win-ders!

[oh yeah, love that texan twang!]

so obviously the big topic of yesterday was the new windows. so heres a "small" update on yesterday...

when i last left you the guys were working on the windows and id gotten my truck stuck after dropping karen off at work and id discovered my own little ice-wonderland.

well after i finished blogging the guys were all but finished with the upstairs and had moved downstairs. so i went up to take some pictures, but much to my dismay, all of the pictures were turning out like crap. it was so bright outside, especially with the sun reflecting off all the snow, that everything was crazy back-lit and silhouetted. and the flash only seemed to make matters worse. so i resigned myself to waiting till dark out to get the rest of the pictures.

not long after id gotten back downstairs there was a knock at the door [which was hard to hear on account of the hammering and drilling] and one of the installers hollered at me that there was a guy at the door. confused, i went to answer and a nice gentleman greeted me and asked if i needed a plumbing inspection. hot damn! id totally forgotten to call them that morning in all the excitement of the windows, luckily id attempted to schedule in advance and here he was! im not sure if ive mentioned this part before, so ill take a quick side-step to fill you in.

[inspections]

well as karen and i decided to get the windows put in we also decided it was time to go about getting home owners insurance if at all possible. so last week id made a phone call to our insurance agent and discussed the matter with him, and he seemed happy to work with us, but there was no way of getting around that thorn thats been in our side from day one... you guessed it, the certificate of occupancy. we'd been trying to get all the work done necessary to get the c.o.o. [lol!] but at this point we'd really been putting off contacting the city building inspections office because well... we hadnt exactly done everything legit and we were afraid it was going to bite us in the ass. now before you think poorly of me, we didnt really know either way how it was going to go, so it wasnt like we were attempting to be shady. let me explain... the wall for starters, well when we hired the masons out to do the wall we discussed getting a permit and they told us that the only reason we'd need a permit is in case the inspector was out while they were working and wanted to see it. since we were getting it done as a weekend job and it wasnt going to take more than that weekend [and the inspectors dont normally just drive around on the weekends looking for people out doing masonry work] we shouldnt have anything to worry about. now i specifically asked him if there was going to be an issue with the c.o.o. and he said as far as he knew there wouldnt be, as long as the work was done correctly they shouldnt care one way or the other about a permit. second was the plumber. when we hired the plumber we discussed permits yet again. after our discussion he formed me that most likely we would need 1 to 2 permits depending on the situation, but he was going to see if he could get around them by doing things a little differently but he'd let me know. i told him that it was fine with me, but that if he needed to pull one, go for it, i didnt mind paying for it... and thats the last i heard about it. so getting back to last week [and now that we're clear that i did ask my contractors up front about permits] after talking to the insurance agent i had no choice but to call my guy at the city building office. dont get me wrong hes a really nice guy [as many of you will remember from when i previously spoke about him in regards to us having the house barricaded oh so many eons ago...] and totally willing to work with me, i was just dreading the conversation because i didnt know how it was going to go. 

well sure enough i get him on the phone and the first thing he does is pull up our file on the computer and i hear "well, weve got a problem. im not showing any permits here." ef. so i discussed with him the situation and after talking through everything and being the nice guy he is, he said he had no problem working with me to get the permits and get the certificate of occupancy afterward. so he gave me the number of the inspectors office and told me to call my contractors and to call him back when i got my ducks in a row. all ill say is that im damn lucky, apparently there were some pretty nice fines i could have incurred, but he said this sort of thing happens all the time and as long as he can see that im trying to work with him, he'll let all that stuff slide and we'll get it done. [did i mention NICE guy?!] 

well after that conversation i called my contractors up and discussed the options with them. the mason was clueless... he didnt really know anything about permits and said he'd try to help me out if there was no other option, but he didnt know how much help hed be... great. the plumber was more helpful, he said that from our conversation he felt like i didnt want him to pull a permit, and apparently there was some miscommunication. but it was no big deal to him, hed get a permit pulled and call an inspector and let me know. well that was good news [and a segue to the inspector showing up] so i still had an issue with the masonry permit and wasnt sure what to do there and went ahead and called the inspectors office to ask them. well again i talked to a really nice guy, he gave me all the info i needed and it turns out i can pull the permit for the masonry work myself, so theres no problem at all. all i have to do is go down to their office and fill out the paperwork and we're good to go on that one, theyll schedule an inspection of the work, and unless they have a problem with what they see, we should be in business for getting the c.o.o.

so fast forward to this week, monday. we get home after work and i find a notice that the plumbing inspector had been by and that i need to call his office. well crap, the plumber never told me he scheduled a time for him to come out, so obviously he couldnt get in to see anything. well i called him up and discussed the issue and thats when we attempted to schedule for thursday morning. [i say attempted because he said he couldnt guarantee any appointments and this was obviously before the winter storm disaster blew through town...]

[fast forward to the present]

so when i saw him at the house i was elated! i welcomed him in and he got right to it. we went down into the basement, i showed him the hot water heater [the permit in question was for a new hot water heater - in you get a new one, you need a permit. so just keep that in mind if youre thinking about getting one. also, if you do any work related tot he main waterline - you need a permit. somehow my plumber got around that one i guess...] he went through his check list quickly and 5 minutes later he wrote out a form, put a sticker on my hot water heater and told me to have a nice day. that was it. we got our permit. pretty damn painless, lol! so now i just have to get around to pulling that permit for the masonry and schedule that inspector and we'll really be in good shape, eh? 

anyway, after the inspector left it was nearing 11:30 and the window guys were making some progress so i decided i better see about getting my truck un-stuck so i could get to work later. i went out and did some rocking for a while, forward, reverse, repeat. it moved a little here and there, then eventually i finally got a little traction and moved laterally about 10 ft, at which point i was stuck again and getting ever closer to that snow pile with the chewy toyota center [yummy... heh]. well at this point i was now half in middle of the road, half on the side of the road turned nearly perpendicular to the curb and not moving. i started the process over again, when my favorite neighbors come out to investigate, haha. theyd heard me working at it [ive got a v8 engine, lol, its not quite when it revs... although just the 2wd obviously, heh] and decided to see if they could help. and not long after they showed up, the window guys had stopped working and come to lend a hand as well. so tracy jumped in the front seat [the smallest and lightest of us all] and the rest of us got in back and started pushing and she tried to go forward. at first we made no progress, so we told her to try and reverse a little so she could get some momentum. and it worked! she backed up a little, then we all pushed as she got about 6 inches of momentum, and thats all it took! she finally was able to get it over the snowbank and onto the street! so that was a small victory. =] we got sahara out and parked in a much better location and then i went back in to watch the window guys install the remaining windows and help resolve any problems that may arise.

im happy to report, that there werent really any problems. haha. the only one we did face was when they first got there and they told me that theyd been sent with one window that was the wrong size. for whatever reason the fabricating guys gave them two of one window and didnt give them one that we needed, so they ended up with a duplicate of sorts. not sure what happened there, but it was no biggie. he said he got the right dimensions, hed put in the order for the right size and then in 2-3 weeks theyd be back out to install it, piece of cake! 

so at about 1pm they were on their way and i was on my way into work for the remainder of the day. i ended up staying a little later than id expected to [about 6pm] and poor karen was stranded till i could pick her up, but once we got home she seemed very happy with our new windows! the difference in the living room is just crazy with having 2 windows now that arent covered in plywood, lol! anyway, the rest of the evening was pretty laid back, we had chinese take-out and watched rocknrolla [i really liked it, very much in the tradition of snatch or lock, stock, although a bit slower... could have used a little more momentum throughout. i was a little shocked at how small jeremy piven and ludacris' roles were in the overall scheme of things, but maybe thats just me...] before turning in early. it had been a pretty exhausting day for me.

oh and one last thing, my dad called from saudi arabia this morning to tell us that he and my mom are making a trip up in a couple of weeks for a visit, so that shoud be a lot of fun. maybe we can get some of that electrical problem figured out, lol!

well, i know all you really wanted was pictures of the windows, so heres one for the site, and the rest can be found at my.pix.

cheers!