Day 44: Framing Nears Completion, While the Garage Still Sits

Our loyal, solo worker has been busy, finishing up the framing and the preliminary roof work. Not only is he a nice guy (constantly smiling), but he's got pride in workmanship. He was excited to show me how he tilted the roof for proper drainage (see below)



The inspector came by today, but said he couldn't sign off on the framing until all of the plumbing and electrical work was done. The plumbing is complete for now, but the electrical still needs to be done. The electical box is still inside the addition, on the side of the existing house. Once the wiring begins, the electrician will move the box to its new space, outside the addition.

The inspector (and it's a different one each time, this was yet another guy) also still had problems with he garage. It's been my headache for the past week: The garage footing, as put in place by the workers a month ago, is 20 feet by 20 feet. But in order to get the garage permit approved by the city, our architect had to draw it as 21 feet by 21 feet. Apparently the city requires the inside of the garage to be 20 x 20 -- which means, once you include the walls on both sides, a total of 21 x 21. Right now, our garage is 20 x 20 from the outside -- and 19 x 19 on the inside. I went to the city several times last week, and got conflicting reports on whether we'll have to change it. I was hoping that the city would let that extra foot difference slide -- but who am I kidding, this is picky Glendale.

I believe our workers are going to go ahead and add the extra foot on both side. Sigh -- we keep losing more and more of our backyard. (I keep telling myself not to worry -- that's why we'll soon have a park around the corner. And that the only reason we had a big yard before was that our house was so damn small!)

Speaking of the inspector, the previous one told us that the garage wasn't big enough for a washer/dryer, and that we didn't have the proper plumbing permit anyway -- so we had the plumber slice off the visible pipes, which are now hidden below the ground. (Hopefully we'll be able to add them to the garage much later.) Below, the garage footing, now without pipes:



The inspector still had a few other, easier to correct, issues. If all goes to plan, next time they'll finally approve it and we'll be able to get going with pouring the concrete foundation.

Things, of course, are moving much faster and currently much smoother with the main addition. More pics:


View from the side


View of the bedroom -- that will be the green view out our side window


We haven't moved in yet -- but the ants already have.


The future family room


Another view from on top -- the old roof drains into the new roof. This should be a temporary change, as I was under the impression that we'd have one new roof that spans both the old and the new portions of the house.