Today is the three-year anniversary of losing our home to wildfire. One-thousand-ninety-six days.

Thankfully, we’ve reached quite a few milestones in the past month and a half. The finish line is in sight, but we’ll still have hoops to jump through when the seasons change and we can get crews and materials up the mountain. Later today, we have the propane company scheduled to hook up the gas so we can get heat in the house. Mr. Contractor wants to call for the rough-out inspections right after they hook the propane up. When we’ve passed those, then we can bury the trenches and insulate the basement.

Once all that is complete, we should be able to get a temporary Certificate of Occupancy (TCO). A TCO lets us live in the house contingent on getting a list of items complete before we can get a permanent CO.

Then there’s the matter of getting all the construction garbage out of our way. They piled most of it near the northeast corner of the house, leaving a narrow path between the house and the mound of waste material. First Reader and I staged one of our trailers near the mess, intending to take one load at a time to the county landfill. Of course, we’re going to scavenge the pile beforehand for any lumber that we can use for other projects once we get moved in.

We have a lot of work ahead of us. But neither of us can wait until the first night we spend in our new home.