Update. Finally. Right?

Last week was gonna be the week My Brother and me were gonna put the deck up.

But The County and Mrs. Weakneed Engineer and Mr. Dickhead Inspector and everybody else that makes building a house a nightmarish breaucratic clusterfuck had other ideas.

Get this.

The County requires a nailing inspection before we cover the exterior. I’m not sure why, I’m kinda baffled by what The County thinks we might be using to hold this house together, but hey. You do as you’re told.

So we had the first one. For an hour and and half Mr. Dickhead Inspector stared at nails, making notes. Phabulous Phil kept looking at me, winking, going WTF? is with this guy?

So he had issues. You gotta realize- every time Mr. Dickhead Inspector can flunk me he can force me to cough up $50 for a re-inspect. Tiny money but gnat-like annoying.

So we fixed those issues and called for the re-inspect. And Mr. Dickhead Inspector found new issues. Gosh go figure. Some of the issues were things that he said had to be engineered before he could sign off on them. Do these guys drink together and dream up this shit or what?

Soooo. Instead of hitting Mr. Dickhead Inspector in the head with a hammer until my arm got tired and burying him in the bay, I called in Mrs. Weakneed Engineer. She’s a he but maybe only barely.

Short aside- Engineers are the folks with the knowledge, the know-how, the collegiate training to calculate all the shit that needs calculating to build stuff like bridges and skyscrapers and maybe, just maybe, a tiny 1600 sq. ft. house.

And so Mrs. Weakneed Engineer thought way long and way hard and came up with the engineering solutions necessary for us to satisfy Mr. Dickhead Inspector’s and The County’s overbearing wants.

And we did them. To the letter.

But before we could even call for the $50 re-inspect Mr. Dickhead Inspector called me to say he had problems with what Mrs. Weakneed Engineer was proposing. It just goes round and round, right?

Loooooonnnnngg story short? Mrs. Weakneed Engineer folded immediately and Phabulous Phil and I had to spend the weekend getting other opinions and forcing Mrs. Weakneed Engineer to come out to the site so that he, um she, could get a first hand look and honestly? she, I mean he, agreed with us and told us he’d (she’d?) re-do the engineering letter to The County and Mr. Dickhead Inspector.

So loooooooonnnnnnngggggg story shorter? My Brother and me managed to get up three (as in 3) girders for the deck. They are the pale fleshy white things hanging horizontal on the pilings in the picture.

It’s FUN building a house.