First Inspection Post-"Lawsuit"

David asked the inspector to inspect the hurricane straps since they will be covered by the siding. As we expected (and hoped), the inspector did not give us a hard time "just because". David will need to add some straps around the door and window framing upstairs, and there needs to be brackets on the back porch pilings. The inspector did not comment on the fact that the those pilings (4x4) are way undersized for how long they are!

The siding guy's 1.5 to 2 weeks are up on Monday. My guess is that he is still another week or two out. I'll probably wait until next Friday to call him.

David has been working electrical - all the boxes for the under-house lights are in. We are still getting quotes on AC. We have two more to get and then we'll make our decision. David is aiming for the 4th of July to get the rough-in inspection. Once that's done, we can start sheetrock.

Help! I need intervention!

David asked me tonight if we were building the space shuttle. Apparently I've bought too many lights. But he's the one that thinks we need three lights in the kitchen, each with 3 bulbs! Here are two of the three lights (without the glass). They are hanging from the trusses with bungie chords while we argue over whether they should be over the walking space as general light (me) or bunched over the island as task lights (David).

Having no idea what we wanted when we started looking at the lights, and the difficulty of looking at the lights in boxes, has resulted in numerous trips to Hudsons (Gulfport, Gautier, and a wild goose chase to Mobile). And just when I think I am done, I think of a place I can put that "xyz" light. The selection is somewhat limited, but there are only 6 or so brands, so we have been able to find some "families" of lights. It's probably costing 50% more to get lights 4x nicer than what we would have! (Well, except for the ten $13 lights I bought for under the house on sale for $5.)

Here is one impulse buy - Minka Lavery Aston Court. We have 4 matching wall sconces for the 1/2 bath and stairs. We will probably order 1 more on-line.



















We didn't plan the carriage lights in time - they really should go to the side of the parking openings (can't have garage doors, part of our "enclosure" battle). It would mess up the stucco, so they'll be mounted centered over the openings. These were an impulse buy during lunch a couple of weeks ago. And will cost a bit since we decided to get matching lights for the front door. But wait, on another impulse trip to the Gautier Hudsons today, I found a smaller version of the light, so now we only need to buy 1!


This is the light I went for - Susan (my sister-in-law) gave us the good advice to match the glass color throughout. But we ended up with beige in the front entry and white alabaster in the kitchen. So what to put over the dining room table? Why, stained glass, of course! My thinking is that it is different enough from the beige and the white to not clash with either. Ok, so it will be an eclectic house, but that suits us.

As for the rest of the house - David is finally working on electrical. I think most of the framing mistakes have been fixed. And our decking arrived yesterday - gotta love the high tech delivery. Luckily none of the boards broke.

I'm not sure how the pictures will look in this post - they look one way when I compose & preview, and totally different when it's posted. Oh well, you get the picture! :)

Gotta go - I just remembered that there's a Hudson's in Picayune. Maybe they'll have that other carriage light, or the funky vanity light that will match the master bath lights...........

Dumbwaiter, 1/2 price lights

The dumbwaiter is in and wired. There's still a little work to do on the switches, but it goes up and down! It's a nice set-up, and went in smoothly. I don't want to know how David got the shaft sheetrocked - it would probably give me nightmares!

We picked out the soffit - we had gone to Mobile to order the underside of the porches; we want to use a baby blue vinyl beadboard. The blue beadboard still hasn't entered production, but we also looked at the T3 and T4 soffit. The T3 (3") looks a little better than the T4 (4"), and will only cost an extra $100. Unfortunately, nobody carries it locally, so we are trying to be accurate on the quantity. We don't want to order more than we'll use, but we don't want to run out. The installer had given us the quantity for the T4 soffit, which comes in 12" widths, so we were trying to convert it to the T3, which comes in 10" widths. The numbers did not work out until I realized that the installer must have figured on 10' lengths, where they actually come in 12' lengths. That's been par for the course with this guy - everything he says comes in 10' lengths comes in 12', and everything he says are 12' turn out to be 10'!

Ordering screws for the siding turned out to be much more of a challenge than I ever expected. The installer specified wafer head screws, w/nibs on the heads, 1 1/4" long. They actually need to be 1 1/2" to 2" long to catch the plastic webs in the ICF blocks. Joe's website (the Nudura ICF supplier) listed a particular screw that supposedly works well. But when Joe priced them, they came out to $70/1000, which would have cost almost $500. I called a local bolt and screw supply store, and they had a 1 5/8" screw specifically for hardie siding, but they were countersunk, not wafer heads. The installer said that he has better luck with the flat heads over the countersunk. So back to the supply store, who located two boxes of 5000 screws that should match the ones that Joe found, for $55/1000. I ordered 1 box, and they said they would hold the other box in case 5000 screws aren't enough.

The siding installer is still a week out, but we should have it done by the end of the month.

Dana told us about a sale at Hudson's Salvage Store - they had inventory from a lighting supply store that had gone out of business. All lights were half off, but all the lights were in their boxes, or in some cases out of their boxes! We spent many hours (which was fun with the girls, not!) and ended up spending $800. Probably none of it was what we would have chosen if we were in a lighting store, but we're not super picky about lights so they should work out fine. For example - we bought the ceiling fans for the back porch. They are 3-blade, satin nickle, and a modern design. I think they'll look nice, but I think David would have preferred a 4 or 5 blade, more conventional, bronze fan. But at $280 per fan retail, getting them for $140 each was a good deal.