It is likely to late now, but " two wire nuts present in a breaker box" is not acode violation. Breaker boxes are also listed as junction boxes, and you can extend wires (or join two wires that then connect to a single breaker) inside the box as required as long as you do not exceed the fill rules for the wring gutters. Most boxes have huge wring gutters and you would have to work very hard to approach their ifll limit in a residential setting. When you bring an essentially incorrect 'finding' to the negotiating table you are likely to taint everything else you ask for. Unless the possibility of FHA financing was called out in the offer you submitted (thus effectively making the FHA rules part of the contingency) the seller has every right to reject your request for any repairs. An experienced RE agent would have likely told them not to accept an offer contingent on FHA financing. For the most part their is no rule that ANY repairs must be made by the seller, safety or otherwise. I have purchased houses with all sorts of gross defects, right down to sections of floors marked off as unsafe to walk on. As long as it is readily apparent and no steps have been taken to conceal a defect you can sell 'as is'. Some places like to revoke COs at sale, giving them a shot at a warrantless (as in no search warrant needed) inspection of the house for code enforcement and tax valuation. By blocking a CO they can force repairs, but often cannot control who must make or pay for the repairs. The revoked CO and refusal to issue a new one can stop the whole selling process cold sometimes since it represents a serious reduction in the value of the property. It is no longer suitable as a home. Since repairs are almost always cheaper than suing the government, the sellers capitulate.

We re about to hit the 7 month mark of no stove, with another 2 months until permits get approved for propane. Demo was in Nov, our punch list is long, our stove is in but not hooked up, our venthood does not work, parts of the counter have been missing for months and I need to paint so much it is overwhelming. I have painted approx half of what needs doing (the entire interior, minus our sons' room needs doing, including painting stained moldings and window trim and new primed window trim and moldings). Then, I get to finish a small section of exterior and paint the garage door. Once the interior is painted, and money allows, we need to rip up the dr and new den floor and put down new wood floors. We need to rip up our new kitchen floor for another one to be determined. Then, the backyard that got chewed up by machines will need fixing and we need a new fence (old ugly one had to get half torn down in the process). I expect to get the interior done in approx 4 months and the rest by Spring. We'll be right around the 1 year mark, if we are lucky! (I am not even thinking of how long until the bs....)

I have done brick interior walls twice. Thin brick is ridiculously expensive, so I made my Higgins jig and cut regular brick with a 20" brick saw that I rented. I ended up paying a bit less than a dollar per square foot for brick slips. The second time I just used queen brick as I was installing over a footer and the engineer approved full brick. Once you factor in time it was even cheaper.

It depends on the spacing of your floor joists, but in most cases you will have space for them to shoot in the foam. The wall in this picture has 1" foamular board on the cement wall, with a 2x4 wall framed in front of it, and then the cavity is filled with rock wool batts. As you can see, there is still space between the top plate (the lighter colored wood) and the floor joists (darker wood at the top of the picture), and I think they could still shoot foam in there. However, it would depend on how close the last floor joist is to the rim joist. Bruce