Lot’s of news this week. We got our Certificate of Occupancy (C.O.) on Wednesday! We can officially occupy our home this weekend.

We worked like crazy last week and over Christmas to finish all the odds and ends for the final inspections. We finished all the electrical Wednesday, 12/21, and had the final electrical inspection the Friday before Christmas. Our water test results arrived Christmas Eve. We spent the rest of Christmas weekend finishing up the porch railings and temporary stairs for the final inspection on Tuesday, 12/27. Our inspector gave us the thumbs up and faxed us the C.O. on Wednesday.

But wait, there’s more… Our contractor Warren entered the Energy Star program with our house. In order to complete the program and qualify under the 2011 rules, we had to get our final inspection and blower door test before the end of the year. This happened Thursday, two days before the end of the year. Final blower door result was 131 cfm, an improvement of 28 cfm from the shell test we did back in September. We’ll post more information on the Energy Star process next month when things settle down. It’s the only certification we’ve chosen to do for the house.

Our kitchen counter tops also arrived yesterday and were installed. The counters are Cambria Quartz (color: White Cliff.) We chose a manufactured quartz counter because we wanted something durable and low maintenance. And we chose Cambria because it’s the only American company manufacturing quartz counter tops. It looks fantastic.

And we generated our 5th megawatt Thursday. It took us almost 60 days to do it. That’s 5 megawatts for half a year. The system went online June 2nd.

We have a few finish work projects to complete. As we were running short on time, Jill found tile contractor, Chad Greenslet, out of Bennington to finish our shower tile job. He installed the Schluter and tile in 2 days, but ran out of tile. We thought we had ordered extra, but somehow miscalculated. The extra tile arrived today, so that project should get finished up next week. Jill is also working with a local glass supplier to install a frameless shower door.

The site-cut maple intended for our stairs is still drying out in our basement. At some point soon we’re going to have to decide if it will be ready in time, or if we should purchase other material for the stair.

95% of the trim is installed. The holes have to be filled and cracks caulked before it gets painted. Doors have to be painted too. Jill is hoping to get the two bedrooms finished this weekend so we can start moving some stuff into them.

Also, a few pieces of siding trim for the basement entry have been sealed and are awaiting installment.

But that is about it. We’re down to the final punch list. We have to be finished in two weeks for the mortgage appraisal. That is our other task - converting our construction loan over to a mortgage. More on that process soon as well.