Applying for a Passing Grade

The “testing” phase of our house construction has begun, and we are one-quarter of the way there. Yes, I don’t know about flying colors (we have lots of colors, though), but we passed our electrical inspection late yesterday. (Very late; it was around 7 when the voluble inspector and the electrician left.)

Now all we have to do is make it past the plumbing, driveway and county inspections.

We’ve made plumbing progress, from box to wall:

[I am going to have to get a better camera if I’m going to keep this up. Everything is much fuzzier than I would like. You should expect more from a professional blog such as this.]

Appliances also arrived yesterday, but the news there wasn’t as good as it could have been. Here is our new refrigerator; see if you can spot the problem:

While the cupboard clears the height of the fridge itself, the measurement True Value (or Maytag) gave to Dusty did not include the door hinges on the top of the door. Dusty is hopeful he can raise the cupboard doors relative to the cabinet; eyeballing it from the ground doesn’t give me a lot of confidence.

Our stove arrived but is not installed, and neither is the microwave — see if you can find the problem with it:

The box, which showed absolutely no sign of damage, contained this unit with the massive dent in the top or bottom. I gather a new one is getting ordered today and should arrive next Wednesday, except that Lynn and I can’t remember if this microwave was one of the appliances that took longer to arrive than projected.

I don’t know how vital this piece is to passing inspections. I would say “not at all,” except that it sits over the stove (and feels like it will sit right over the stove) and serves as the vent hood. So it might be more necessary than we think.

And if it has to be raised, the cabinet directly above it will have to be raised as well, and a hole has been cut in the back of that to facilitate an outlet that I suppose powers the microwave.

[I just got a call — I spend every morning these days taking an endless number of calls — from Lena of my solar company, letting me know they’re working on getting Gunnison County Electric Association out for that inspection, possibly today. Another test. We should pass, because when Lena’s husband tested the system the other day, he left the breaker on, and my solar was producing enough to roll our meter backward at GCEA. And they noticed. And came out to yell at Dusty about it. So it should work fine, and we could be operational with the solar as early as this afternoon. When it will likely rain.]

So far, I’m unaware of any problem with the new washer and dryer, seen rather fuzzily here (although the controls look so similar that for a bad moment I thought I had two washing machines until I realized one says “Quick Wash” and the other “Quick Dry”):

That’s the sleeve of my wet rain jacket, hanging from the drying rod. It’s the only operational piece of equipment in the room, so far.

And now I need to go, either studying for our next test or perhaps making a futile gesture at getting a tiny bit of work done this week.