what it is. We'll just have to deal.
Anyway, it appears we shouldn't have the siding guys in yet anyway. They don't expect to be in until the power is on, so they didn't bring a generator. But even without electricity the crew started. They made some progress.
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Not bad at all. In fact, very nice. We should ask them how long it will take them to finish. They'll bring their generator tomorrow too.
Finally, after all this time we STILL have not heard from the cabinet designer. Paul expressed his feelings about this particular issue in a voice mail to Bob, who responded that they would be contacting Katie in the morning to have a status check with her. Interestingly, she e-mailed us late tonight to schedule a call to discuss the cabinets. :eyeroll: We told her to call at her convenience and the sooner the better.
Ah well. For all the misery, forward progress was made the last couple days. What else can you ask for.
In other news, we did go ahead and order tile for the shower floor from a bathroom store in West Allis. Kathy really like the tile patterns they had there. We'll have to see if we can use them. For all that's been going on, believe it or not we still don't know if the shower is approved or not.
Anyway. That will do. We have had quite enough of dealing with the house the last couple days, so here this note will end. Update tomorrow.
