Week 23 Schedule

Last week was one of the most difficult and stressful weeks of my life…but (hopefully) it will all be worth it. We got our electrical, plumbing and HVAC systems ready for final inspections early in the week, and we passed our HVAC and Plumbing inspections without much issue — but the electrical inspection didn’t go so well. I don’t want to go into too many details, as my dealings with my county building inspectors have for-the-most-part been awesome (most of the inspectors here are nicer and more reasonable than anywhere in the country we’ve worked), but suffice it to say that there was one inspector who didn’t want to make it easy for us to finish our house. In the end, he did the right thing (we were completely within code and not passing us would have just been punitive), but it took all week to finally get approval for our electrical final and he made it difficult the entire way.

Long story short, we’ve now passed our Electrical, Plumbing, HVAC and Sprinkler Final Inspections, and only the Final Building Inspection remains. We actually had the building inspector do the final building inspection last week, but I didn’t realize that we needed the entire exterior completed in order to pass that inspection. We failed the Final Building Inspection because the exterior wasn’t complete, but the inspector walked the interior and found no issues — basically, we just need to add a handrail to the basement areaway, finish the driveway and finish seeding/strawing the yard in order to pass our final.

We also finished our bio-retention pond last week…though our stormwater management inspector gave us approval to hold off planting until Spring (it’s very difficult to find the specified plants this time of year, and they likely wouldn’t survive if we planted now). Once the bio-retention pond was completed, we had our bobcat guy come in and grade the lot, so our final grading is completed. And we completed some lingering issues like replacing the small amount of siding that we had to remove to install a handrail and installing the final downspout on the front porch.

The one big thing we didn’t accomplish was getting the driveway installed. If we can do that during the beginning of this week, I think we should be good to get into the house for Thanksgiving — though we need the weather to cooperate on that, as well as the cooperation of our driveway contractor. We also have a few other exterior things to finish up. On the interior, we’ll start refinishing the hardwoods this week — they won’t be completed until two days before Thanksgiving, but hopefully we’ll have our occupancy approval by then.

Here’s a detailed breakdown of the schedule for this week:

1. Paint Touch-Ups: On Monday, our painters will be back to do some paint touch-ups around the house.
2. Install Handrail: On Monday, I’ll install a handrail down the exterior areaway stairs.
3. Haul Some Dirt: On Monday, we’ll have to remove a couple more dumptrucks worth of dirt from the site. This is the dirt that was removed during final grading and preparation for the driveway.
4. Move Some Other Dirt: On Monday, we have a couple guys coming to move a bunch of dirt under our rear deck/porch. There’s been a lot of settling of dirt under there, and water just sits in a big pool next to the foundation every time it rains. We can’t get any equipment under there, so we just need to have a couple guys shoveling for a day.
5. Cleaning: On Tuesday, we’ll hopefully be able to get our cleaner into the house to clean.
6. Install Driveway: On Tuesday, weather permitting, we’ll get our asphalt driveway installed.
7. Seeding/Strawing: On Tuesday, weather permitting, our landscaper will put down seed and straw around the property.
8. Finish Hardwoods: On Wednesday, our hardwood company will sand the floors. From Thursday through Monday they’ll stain and polyurethane the floors several times.
9. Final Location Survey: On Wednesday, assuming we got the driveway installed by then, our surveyors will be out to do a final location survey for the property.
10. Grading Certification: On Wednesday, assuming we got the driveway installed by then, our surveyors will be out to do a final grading survey to certify that we graded to our site plan.
11. Stormwater Management Certification: On Wednesday, assuming we got the driveway installed by then, our surveyors will be out to do a final stormwater management survey to certify that we installed our bio-retention pond per plan.
12. Final Building Inspection: On Thursday, assuming we got the driveway installed and the yard seeded/strawed, we’ll get our Final Building Inspection. If we can pass this, we should be allowed to move into the house (though we won’t be able to until the following week due to the hardwood floors being finished).
13. Final Grading Inspection: Should everything else go perfectly, on Friday we’d get our final grading inspection. If we pass this, and assuming everything else goes well, I *believe* this is the final requirement by the County, and will allow us to get our Certificate of Completion. Though I’ll have to verify that I haven’t missed anything.

At this point, I’m cautiously optimistic that we’ll get approval to occupy the property this week, and worst case, we should get it the beginning of the following week. Which means we will hopefully make our Thanksgiving goal. I’d also love to have all exterior approvals and certifications completed as well this week or early next week, which would allow us to get our Certificate of Completion before Thanksgiving as well.

Even so, we still have some additional work in the two days before Thanksgiving — installing mini-blinds, cleaning, some final paint/sheetrock touchups, getting the glass for our master shower installed, getting our appliances installed, etc. So, things won’t slow down just because we have our final approvals…