This morning, pretty much first thing, the electrical inspector from the ESA showed up to do the final house wiring inspection.  It took him all of about five minutes to test our circuits and check out service panel, and then we got the sticker indicating that we passed!  This will hopefully clear the way on our path to occupancy.

Heathers uncle Paul came to help out and has been hard at work getting more of the solar racks assembled.

While he was busy with that (and heading out to get our new countertops – more on that later), dad and I continued working on the front stair railing to bring it up to code.  This is pretty painstaking work, cutting each baluster to fit and then fastening each one with a couple of pocket screws for a good, solid connection.

We got one entire side of the steps complete (20 balusters), and hope to get the rest of them finished tomorrow morning.

We also took the opportunity to bring up Chewie from the basement, where he’s been living, up onto the porch.  He seems to be really enjoying the fresh air!

After we got those balusters installed, we realized we needed a railing at the back stairs as well, so we quickly roughed up a temporary railing that will hopefully be satisfactory for our occupancy inspection – scheduled for tomorrow morning.

During all the chaos today, Heather and uncle Paul drove up to Ottawa, to the IKEA, to pick up our new countertops.  We decided to get solid birch (hardwood) butcherblock countertops and we were able to use our IKEA gift cards from our kitchen cabinet purchase to pretty much cover the entire cost – hard to beat that price.

That’s about all that’s going on for today.  We will be up bright and early tomorrow morning, and can hopefully get a few last things squared away before the building inspector shows up around 10am for a possible occupancy inspection.  Fingers crossed that that goes well!

Hope you enjoyed the pictures, thanks for reading – we’ll be sure to post again soon with the results of our inspection!