One More Issue to Address...

...and it's the address. No kidding.

Since we got a construction address from Kootenai County Building & Planning in summer 2011, our new home was to be located at 4332 S. Stateline Rd. That's what it is in all of our construction loan/mortgage documents; that's the address I ordered on our Arts & Crafts house numbers. Good thing I didn't change our address with the U.S. Postal Service, because when our contractor came back from the county with our certificate of occupancy (Yay!), Kootenai County Community Development (formerly Building & Planning), read 4338 S. Stateline Rd. Apparently the mapping office decided that our new house was sufficiently far from our old house - even though it's on our own land, but an adjacent parcel - that "2" would be too close, but "8" would be just right. I put in a call to a woman I trust in the department, and she's going to try to convince the mappers to change the address back to 4332. Conservatives often say that local governments are more responsive and efficient. Right.

But, whatever the address, we soon will live in a house owned by Global Credit Union, paying a monthly mortgage beginning in November for the first time in five years. Still, I feel a great relief, having lived this building process for about a year, with constant interaction with the builder and his subcontractors since early July; purchasing this and returning that; pumping water out of our foundation; selecting colors for siding and granite and marble countertops; ordering and installing appliances; ordering and laying wood flooring and working with a neighbor on installing ceramic tile; designing a hidden-wire audio/video system; cutting trees for Internet line-of-sight service; clearing the site of hawthorn bushes and trees; having a road built, electricity run, a well dug, and a septic system planned. And, going over construction designs, over, and over again.

Now comes the moving, slowly, a half-mile up our driveway; getting the cats used to the new house (Pepper has been going up with us every day for weeks; he loves napping on the balcony); buying snow tires to allow us to drive up to the new house and chains for the tires on my ATV, which I'll use for plowing the long, long driveway.

But, tonight, I'll sleep well. Tomorrow is another day, and tomorrow I'll be posting pictures of the new place.