DAY 495: WE PASSED!!!

Yep, this post calls for all caps: WE PASSED OUR FINAL INSPECTION!  We are now the proud owners of an occupancy permit! Brent and Cole spent their Saturday working on this list of 17 corrections.  They did a great job and got us passed!  (Doing the happy dance at our place...)

We have already started to move things into our new home. Tonight Brent and I went over and installed all of the closet rods.  We hope to be sleeping there on Saturday night!  WOW!  What a journey!

We hope to close on the loan in the next couple of days.

Time to roll up the sleeves and start packing!

We got our very beautiful euro shower door installed last Thursday.  I have to call them to come back though...it's making a funny noise when we open it to the interior. 

This past weekend the girlies and I cleaned while Brent and Cole were working on the corrections.  We are almost close to clean and can move lots of stuff in to our house.  

 I was able to go with the kidlettes to Abravanel Hall this afternoon to listen to Sierra play with TCO at a music festival.  Pretty girl in front of pretty Dale Chihuly glass:

DAY 490: 12:12 a.m.

Happy Wednesday!  We just walked through the door at 12:12 am.  It was a late one tonight.  Preparations were made all day long for the final inspection this afternoon at 4:00 p.m.  We hope that we are ready.  It will still require Brent to go work early in the morning and I will need to work throughout the day.

This is what our house looks like at midnight:

 I still have big piles of messes and projects out that need to be cleared away before 4:00 p.m.  I'll get there!

And for your viewing pleasure a good shot of our living room.  I ordered extra carpet for the stairs so we can freshen them up in a few years. I wasn't anticipating receiving pad also.  Now to find a place to store it...

 I am pleased with how the carpet turned out on the stairs.  This is a closer representation of the color of our carpet.

Blackhurst Carpet did our carpets and they were fantastic!  I had to reschedule the carpets multiple times and they NEVER complained or made a fuss. I highly recommend!

Our projects today included (but not limited to...): Install kitchen faucet/garbage disposal, install master faucet, install tub/shower hardware,towel/tp hardware, phone calling cabinet workers, calling for blinds, more drywall patches, prime drywall patches, start touch-up paint, install door springs, install heat vents, install duct covers, vacuuming, pulling up all the paper and exposing tile (finally!), installing missing lights, Lowes run, Home Depot run, plus Brent went to his full-time job and I got to enjoy parent teacher conferences!

Time for bed!  I'm up again in 5 hours!  It still feels like Groundhog Day (the movie). Wake-up, send kids off, go work at the house, greet kids/cook dinner, go back to house, go to bed, repeat.  But it is really feeling worth it! 

DAY 490: Seventeen

Seventeen is a very important number today--final inspection indicated that we have seventeen things to fix!  That's it!  And they are cinchy! We specifically worried that the entire house is not yet painted (don't be shocked when you come over) and that we have not done a final grade.  We have to wait until spring for both of those. 

 RELIEF.

The inspector said that we can even move things in to the house.  Just not stay there until the remedies are inspected and until we close with the bank.

Tonight my friend AnneMarie brought us pizza.  It was so nice not to think of what to feed the kidlettes plus it was something that they love.  But with the pizza came tears.  I am going to really miss my friends in my ward (church group).  That's the very unpleasant part about building a house. 

 Now I need to shift into moving gear from building gear.

DAY 488: Let The Carpet Begin

Today was a big day for us!  Carpet has begun!  It will be completely finished tomorrow. Our poor carpet company...we ordered it quickly in December thinking that the install would be first week of January.  Feb 4th turned out to be the magical day instead.   Here's a sneek peek (well, a sneek peek of the pad anyway...):

No shaggy, frise carpet for us.  Our carpet has a short pile with small squares that don't show well in a photo.  The color is brown/gray/taupe--but not in an old lady's wrinkly nylons sort of color--it's really pretty.  I agonized over the color choice.  Again, such a permanent and obvious thing.  I hope the color works with what we have already done.  I probably should have consulted with a designer but didn't. 

 After our FHE lesson http://www.lds.org/hf/fhe/welcome/0,16785,4210-1,00.html by Estee (she did great, lesson from The Friend on "You Can Be A Missionary Now") Brent and I ran back to the house.  I left to this (cheered my heart), big sister helping little sister practice:

Brent kept putting up bathroom hardware.  That takes longer than I expected. Measure, find the stud, put together tiny parts with the world's smallest screws, etc.  He also worked on more finish work plumbing.  I was back to scraping and vacuuming floors.  I needed to finish the upstairs floors since the carpet will go down today.  We did more touch-up paint but I still have oodles more to do.  Has anyone seen our drop cloth?  It walked off yesterday.

We are still waiting for cabinets to be finished.  This has by far been the longest and slowest relationship with a subcontractor.  We are weary of "we'll be there tomorrow" and then no show.  

We aren't quite finished so we moved the final inspection to Wednesday afternoon.  We must must must pass as soon as possible in order to close our loan and keep the unheard of interest rate that we locked in for 60 days.  60 days went by way to fast. Wish us good luck.

DAY 486: Found: Fantastic Pictures of Cole Welding

While searching for a completely unrelated photo, I found some great shots of Cole welding last year.  I think that Brent has done an awesome job teaching him!

Cole is welding bolts onto the massive beam that spans the ceiling of the garage basement. I wish that building a house for your family could count as an Eagle Project (ha).  That's his very most important project waiting to be finished as soon as we finish the house. 

DAY 486: Weekend of Work

Brent took work off yesterday so we could spend another two solid days on the house.  We're just piecing together the details: plumbing fixtures, installing sinks, finishing lights, Brent made another fence/railing, scrubbing, cleaning, touch up paint.

Today Cole and Brent did a lot of plumbing:

 

Now that this light is almost in we have only two more lights to do in the house.  Who am I kidding?  It's not we, it's either Cole or Brent that has two more lights to put up.  They are the electrical geniuses! 

 

I spent the entire morning with the girlies scrubbing all the concrete in the basement. Carpet goes in on Monday and Tuesday so today was crunch time to get it all cleaned.  The mudding phase of the house was very messy and we had mud puddles everywhere.  We first scrapped everything, then vacuumed, then used the bristle brush, then mopped it all with a sponge.  We had a good system. (And those who worked got a donut and a sucker)

Don't take my picture...

 No pictures...

 No, no pictures today I'm in work clothes...

 Really, no pictures...

 Aewwww, the sisters caught me...

 They are all cute even in work clothes.  I keep telling my girls that the right kind of boy will like them (and maybe like them even better) even in work clothes.  They worked HARD today.

 Sierra had a birthday shout Hurray!

 She passed her learner's test....

 And is now driving. 

 We are so tired.  Tired, tired, tired.  Last night Brent and I came home for dinner.  He said he was going downstairs to watch a little TV.  I felt kindof cold so I climbed into bed at 7:30 to warm-up.  We BOTH fell asleep.  I didn't wake-up until Brent came in the room at 10pm.  He had just woken-up.  We had big plans to go back to the house after dinner but sleep took over.  Almost done, almost done!

We are trying for a final inspection on Tuesday morning.  Cross your fingers for us!  We hope that the list won't be as gynormous as the list from the four way inspection.  I imagine that we will have many things to remedy but we're just getting so close!  (insert cheering here)