Yeah, well.

We have a new inspector on our project. This shouldn't surprise me, considering that our permits were issued in 2006, and yet it does. Our last inspector was great. He was very nice. He liked the design. He only failed one thing and came back the same day to approve it when it was fixed. Perhaps I should find fault in his failure to find fault in things our previous contractors did, since they were such total f* ups and maybe, just maybe, if he'd looked at the drain tile before it was covered up with dirt and said, "Uh, you know, this isn't going to work," then he might have saved us thousands of dollars.

So maybe I should be happy about this new inspector, because boy is he an eager beaver. He has come over to inspect things twice already - despite the fact that we haven't called him to inspect anything and haven't been there to explain anything. The reason for our absence being that nothing, besides the sump pump (coming attraction!), has warranted an inspection, and the way this works is: (A) I get a permit; (B) I do some work; (C) I Call for an Inspection; (D) Inspector Comes to Inspect; (E) Repeat symbol from B to D ad nauseum until done. This guy thinks the song goes A, D, D, which is appropriate since it seems he isn't really paying attention to either the way the song is supposed to go and is oblivious to the fact that we haven't hit the B note much lately. This is due to the fact that B is really a trill that goes Money-Work-Money-Work-Money-Work.

Anyway, despite his enthusiasm for his work, I just can't get excited to come home and find inspection notices shoved in the edge of our front door that say "Fail" repeatedly. Of course it's going to fail - it isn't done! That's why we haven't called you to come inspect!

But the one that really gets me:

Inspection: Outdoor Sink and Hose Bibb

Result: Fail

Reason: Not According To Plan.

Yeah, well, on that basis...

What The Hell I Was Thinking (Part 3: The Kitchen/Dining Remodel)

Another Era of the Hadean Age was the Kitchen/Dining Remodel, which commenced as soon as the bathroom was complete. This Era started with the above-documented world - that is grease on the walls and light fixtures, by the way. I wish I could also give you a scratch and sniff sticker for that dishwasher and sink cabinet, which contained, respectively, the most disgusting stagnant water & green slime, and moldy, semi-dissolved particleboard with about fifty dead roaches. As I mentioned earlier, the sink drain wasn't even connected to the waste stack anymore - water from the sink just drained straight into the cabinet and through the floor.

The dining room, which is next to the kitchen, looked like this in its original state:

Don't you just love the floor? As far as I can tell, it was 7 years worth of uncleaned dirt. I scrubbed the floor for a few days and although the top layer came up, the wood was permanently stained. Being no fan of parquet floors, it wasn't a big loss to me - I just painted the floor "Wheat" which brightened things considerably.

So the first phase of the Kitchen/Dining Remodel Era was demolition, which took a couple of weekends and involved roping my dad and another friend to take that vile stove and dishwasher out to the curb for pickup. Bless you City of Alexandria for your free Special Item Trash Pickup! Here are a couple of demo shots. This is the kitchen stove area before and during demo:


This is the kitchen from the back door and looking to the dining room during demo:


And here's the view from the dining room during demo (roughly pasted together):

And then for The Surprise, because every Era had a Special Surprise: I hadn't thought anything was behind the kitchen/dining room wall, but I was oh-so-wrong. My hammer hit the drywall with a menacing thunk instead of a satisfying punch. When I was able to pull out enough of the wall to see what the problem was, to my horror not only were there two ducts heading upstairs, but they were covered with asbestos tape:

I think people could probably hear my cursing for blocks.

I carefully took out the rest of the wall wearing a NIOSH mask, double wrapped the ducts with heavy duty garbage bags, and started calling the asebestos remediation companies. And so, this was the Kitchen/Dining Era for 6.5 months - granted, lacking a kitchen for 7 months is not ideal, but it was a vast improvement over its original state: