The Fix

Our delay due to the structural items flagged in rough inspection will soon be over.

Our builder's Engineer is back from vacation and has studied both of the inspector's objections. The shear wall with the window through the post simply needs another post beside the window. That will drop the factor of safety from 4 to 2. Considering that in school we were taught that most commercial airliners fly with a factor of safety of between 1.2 and 1.5, both Laura and I are content too. New piers will be needed under the living room, as the Engineer can't mathematically prove that the floor is strong enough for the new ceiling load - and pointing out to an inspector that the house has held that load for 50+ years might lead to more delay. Thankfully, ours is a fixed price contract, so the only direct hit for these is in time.

The delay means we're unlikely to be back in the house by Christmas. John, our builder, does assure us that he could make arrangements so we can have a pretty credible party on Boxing Day (December 26th), even if we haven't moved in.

We brought Bell along as Job Dog today. She was a hoot. As soon as we took her out of the car, you could see the thought go through her brain, "Hey! I know this place!" And as soon as she stepped inside the construction fence, you could see another, "Hey! This is *my* place! I remember this!" She wiggled and smiled all through her tour today, including posing for this picture in the tack room

Beyond it being her turn to be Job Dog, Bell came along so we could confirm some colors, and coordinate with her (our black dogs match everything). One color match was stain for the front door (Cherry). Bell approved mightily of the sidelights on that door. The other color was for the guest bath vanity top. There we were picking between a Cane Sugar (White), Black and Tan, or Ember for a Kohler Thistledown vanity (if you wanted to look it up on their website). The colors on the web were tough to make out, so Lynn Hammerschmidt had located some color chips for us. Seeing those chips in the natural light of that room made it easy to choose. Wanna know which one?