Hallelujah! We have our certificate of occupancy.

With four business days between us and a $28,000 bank penalty, we have our Certificate of Occupancy.  What a relief!

construction: month twelve

The last month has been bonkers.  Jack has been up at the house most evenings after work, we’ve worked most weekends and taken a couple days off work as well.  Last Monday when we were finishing up electrical, there were about a dozen people working at one time on various things.
We finally got our sewer and water hooked up by paying more money to bore under our neighbor’s yard, leaving it undisturbed.  The stairs and railings and countertops were installed.  We put up light fixtures and troubleshot electrical problems and did outdoor work getting the soil ready.  Last week we passed the electrical and plumbing inspections.  The elevator is still not installed so all of the appliances came up the stairs and are now installed.
Until developments grow up, we can see the top of Mount Rainier to the south.



Tonight it was cleaned, showing us the windows and the floors without the protective coverings!

Though we thought we could put if off a few months, it turned out we did have to cover the ground in “the boite” (fenced in area) so last weekend we scrambled to get the right kind of gravel delivered on a weekend and we bought and installed turf, which game in one big 400 pound roll.  Jack had his heart set on turf because it will be less maintenance and will never get muddy.  I’m glad to say that it’s come a long way and the filler is sand now, instead of annoying rubber pellets.

The biggest remaining tasks are the sewer test and inspection, touch up painting and color painting.  Then the city will walk through for an overall safety inspection and the bank appraiser will check that everything is as we said it would be. Even though we’ve passed electrical, there are some issues to figure out, like the bizzare combination of lights on L2 that trip the breaker.  We’re moving out of our apartment this month and I REALLY want the painting to be done so we can safely stow our posessions in the house, even if we can’t quite live there.  There are nine days until all of our stuff has to be in the house!

August weekend

 

This post is just an excuse to share some pictures I like of things other than our house!  Last weekend we got to spend some time with my sister and we also had a great time at Jack’s [g]uncles’ pool party.

Becky clearly said something funny at brunch.  Wish I remembered what it was.

Pool volleyball is a blast and the floaty toys were unexpectedly perfect for these toddler cousins.

nursing notes

 

August is breastfeeding month in the United States and it’s a topic that is close to my heart. Pun intended. 

Thanks to decades of public health outreach and promotion, nursing is once again is a routine practice this country.  However, I absolutely believe it needs all of the organized and legal and social support it can get, because although it is the most natural thing in the world, it is at odds with a lot of values and practices in our culture, including our paradoxical modesty and the demands of the workforce.  That said, the word that it is good for babies and moms is out, so I’ll step off my soapbox for the rest of this post and share some of the most fascinating things I have learned about nursing.

• Nursing makes kids’ teeth align better.  Okay, so the studies mentioned here [http://news.health.com/2015/06/15/breast-feeding-may-have-dental-benefits-study-suggests/, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4017283.stm] show significant correlation, not actual causation, but it makes a lot of sense.  The belief is that because the latch on a breast is different than on a bottle, the jaw and palate develop differently.
• Breast milk contains stem cells with “variable expression of pluripotency genes normally found in human embryonic stem cells” unlike other stem cells found in adults.   This kind of makes me wish I hadn’t thrown out the leftover frozen milk I had in the freezer in case I someday get cancer.
• From the abstract of http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22865647 - These findings provide evidence that breast milk represents a novel and noninvasive source of patient-specific stem cells with multilineage potential and establish a method for expansion of these cells in culture. They also highlight the potential of these cells to be used as novel models to understand adult stem cell plasticity and breast cancer, with potential use in bioengineering and tissue regeneration.
• The immune benefits are fascinating but tricky to study.  There is evidence and speculation [https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/growth-curve/backwash-nursing-babies-may-trigger-infection-fighters] that nursing babies’ saliva is backwashed and absorbed by the mother so that her immune system can create leukocytes to combat specific infections.  Inhabiting the same germy environment also contributes, of course.
• In fact, all of the purported benefits are complicated to study.  This article [http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/everybody-calm-down-about-breastfeeding/] on a statics blog Jack and I read really set me off.  It legitimately, but glibly, highlights just how difficult it is to study breastfeeding in real populations where it is unethical to assign mothers to groups and all kinds of factors affect how a particular baby is fed.  It upset me that this review assumes that breast milk and formula are equal until proven otherwise.  The assumption should be the reverse.  I believe it is healthier, even if we haven’t been able to rigorously prove it. 

I estimate that I spent over 2500 hours (10*90+4*270+2*300+1*60) nursing or pumping over the course of D’s first two years.  It was a wonderful, convenient, inconvenient, pleasant, painful and irreplaceable series of experiences that gave me a lot of time to read and reflect on the subject.   In fact, those of you who read all the way to this point should consider congratulating me on keeping this post so brief.

construction: month eleven

Right after the construction: month ten post, we got our permanent electricity hooked up.  This  was a huge deal, that I hope to write about in more detail when I get around to it.  For now though, the short version is that we paid Seattle City Light a few thousand dollars to move the high voltage wires a few feet farther away from the house, in order to get the power hooked up.

The contractor installed our water and sewer lines up to the property line with the neighbors and then installed the retaining wall.

In a few years we expect the parking in our neighborhood will be in higher demand since there’s a large new development in the works nearby.  The little parking spot we squeezed in next to the house will be nice to have, and now it’s constructed!

Now that the corner trim is on the corten siding is completely done.  They also built the steps along one side of the house.

Lastly, we did some more electrical work, putting in switches and fixtures, and the contractors started on the final stairs.  Below left is looking up at the powder room door on level three.  Below right is looking down at the stair stringers from level three.

My recent today in pictures post referred to the sewer and water easement with our neighbors.  It’s more or less resolved now that we are throwing more money at the problem. 
Tomorrow marks the one year anniversary in the eyes of the bank, although they didn’t start until late August.  We’ll see if they can finish it this August. 
The complicating dependencies are that the stairs are needed to install the elevator, which is needed to move the appliances from the basement to the third floor, which is needed to finish the electrical work.  The smaller kitchen counter pieces also needs to come up the stairs and the largest one has to come in a window with a crane.  The plumber can’t finish his job until the sewer and water are hooked up.  Other large tasks are putting in the metal spiral stairs, the primary stair railings, the railings on the roof and the fence in the yard.

today in pictures

Deception Pass again

 

Our fourth of July camping trip is now a venerable tradition in its second year.    We reserved only six months in advance instead of the nine months that is permitted so didn’t get as nice of camp sites.  Aside from one of them being next to a rocky, precipitous drop off in to a pond, they were okay though (sites 343, 345, and 346).   A couple of us stayed three nights and the weather was dry and comfortable.   

D and his friend had lots of common interests like digger toys, plaid shirts, wearing bike helmets all the time, biking and playing in the car.  They only called OnStar twice.

Down at the lake the kids swam a little, went out in a canoe, flew a kite and played in the sand.

Getting a good group shot proved to be difficult.

There was a pair of owls living in the campsite that we saw several times.   In the picture of the kids on the rock we tried to keep them happy by saying “oooh look there’s the owl”.  Below, one of the owls has a huge rodent for supper.

construction: month ten

At this point, we’re wondering how many more of these monthly posts I’ll be writing before we get to move in.  The original schedule put completion in May, which quickly became unlikely.   The next big date is the one year mark, in mid August, at which point the bank can start charging penalties.   It’s been a stressful time, since so much is out of our hands.  The contractor has drawn 90% of the construction money from the bank and they don’t get the final 10% until the house is officially complete, which is supposed to motivate them.  We hope it works. 

Based on every other project we’ve heard about, we expected some problems during the course of construction, buy yet the specific problems we’ve encountered are still somewhat surprising.  I guess that’s life.  The small size of the lot presented more complexity than anticipated.  Utilities have been a headache and though we’re happy with out site and our house, the calculation in favor of building on a vacant lot versus a starting with a tear-down house is less clear than it once seemed.

Our efforts this month were directed towards nagging the contractor, re-homing large rocks, getting much better at making up electrical outlets and wrapping up a signature campaign with the neighbors.  It took us two and half months to get notarized signatures from the owners of five house with which we’ll be sharing a sewer.  Now the paperwork, which just says that we’ll evenly split future maintenance on the shared portion of the side sewer, is waiting on a meeting with the contractor so that we can apply for the next sewer permit and walk the precious signatures over to King County Records. 

The big progress this month was on the siding and a few interior carpentry things.  The second siding material is corrugated corten steel.  It will rust to the color of the picture below on the right.



We’re really excited about this shelf that runs beside the staircase for a couple of levels. 


Most of the tile work was done last month, but the accent tile installation is new and I didn’t include a picture of the entryway tile in last month’s update.  They also installed some pocket doors and the rest of the kitchen cabinets. 



The house was also broken in to over lunch time on a Saturday.  A couple of guys were working and in the 45 minutes they were gone for lunch, someone who was creepily watching them, smashed open the door and stole some tools.   They got staple guns, but didn’t take the larger saws.

All of the rocks from the rockery are finally removed and we’ve had a second wave of craigslist folks come to pick them up.