WE PASSED OUR FINAL INSPECTION & ARE MOVING IN!

Today the county building inspector arrived, passed us, and gave us a letter of occupancy (meaning we can start moving in)! On a funny note: When I arrived at the house to meet with the building inspector, Mr. "B," our alarm had been set off and was making tons of racket! I saw the building inspector's truck, went inside, shut off the alarm, then found Mr. B and someone else on our prow deck. The alarm company called to ask if they should send the police and I said no. They stated that the alarm had come from our crawl space area, but when I asked Mr. B if he had tried to check that out he denied it. (I suspect he did try to take a look and was embarrassed, but who knows? It may have just been my guardian angel welcoming me to our new home! )

YES, YES, YES! There will be champagne flowing tonight! We will start to move all of our stuff a bit at a time and will be all moved in by this Saturday night! Now we get to deal with "perming up" our mortgage, hopefully at a nice, LOW interest rate!

If any of you are interested in one final round of pictures, click on the link at the top right of this page under Pre-Construction and Post Construction Photos that says Pica Web Albums, then click on Post Construction Photos. I doubt if I will take any more pictures for a while - Ya'all come see us, ya hear?

Pat

PHASE FIVE: Weeks 37 & 38 - We're Done!?

Weeks of February 9th & 16th - Norman and I are both SO READY to move into our new home! We have worked very hard the past two weekends putting up closet shelving, touching up paint, hanging towel racks and more. We did have a small shock on Friday the 13th (no kidding) when we discovered that we had forgotten to put in a dryer vent! (We are SURE that must have been someone else's job, but can't find it in any one's contract!) Anyway, our HVAC guy Randy came to the rescue and got it installed in one day. I then called the county building inspector, hoping he could come last week so we could start to move in this weekend, but guess what? He's out of town so will do our inspection on Monday. Meanwhile, our friend John Malaspino has agreed to help us move and has loaned us a covered van to begin loading up things. I've packed up almost all of my kitchen stuff, cleaned out the attic, and gone through all of our drawers. We've given away an old leather couch and chair, bought new leather living room furniture, picked out new bar stools, ordered our dining room rug, and ordered wood Levilor horizontal blinds for the great room and master bath. Oh, and we have also seen a resurgence of our ladybug friends. I am told that everyone up here has them and just periodically suck them up with a vacuum cleaner as they are not easily killed. They don't harm the home or reproduce; they just visit for the winter from around November until April. Now that I've learned this, I notice them in all of our friends' houses. Oh, well, they are sort of cute I guess.

I've taken one last round of pictures and will attach a link so you can watch a slide show. Assuming we pass our building inspection tomorrow, we will begin moving in this week, finally in by Saturday. We still haven't put together our hot tub, put down a walkway from the driveway to the house, built a fence for the dogs, or stained our decks, rails, and spindles, but all of those things will be done eventually!

PHASE FIVE: Week 36 - We Have HEAT!

Week of February 2ND - We finally passed our electrical inspection and now have heat. It was was wonderful to haul outside our two kerosene heaters and turn on the heat pump. We swept out the inside of the house, turned all the lights, and thoroughly enjoyed the way everything looks. The guys came back for a few hours to fix the tile and rehang some door knobs. We also had King's Tree Service grind down four stumps in our new turnaround and a few elsewhere, and cut down a pine tree that we've been concerned about as it leans towards our house (and in an ice storm could easily fall on it). Here's what is left before the building inspector can come: 1) Cover the hot tub hole (we won't have time to assemble it until after we move in); 2) Finish our closets (we've ordered a nice wooden closet system for our walk-in closet and will be hanging wooden shelves & racks); and 3) Insulate some plumbing areas in the bathrooms and kitchen. None of this will be finished for a week or so as the closet system has to come in and Norman is going to be out of town for three days, including most of this weekend. The guys doing our interior work also have to do a few more minor things such as touching up the paint, adding trim to kitchen backsplash, etc, but they are busy on another job right now and have not returned my phone call of two days ago. Here's the agenda for the next week: 1) Hang mirrors, towel and toilet racks, switch over our phone and Internet so our alarm system can be put in place (scheduled for next Tuesday and Wednesday), finish adding gravel and crusher run to the driveway (that is supposed to begin today), get prices on moving charges, and begin cleaning the house, an arduous task indeed (which will fall mainly to yours truly).