Can You Spot the Difference?

Work continues on the city inspector's to-do list. Ben has already rebuilt the stairs, which look oddly like the stairs he built originally. See if you can tell what changed.

New stairs:


Original stairs:


Give up? The platform at the top is slightly smaller now, and the turn is a little more gracious on big feet.

Additionally, Sam and I went through the house and shot flame retardant foam into every little hole through every stud. Apparently this buys you a few extra minutes in the event of a fire. Apparently the "very sticky" warnings are also worth following; Sam and I both have a thin but rough layer of this stuff on our hands, which Ben says will stick around for at least a few days.


The last big thing on Ben's list is to finish digging out the basement windows. We finished moving the electrical wires, which used to run just below the bedroom windows. All of the wires connecting to the main floor now sit above the windows, while all of the wires that are strictly for the MIL apartment run a few feet below the windows.


Sam and Ben finished digging out the holes outside the windows this afternoon. As you can see, they basically take up the entire walkway leading to the backyard. We're thinking of rerouting the path to the other side of the porch to compensate.


Ben then rented a concrete saw from Home Depot and started cutting through the foundation. The windows are going to be huge -- 4' x 4' -- probably too big for the MIL bedrooms, but Seattle code necessitates this disproportion. Ben cut through the foundation as far as he could and then took a sledge hammer to it. He managed to get a little bit of the foundation out -- I guess enough to give hope that he's on the right track, but not enough to finish the job today. Ben's hoping he can finish the rest tomorrow, but I guess we'll just have to see how that goes.

Ben and Sam also installed our new front door last week. This wasn't on the inspector's to-do list, but it was time well spent. What a good looking door, eh?