Well I was really hoping for better news this week. On Wednesday I went to City Hall to check up on the status of my building permit. I was really hoping they would say "It's done" especially since an inspector was working on it the previous Friday. However the answer I received was "no it's not done and no news is good news". Well Friday afternoon came and went and still no call. I know that City Hall has 10 business days to finalize it which will be next week Monday however I was really hoping since somebody was perusing the file they might finish sooner. Oh well you can't fight City Hall.
About the only thing I accomplished this week was to build a couple of stands for a few water barrels at the building site. I should have water there within a week of them starting since the water line goes in before the footings are poured. However in case they don't turn on the water right away wanted some water around for cleaning hands, mixing mortar, etc etc. Here is a picture of the project.

The other thing I did was go up to the local Lowes to buy some insulation for the garage radiant floor heating system. Lowes had a sale on these panels called SilveRBoard by AMVIC which are designed for beneath concrete slab applications. The panels are 4by8ft by 2in thick. These panels were regularly around 43$ but were on sale for 36.54$. As well Lowes had a beat the tax sale on this weekend where everything in the store was discounted by the amount of tax paid which by us is 13%. Therefore after the complicated math was done I paid a little over 35$ per sheet. The reason I said complicated was even in this highly electronified age the computer still got it wrong. The initial discount the program gave me was only around 1.5$ instead of the close to 4$ it should have. After talking to Customer services they finally agreed and refunded me the difference. It pays to check your bills and be mentally capable of doing simple math to check out the computers.

So with this purchase Mom's garage is getting full of my stuff for the build. Here is a picture of the garage. The 26 panels are visible as well as the Bluewood studs on the left side. Also visible is a new ladder I bought myself for the project. I'll tell you about that below.

Ok as mentioned before I am always looking for deals for my build. I just discussed one above ref the insulation and here are two more. The ladder is a 24ft fibreglass ladder rated at 300lbs which is great for a guy my size. Now I watch all the flyers for Rona, Home Depot, Home Hardware, Canadian Tire and Lowes. Lowes had this ladder on sale for 165$ vice the regular price of 265$. Now all 4 hardware stores will price match, so went down to the local Home depot and picked up the same ladder for the sale price plus another 10% off since Home Depot says "price match plus 10%" so the ladder only ended up costing 148.50$ plus tax. Great. Another thing I found out was that if they screw up with pricing on their system they give you a 10$ discount on the item. What happened was, I picked up a case of 1000 deck screws. Now the tag on the shelf said this case was 38$ when I got to the cash register it rang in at 46$. I advised them this was not what the shelf tag said. An associate went down and checked and she went to one end of the shelf and there the tag was 46$ however at the end where I had picked up the case the tag said 38$. The end result was I got the case for 38$ and then another 10$ off due to the Scanning code error. So again keep an eye on the shelf tags and what rings up in the computer.

Well I hope that on either Monday or Tuesday at the latest I'll have word on the building permit. Once that is complete it's full steam ahead. 

Until next week.

Harold