A very bad day

We arrived at the land on Wednesday night. We hoped to get an early start on Thursday and head to Prescott's planning and zoning office to take care of some last details before our third (?) attempt at a combo inspection.

Gerald and J.C. had spent the previous weekend getting the last of the wiring done, and Gerald had changed out our nice wain-edge stairs for something plain and boring that would, at least, pass inspection.

We hoped to clean up a few details on Thursday and call for an inspection on Friday.

We hadn't gotten off to a good start. The Webber grill that had served us so well for 25 years quit working. We went into Rumors for dinner, and thought we'd just pick up a new regulator the next day when we were in Prescott. We should have taken it as an omen.

Gerald didn't have a good time at the planning office. A major sticking point was our entryway. When the inspector saw it on a previous visit, he said we needed a permit and wouldn't do another inspection until we applied for it. Gerald had made drawings and hoped to get the permit approved. We also had some additional questions. For example, we didn't plan to finish the loft right away and was that going to hold us up? Also, the inspector said we needed two electrical outlets in a 2-foot passageway that led from the guest bedroom to the bathroom. That seemed silly. Was that really necessary?

We had bad news on all fronts. On the loft, we either needed to change the plans to show nothing up there, or wire it according to the plans. And, yes, we needed those two ridiculous outlets. But the kicker was the entryway. They wanted an engineer to come out and say our little three-pole structure was sound. Oh, and did we have those poles graded and stamped? When Gerald got upset, the clerk told him if he did it right in the first place, we wouldn't be in this predicament.

It all seemed crazy to us. What danger did our entryway really pose? It was well off the public roadway and we had used plenty of steel and concrete. But now we were in a pickle. Gerald understandably didn't want to pay an engineer to come out and ok it. The engineering report we had to get that said the holes our contractor had drilled in the ridge beam wouldn't compromise its integrity cost $400. And that didn't require a trip to the land.

As far as stamping and grading, John at Old Santa Fe lumber said he didn't think anyone in Arizona did that. All the graded logs were coming from out of state. He said, in fact, that in Coconino County, people weren't allowed to use the logs from their own land in building, which stuck us as odd. People had obviously been building up there for hundreds of years using those trees. Did people with perfectly good trees really have to get logs from out of state. Had the world gone crazy?

But what worried us most was the logs we had used in our house. Gerald pointed out that if they were concerned about the entrance way, they would "sh**t 14 little bricks" over the 14 logs that held up our porch. Not to mention the ones inside. We were concerned, to say the least. We got a regulator at Home Depot and headed back.

We stopped at the Skull Valley Cafe and asked about Ryan, the boy who had driven off the road two weeks before. His mother was there and she said he was doing great. He had cracked his skull and broken C5 in his neck and cut a shin to the bone, but was healing well. It didn't seem there was any spinal cord injury and we all agreed he was one lucky young man.

We got back to to land to find out that Home Depot had sold us the wrong part. Then Gerald got a call with bad news from work. Obviously, we weren't going to get our inspection, which I knew was a huge disappointment. Gerald didn't say much, just went quietly about his business.

I didn't realize how upset he was until I said I had noticed that our prickly pears were blooming. Did he see them? When he didn't respond, I thought he must not have heard me. I asked again. "I don't feel like looking at any prickly pears right now," he said glumly. That's when I took my book and headed for the "casita." "Let me know if you need help," I said.

On Friday, we got another lumber delivery from Old Santa Fe, the balance of our bats and some decking material. We didn't plan on using that this weekend, so we covered it up with a plastic tarp.










Inside, we reseated the toilet and Gerald re-hooked up the utility sink. Then Gerald worked on the pony wall around the loft, so he could run wiring. He built until he ran out of 2x4s, then drilled holes and installed outlet boxes.

It was an unseasonably cool day, and incredibly windy, which made it feel even cooler. I kept a fire going in the fireplace all day, which was nice. It was cool enough that I was glad I hadn't brought home our down comfortor. We had a nice sunset, the first really good one in weeks, though the sun was now setting in a whole new patch of sky. It surprised us just how much the sun had moved over the course of the year.

By 8:30, we were ready for bed. J.C. was camping with his family, so we decided to pack up after breakfast and head home.