wednesday, week four

My first change order is nigh. Half of my water pipes -- the back half, of course -- are galvanized. Apparently, they are disgusting. Ariel crawled under the kitchen, somehow, to make this discovery. Now someone is going to have to crawl under there and replace the pipes. I am not completely surprised, though it does seem odd that half of the pipes are copper, until I start to think about somebody having to navigate the extremely small space under the kitchen.

I found out about this on Monday afternoon, when Ryan and Ariel and I had a check in. I also found out that the sun room will be 6 inches narrower than planned because of the retaining wall/foundation next door. This didn't matter before, because the laundry room had no foundation. But now I have to decide whether to buy a smaller washer and dryer so that the laundry closet can be smaller, or live with a smaller sliding window. When I started looking into my washer/dryer options I remembered that America is the land of jumbo sizes. There are super-expensive pairs, and affordable pairs that don't quite work -- the washer is too small, or the dryer is ventless. At this point, I'm hoping I can stack a mismatched pair.

I took a couple of photos of the foundation trench, which is being framed. The framing will be inspected next week, Ariel says. And then they will pour the concrete. Ariel also said that the inspector for our area stopped by the other day -- he had been responding to a complaint at a neighbor's house, saw my job card, and came back to see what was going on. Apparently, he and Ariel are friendly. That is good news.

Ariel is also going to give me a quote for breaking up the rest of the concrete out back. It seems like the only way to go, really.