Final Inspection

This morning we had our final building inspection as well as the final walk-through for the Arlington County Green Home Choice program. Rob showed up at 7 am, and, since he knew we'd still be in bed, did some work outside. He raked up some of the gravel from the driveway...
...and used it to fill in the window well. Exciting stuff!The gravel-raking noises woke me up, so I hopped in the shower and eventually made my way downstairs just as Rob was finishing up. Our newspaper was already sitting on the kitchen counter, along with fresh bagels and cream cheese. What a sweetheart! We compared notes on our Indian wedding experiences (we both attended different Indian weddings on Aug 1) and caught up until Josh came down. Just as we were starting to dig into the bagels, the doorbell rang. I thought it was the building inspector, but it turned out to be Steve B. He had brought us some raspberry plants that he had to dig up from his own yard as he is having some work done on his house. We'll have to find a good spot to plant them this weekend.Soon afterwards, Josh noticed Steve W standing in our back yard. Rob hadn't mentioned that either of the Steves were planning to come for the inspection, but it was nice to see them. We chatted with them over bagels while we waited for the inspector to arrive.

The county inspector rang the doorbell a little after 9 am, followed closely by our architect, Marta, and Helen, the Green Home Choice program coordinator. Marta also brought us a gift -- hand-painted house number tiles and a butter dish that her husband had picked up for us on a recent trip to Mexico. We are eager to use these lovely tiles to replace the spray-painted plywood sign on the front lawn that currently displays our house number. The county inspector was in and out in about 5 minutes, as he just had a couple items left to sign off on. Once all the paperwork was taken care of, we gave Helen a tour of the house. Here are the Steves explaining how the heat recovery system in the basement works. Steve W likes to refer to it as a "whole house bong" or a "hookah" because it kind of looks like a giant water pipe... Actually, it is a giant water pipe, but in a different sense of the word 'pipe'.Once we had finished the tour, we sat down to go over the scoring sheet to see if we had enough points for the Green Home Choice certification. From left to right: Marta, Helen, Rob, Steve W, Steve B, and Josh. Josh and Steve W eventually had to duck out, but we finally tallied up the points for our score around 11 am. For the basic certification, you need at least 150 points. Our grand total: 298!
Rob also presented us with a homeowners manual that he had put together for us. It has all our green certifications as well as information about the green aspects of our home and how to maintain them and suggestions for other ways to save water and energy.
He also gave us this huge file box with all the owners manuals and documentation for the various appliances, mechanical systems, and fixtures in our house.
It looks like we have our work cut out for us to go through all this stuff and make sure we know everything we need to about our house and its inner workings.

After Steve B, Marta, and Helen left, Rob finished up a few final projects around the house. He replaced a sconce in the master bathroom, touched up some scratches in the hardwood floors, and installed shelves in the built-in cabinets in the master bedroom.
I spent some time last night unpacking books and photographs to put on the shelves. Of course Rob teased me about not being able to reach the top shelves. But we do have 9-foot ceilings. I don't think he could even reach the top shelf without a stool. (Have I mentioned how tall he is? Probably.)
Rob finished up around 1 and said goodbye, although I'm sure we haven't seen the last of him. Especially since he forgot a tote bag full of his stuff here. Clearly, he enjoys our company enough to create excuses to keep coming back -- at least subconsciously... ;-)

For those of you who care (mom?), here's the latest grass photo. As you can see, the weeds are coming up quite nicely, too.

This afternoon I gave a quick tour to a couple who are planning to work with SAI to build a green house in Arlington. They have a new baby, so they had a very small window of opportunity in between naps and feedings to see the house. I've lead a lot of tours already, but I'll need to work on a condensed version in case this situation arises again. We ended up having to run through the entire upstairs in about 3 minutes, and never made it to the basement. Still, it was nice to meet them and I think they were impressed with the house. I hope to eventually add "tour guide" to the list of new skills and knowledge I acquired through this renovation project...