Drainage is a special consideration, and one that gets trickier the more I think about it. Burying roses for the winter is something I have extremely little second-hand knowledge about. I know one person who does it, and it's hard to tell what site-specific oddities he is or isn't dealing with. To start with, fall is our rainy season, as much as we have one. It's also when the deciduous trees start going dormant, so they pull up considerably less water in December than they do in August. Aside from surface drainage, it seems to me that the soil is every bit as soggy in March as it is in October. And that isn't taking any snow into consideration. Without snow insulation, frost enters the ground from the top down. It leaves in the opposite direction, from the bottom up. It takes a lot of energy to thaw out water, including water in soil. This is one of those obvious things that took me a while to figure out. The temperature characteristics of dry soil resemble the temperature characteristics of air - it's a relatively good insulator, but warms and cools relatively quickly. The temperature characterisics of wet soil resemble the temperature characteristics of water - it's a relatively poor insulator and warms and cools slowly, with an extreme delay due to the energy change necessary to change water to ice and vice versa. When it comes to winter protection and roses, there is far more in this than I have so far teased out. What I've got so far, is that it takes considerably more wet soil to provide the same insulating qualities than dry soil. Another point is that when the soil is thawing out, there is a rock-like drainage barrier at the frost line. Because it takes so much heat to warm up the water, the frost line moves very slowly. So unless there is a significant change in level, which allows the water to escape, any given soil level can spend several days sitting in water until the soil thaws out enough to let the water sink to the next level. When you add snowmelt into this, you see why a very extended Mud Season is normal. You can also see why going inside and avoiding the entire issue has become quite common. When we were in Maine for a HRF convention years ago, they talked about a local nursery that buried their leftover roses in a hole in a barn. The southerners thought it was one of the looniest things they'd ever heard.

"I have a question about this? What are the rules for final inspection? Can the inspector refuse to issue a CO because the room does not meet code even if it passed the rough-in plumbing inspection?" Yes. If IRC applies to his building jurisdiction, the water closet should have been first flagged when the plans were first reviewed for permit. So "as is", the permit never should have been issued. But that's assuming that the plans were submitted for permit with the too-small water closet drawn as-is. Sometimes changes occur during construction that make what was compliant in the plans non-compliant after changes were made on-site during construction. While inspectors can have a "holistic approach" while doing the subsequent electrical, plumbing, framing inspections, etc, they might simply be looking at the specifics; the electrical specifically, or the plumbing specifically, or the framing specifically. In an office with a large jurisdictional area, the plumbing inspector might simply be concerned with the plumbing: The size of the pipes and tubing that make up the supply system, the size and pitch of the drain system, that the system as a whole is adequately vented. That the proper valves are used, that joints are properly made up, etc. The plumbing inspector may not even know about the non-plumbing issues like the minimum required size for a water closet. When they do the final inspection for CofO and see the too-small water closet, they could then fail the inspection and not issue the CofO despite the plans having been reviewed and a permit issued and despite inspectors having been on site and having passed other inspections. The owner, and the builder, have no real legal "look back" defense, in that they can't claim that the permit was issued "as is" and that previous inspections passed "as is", so the CofO should be issued with the water closet "as is". If it's non-compliant, it can be noted as non-compliant any time during the process. It's the builder's responsibility to know the code and to build the structure IAW code. It's the inspector's responsibility to enforce code. If the inspector doesn't catch a violation and red flag it until the CofO inspection, well guess what...he still caught it.

If you buy a hand saw, the best are the japanese pull saws. I have a bucket full of hand saws that are not worth the effort - they have too agressive teeth and you simply can not get a good cut with them. The pull saws cut as you pull them towards you, standard ones cut as you push, and that is way harder to control. You mentioned it's a bearing wall. Though the wall in the picture is in the middle of the house, it is actually a bearing wall as that was the exterior of the house at one point, then a porch was added and eventually closed in. We had already "fixed" the wall and then after four years decided to swap the den and dining room and opened up a second passageway and made an alcove for the hutch as there was not enough room for the hutch and dining table. This is what the other side of the room looked like after we made changes the first time And after making changes We moved the wall 2' into the kichen to make the alcove for the hutch. Here is the kitchen side of the original wall, after plaster and lath had been removed. You can tell where the exterior windows use to be - This wall now has three headers installed. The main one is 7' wide and then htere are the two new ones, 3.5' wide for the second entryway and about 5' wide for the alcove I put the new wall in place before opening up as I wanted to save as much sheetrock on the back side as possible. This is the new wall - DH was working out of town and while I can demo and build walls, I needed him to put up sheetrock so it stayed like this all last summer. My house is a complete remodel so we've been at this since 2004 - the big problem is I ended up changing my mind a few times so we tore out a wall and patio door we had installed only four years earlier. And just one more picture taken a few weeks ago - we were still using the old cabinets - the new ones are getting final coats of finish and we may get some installed this weekend.

I appreciate the feedback. Sometimes it just helps to be a little educated on a topic. It can be a little intimidating for homeowners to talk to builders. I also don't want to falsely accuse the builder of doing something that couldn't have been avoided. That said, the red arrow points to the hanger in question. in the original picture you see the left LVL is the lowest That beam is level (homeowners 1' level). The 2 LVL's that the 3 boards are hung from is also level. It appears to me the far left of the 3 LVL's was purposely left at that height to maintain level joists connecting to it. To answer the question of architect, structural engineer and permits. Yes, yes and yes and we've already passed inspection.