Copper Overkill

Final check has been paid - the garage is ours! Spent the last week and a half planning, getting the electrical permits, and starting the wiring. I decided to bring in an electrician to work with me on the main subpanel feed to the garage, but that may turn out to be more headache than it was worth. Had my mom visiting this last week and we have been working on getting most of the branch circuits wired in - up to where the panel should soon be installed (if I can get the electrician to show back up with my panel!). Should be just a couple more nights to get the electrical rough-in done. I think we probably went overkill with lights, switches, and outlets, but I'd rather do too many rather than too few!

I did hit an unfortunate snag, however. Evidently the county has been seeing lots of folks self-finish "unfinished storage" spaces, so they will not allow me to wire my upstairs space with anything but a single outlet and 2 ceiling lights. My intent was to use this partly as an extended workshop space, and in retrospect, I should have had that space labeled as workshop space on my original building permit, as I may need to pull a new full building permit to re-classify that space. For now, I'm just going with it until we know if/when we will do a full finish-out of the space. Of course, this is all after the building inspector made us do a full "proper", finished stairway. C'est la vie.

My father-in-law came over this weekend and finished up most of the trim painting. I've just got a small area between the roof lines left to do and that part will be done too. I think I'll wait 'till cooler weather, though!

Glad to be done with THAT ladder

I've learned something about myself. I don't mind being on ladders. I don't mind being on roofs. But I can really do without having to be on ladders that are on roofs.

Thanks to Gary, who ended up doing most of the real work while I held the ladder (I am clearly NOT a professional painter and tend to operate at something akin to a snails pace), we got the remainder of the wall above the jut-out painted today, along with the trim boards along that roofline. I need to paint the window trim on that wall yet, but can do that part without a ladder. Glad to have the worst of that behind us now.... next time I'll seriously be considering renting a boom truck/trailer.

Final Passed!

Inspector had a couple comments (didn't like my toe boards still screwed to the roof on the jut-out that I left up there when painting), but was ok otherwise and passed the garage final inspection for us. Garage door guy is coming back Monday to lower the spring on the high lift an inch and a half so we can sheetrock at some point later without having to do excessive boxing into the ceiling cavity. The good news, for the garage door guy anyway, is that we decided to keep these garage door window panels - after much deliberation (and those that know me know that I did an exhaustive comparison of my options) we think these are sorta cool looking. Gutters will be installed toward the beginning of next week as well. Just have a bit more painting to finish up this weekend, and then we can start electrical work.

The end is near!

Heights

Only when you climb a ladder just to get you high enough to get on another ladder, does the height really come into picture.














And here's what she looks like (admittedly less picture perfect with the overspray on the trimwork, but that will be remedied soon). These actually weren't the windows we were "supposed" to get - but I sort of like the look. Need to decide whether to have them swap the panels out with a "standard" 4-window option which was what we were going for.

Caulking finished up this morning, a few pavers out the back door to make the step down more within code, and all the locks have been installed. I think we're ready for the final inspection!

The list is getting shorter

The list of stuff left to do is getting shorter. Much shorter.

The crew came back and (as promised) finished up the boxing and siding work in a day. Except for garage doors, we are now officially dried in! Garage doors arrive late next week, so now it's just a few "punch-list" type items to take care of in the next week and we're mostly done. With the contractor's part at least.

I've been able to finish the exterior priming over the last couple nights, so we no longer have any exposed wood surfaces. Need to get the caulking done before we can get a C/O, but not a whole lot left to do for that.

Now to figure out the details for electrical....