The journey of building our new home!: 7.10.2018

Talk about a crazy day! But more "coincidences" today on our journey - here's a picture from the blog on July 10, 2014, when we received our official Building Permit...

How crazy is it that we had our Occupancy inspection today - and passed? Four years to the day - amazing!

I'll start from the beginning of the day...

Jim already had an appointment for the gas company to come out late morning and bring our tanks and get the gas hooked up. Since Jim hadn't been able to get in touch with the building inspector yesterday, he called him in the morning to set up an appointment for the afternoon - Jerry said he would be out about 2:30.

The guy from the gas company got to the carriage house about 10:30.

He had to set the outriggers on the truck and then started getting ready to bring the tanks down.

Getting the first one on the crane and lifted up...

Second one up in the air...

Setting it into place...

All done! Okay, because we are X-File geeks, there was an episode where Scully, after much deliberation, admits to Mulder that she, like him, sees a resemblance between a nearby propane tank and a "fat, little, white Nazi storm trooper." While it's probably politically incorrect, that's what we're calling our new tanks.

Time to start connecting everything up - he took off Jim's pressure gauge and started hooking up the tanks.

Connecting the two tanks together...

Starting to hook up the copper gas line...

Connecting it to Jim's pipe...

Checking for leaks. He had this special tool that can precisely see if there is a leak - Jim wants to see if he can get one.

Speaking of leaks - huge news for Jim that there was no leaking in any of his pipe connections into the furnace - yay!!!

Once everything was hooked up, time to go inside and turn on the furnace. While Jim had run the furnace through a trial, it's obviously very different when there's gas involved. They couldn't make the furnace ignite. The guy said that he had to see the furnace working before he could leave - otherwise, he had to "red tag" it and come back another day (obviously at our expense). A red tag on the furnace would definitely not be a good sign for the building inspector to see either. Finally, Jim figured out that the furnace was looking for an outside sensor, which we don't have yet. Once Jim changed that setting, things started working and we got to see how quickly it heated up. There's still a setting somewhere that isn't allowing the domestic hot water to work, but again, that's just a minor setting. The furnace works, the gas company signed off on all the paperwork and left!

Jim barely had time to catch his breath and eat his lunch before it was time for the building inspector. He was impressed that Jim had everything done but of course there's always something with building inspectors. He told Jim that the metal-shop side of the new fire wall had to be taped and we needed spring hinges on that door. Neither of those things were specified before, but the inspector said he wasn't going to hold up occupancy for that - halleluiah! So, he said we passed and could come to pick up our occupancy certificate tomorrow! We'll definitely take a picture with our completed certificate tomorrow but we couldn't be any more ecstatic! Four years of hard work culminated in getting this certificate and validation. Plus, now we don't have to pay for another extension on our building permit and we are no longer under anyone's time constraints but our own. We still have lots to do but now we can focus on what needs to be done so we can move in!

Our brains were buzzing all afternoon, but Jim still managed to get lots done. He had to dig through his wood stores to find more oak and then glued up some pieces to make more door sills.