Lighting, puts the Spotlight on Great Space

The last two inspections for the addition are tuesday, March 4th. They are plumbing final and building final. I nearly fainted on Wednesday when I called to schedule all the finals and was told that I needed an insulation inspection. WHAT!!! They had already sheetrocked without calling an insulation inspection- so all the sheetrock would have had to come off and be redone, mudded and sanded IF I didn't convince someone that I should be able to pass without an insulation inspection.

I called back after pulling my jaw off the floor and got the nice lady at the permit office. I explained that my addition was on the inside of the house with no walls touching the exterior so there should be no need for an insulation inspection. I didn't mention that had no idea what I was talking about. She agreed with me and said, "I'll just delete that inspection from the system." Holy cow. Whahoo! Thank goodness for the delete button.

Wednesday when the electrician was finishing up his part for the addition, he installed three of the eleven light fixtures that he will eventually install. Those couple of fixtures make such an amazing difference. One could be the biggest lighting fixture difference of all time as the one taken down and to the trash was gold wires simlar to a coat hanger thickness that at one time had fake crystals or something hanging from it- but now just looked ripe to take the eye out of a tall person. Ugh. I'm really excited about a neat little pendant light I picked up at lowes today from the Antique Roadshow collection. There is a breakfast nook that currently doesn't stand out on it's own but is a great little space. I hope this fixture will help highlight the area.

In the kitchen and in the upstairs hall were horid ceiling fans with all the blades pulled out. ?!?! Just weird stuff. Speaking of weird stuff in a foreclosure...I showed David one that had no lie about 100 turds thrown throughout the house. Literally we wiped our feet after leaving. Enough getting sidetracked, we have a lot going on next week.

Here's the rundown of things Owen and I will be keeping an eye on next week: Carpet install in master, granite counter install, rest of lighting fixtures, sink and shower faucet install in master addition...at some point we'll need to bring over all the stainless appliances that are patiently waiting in our garage. We haven't purchased any staging yet, except a rug for the dining room. Did I mention that less than half the house is painted and all exterior door handles need to be exchanged for their new hardware as well as four other interior doors. Speaking of the new interior doors, I got them and the replacement window for the crawl space at a salvage place for $65. The door handles and hinges cost more than the doors. Lastly, Andy will be replacing two rows of tile that he pulled up during demo of the original cabinets and possibly he will do something with a chimney that he opened which had been bricked up.

Painting is slow going as the baseboards started out dark brown, green and blue. This past Wednesday I spent all day putting the second coat of white on the base boards and doorways. Tomorrow, after Abby's 1st soccer game, I'm going to paint something that makes a bigger difference- like the walls of the study, kitchen or maybe the master.

On the more done side of things- the cabinets are installed, the floors are done and beautiful, the roof, exterior paint, landscaping(56 shrubs planted, 110 bags of leaves raked and 15 bales of straw laid), hvac and new deck stairs are done. Also, I got a letter in the mail today stating that we got conditional approval for the Historic tax credit program. This would give us back 30% of rehab money spent in the form of tax credits. The condition is that they approve of the type of doors that we possibly install for the exterior. We no longer have any desire to replace exterior doors so updating the commission on that fact- hopefully will put us in the possition to mail them pictures of all the finished work to our "certification of rehab" document that insures the tax credits.

Lots going on. Tuesday, I meet with a framer to give me a quote for adding a 2nd story to a house that we really like in Belmont. :) So just as I'm within a week or so away from wrapping the current rehab up- our next victum...er rehab might already be in the cross hairs. Below on the left is a picture of the house currently. After we paint and get the counters installed in the kitchen- I'll post some interior pictures. The floors will make you drool.