The finish carpenters have already spent multiple days trying (and succeeding, with much effort) to get the shoe moulding placed on the left hand side of the stair landing (I forgot to get photos so I will do that this afternoon) and now they are working on the right hand side of the stair landing.  On the left hand side of the stair landing, they only had to deal with wood framing; on the right hand side, they have to deal with steel framing.  It ends up, of course, that the steel frame unit that comes out to complete the stair landing on the right side is too long.  If it were too short, they could just use a shim to bring it out the correct distance, but no, it is too long, so they have to cut it.  Evidently, earlier this morning they had a lengthy discussion with the steel manufacturer about coming out to cut it with a torch but he suggested trying a SawzAll first.  So that is what they did and with the SawzAll and lots and lots of lubricant, they were able to cut the steel frame back to the proper length.  Here it is after the adjustment.

The contractors and Peter and I so far are not impressed with the stair manufacturer.

While the contractor was telling me the story of the steel framing and how they successfully concluded that issue, I was contemplating the newly shifted electrics for the sconces above the "amazing sweeping staircase".  The electrician was moving the electric plates for the sconces while we were talking and I could swear they were not equal distance from each other or from the stairs.  So the electrician was called to a halt and we reconsidered the spacing of the sconce plates.

The tape measure was brought out for confirmation

and in fact, the spacing is not right.  Not only are they not evenly spaced from each other, but they are not on a straight slope.   Lucky guys get to remeasure again this morning and then reshift the positions!

The electrician is also busy outside pulling electric for the stair lighting.  All the concrete staircases outside have lights in every other riser.

Outside, we also have found another huge issue.  On Monday, when Peter and I arrived at the house, we noticed (it didn't take a keen eye) that there was a big wet spot just on our side of the curb in front of the garage.  We spent a couple days trouble shooting the problem even asking the neighbors for help.  Well, today, the contractor got a guy to start digging at the top of the wet spot.  And here is what he found.

Indeed, there is a big leak and the leak is in the water supply line from the main city water supply.  The actual leak is about 4 inches below the surface of the water in the photograph.  It is just a water leak, you say, no big deal.  Well, actually it is a huge deal.

The puddle that is shown above exists exactly where the water meter used to exist.  During the design process, we decided to move the garage from one side of the property to the other.   The main problem with this idea was that it meant we had to move the water meter because the new driveway would cover the original location of the water meter.  We were told that the request to move the water meter could be denied, but it would be easier to get permitted if we moved the water meter less than ten feet from its original location.  We did that, and sent our plans through the city and they were approved.  Yippee!   Right?  Well, not really.  I assumed (silly me) that by approving this water meter move, that the city was agreeing to move the supply line from the city water as well.  What actually happened was that the water meter was physically moved, and the supply line was connected to the new water meter via an elbow from the existing line to another piece of copper pipe that runs to the new water meter.  It is that piece of pipe that you see in the photograph above.

Now there are two major problems with this design.  First of all, when the water meter was moved and "replumbed", the water was not on so there was no way to check that the replumb was sealed.  Well, now we have checked it and it is not sealed.  Frankly, it looks like the two pieces of copper pipe were sealed with a bit of black tape instead of a true weld......But that is only the first problem.  The second issue is that now the pipe is too shallow for us to pour the driveway.  That is, we cannot pour the driveway until the pipe is rerouted.  Further, we cannot reroute the pipe ourselves because it is on the city side of the water meter so we are not actually allowed to plumb this part of the pipe.  The city is not taking any responsibility for it though and says we have to put in a work order to request a new pipe tap.  We found this out when we called for a repair.  The guys will repair the existing pipe so that it will not continue to leak, but they will not fix the bigger issue - moving the pipe - because that has to be done on a work order.  This means more fees and more wait time.

It is off to the city for me to see if I can actually accomplish this task.