The electric company came and installed the meter on our garage today! Close to the last step.

Construction has been stalled since 14 December 2024, when the electricians completed installation of their bits. There are lights and outlets, a fuse box, and all the necessary bits on the outside for the meter and electric installation.

We've been using the garage, with an extension cord from the house to the garage door opener, which has been a nice feature since it's been brutally cold and a little snowy. We've got most of the garage things put back into the garage from the house, but some still remain as we're waiting until the garage is complete and "released."

Next, the electric company should send someone out to connect the power from the pole to the mast on the garage. Upon hearing that's been completed and turned on, we can flip the bits in the fuse panel and start using the power from the garage. I'll plug the garage door opener into the outlet and remove the extension cord. I'll have to ensure that the "remote control" on the garage external lights works; we have a Lutron switch in the garage and a remote in the house, so we can toggle the external lights from either the garage or house. I'll probably bring the garage Ring camera back out so we can keep an eye on the inside of the garage when we aren't there. I'll put the WiFi extender back in an outlet in the garage, and I'm hoping that the Ring spotlight camera on the garage will just rejoin the network, otherwise I'll have to re-add that.

Upon installation of the electricity, the final inspection can be done, and we'll finally be able to call the construction complete.

The very last things will have to wait until the weather warms.

A lingering annoyance are a few wires strung from the pole in the alley to the house. The house used to be a single-story. When we remodeled and built our two-story home, they talked us out of lifting all those wires. When we put the deck out there, there are wires hanging as low as 8 feet over the edge of the corner of the deck. The electric wires were a little higher, with the low ones belonging to cable television and telephone. We had the electrical lines lifted while the electricians were working on the garage, since they were doing similar work to the garage. The electrical lines are now 20 feet in the air, well above the deck. The cable and telephone lines aren't really used. I guess, technically I do still have the telephone fiber and DSL services on, but the fiber is "paused," and the DSL is only used as a fail-over right now. After I cancel those services, none of those lines will be necessary, and we can ask for them to be removed (or lifted, I suppose).

They dug up the end of the sidewalk at the yard-side of the garage. They were supposed to dig up the whole sidewalk around the north side of the garage, but didn't, which is part of why the garage is moved over a little bit. We're probably going to leave the sidewalk along the north side of the garage, and fill the small gap between the garage and sidewalk with dirt and lilies or clover, or something else small and sturdy. There's a gap between the yard-side of that sidewalk and the sidewalk going from the house to the garage. They did fill in the gap between the end of the sidewalk between the house and the garage, but left the other 3 feet going to the other sidewalk for us to deal with later; I think because it wasn't supposed to be there, so it wasn't in their plan. Another difference between that first step out of the new garage and the old garage is that there was a step there outside the old garage door, where now that first step is flat on the ground. It's taken some getting used to, stepping down as you go out instead of out before you step down, but I think I'm getting used to it. We discussed and think we'll have whoever fixes that missing bit of sidewalk also rebuild the step out of the garage door. In lieu of a sidewalk fix, I've suggested I could build a tiny deck that would cover the ends of the sidewalks, which would give us a platform to step on coming out of the garage, kind of matching the deck right outside of our back door on the other side of the yard.

We need to rebuild the fence on the south side of our yard, the one that runs from the house to the garage, since they took so much of it off when doing the garage construction. The fence used to run near the property line (it's straight, but askew instead of parallel), and end at a short bit that extended to the edge of the garage. The garage moved a little, and the little fence bit would have been in the garage had they not removed it. As it is, the end of the fence left hanging (they removed the end pole and some of the chain links) still extends beyond the yard-side of the garage. We want to put a new fence in that's parallel to the property line, maybe something other than chain link, and ends neatly at the corner of the garage, like it used to. We hope to fix the gate that's on the house side, because that end of the fence is farther from the property line, and the fence  ends at the corner of the house instead of a little over, making room for the air conditioner conduit. Fairly, that would have left a few inches of gap between the house and fence, but I think there's a better solution than what they did.

Finally, after (or during) all that construction, we'll need to finish landscaping.

The south side of the garage has been a big lily garden, where occasional trees or big weeds pop up, but largely the space is just filled with big, bushy lilies. The neighbor uses the space between to store stuff, and has said they don't like the lilies, nor do they remember agreeing to it, even though they were there when we laid the first (and only) layers of mulch and transplanted the lilies from other spots in our yard. Our side of the south-side fence has lilies all along its run, even where the deck and planting beds are. This was done to discourage the dogs from running along the fence, but it doesn't deter them all the time.

The planting beds were largely removed before or during the construction. Three 4x8 beds, 10-inches deep, were built in that corner, along the south side fence and garage wall. Two beds along their 8-foot sides ran along the fence, and one bed's 8-foot side abutted along the garage wall, making a bit of an L-shape. I planned to build a few 3x8 boxes along the south side of the house, where we have two other 4x8 boxes (that have been overwhelmed by weeds in our gardening neglect), but make them like 2-feet deep. I want narrower boxes so one can go all the way around, and deeper boxes so I don't have to bend down to weed and harvest. I don't want them so tall that it'll be hard to maintain tall plants, like tomatoes or peppers. Depending on spring discussions, they'll probably end up along the south side of the house as planned, but may be split and have one in the yard, or put both in the yard. There's a giant stack of wood waiting for the time and energy to do that. I won't wait for the other landscaping to be finished, but do need to wait for warmer weather so I can dig.

The lawn has taken a beating in the last few years, even before the construction. Along the north side has been just beat up by an inflatable pool we had during the pandemic years, and dogs and kids running over it. The south side is just a little bit small, most of it taken by the planting beds, so it'll be mostly encouraging grass to grow where the planting beds have been.

There are a few dogwood bushes along the edge of the yard in two spots, by the deck on the south side, and next to the dog area on the north side. We might do some shuffling or changing of those bushes, as some of the branches have burned in the super cold or because of the construction and other activities. We also have a row of neglected hostas along the north side fence that need a little attention, as well as a bit of a "hosta garden" near the house on the north side.

And mulch. So much mulch will be needed!