The Remodel: Passing Final Inspection

I don't remember how much of the electrical saga I've shared, but on our final inspection (back in June), the inspector found two "small" things that needed to be fixed with the electrical system. One was that an outlet was set in too far and the other was that a wire needed to be secured on the box downstairs. I didn't fully understand what needed to be done, so I asked the inspector to call the electrician. Snipping a lot of details, it took almost six months for the inspector to reach the electrician (including numerous reminder calls from me). The electrician came on December 27th, and the building inspector came today and we're DONE! We'll officially have our project "off the books".

One of the annoying things about having the final inspection *not* completed is that we wanted to add a light over the mirror. The only lights in the bathroom are one over the shower stall, and one in the middle of the bathroom, in the same fixture as the fan. Needless to say, things like putting on makeup were impossible! We had purchased (almost 6 months ago) a $42 light to mount over the medicine cabinet, but since we were going to put it in, and not the electrician, we had to wait for the inspection to be done. When the electrician was here last week, I mentioned something about how awful the light from the fan fixture was and he said, "and you can't put a light over your sink because of code". Here's a picture of the ceiling, with the slanty wall/ceiling, due to the roof:
Unfortunately, the 90 days had passed for returning the $42 light fixture to Home Depot with our receipt. We tried bringing it back without a receipt and it had been marked down to $34 (bummer, but not as bad as I'd feared). Then we went to look for a lamp that could sit on the floor but aim light at the mirror.

We'd almost given up when we were walking past the track lighting in Home Depot and saw a floor lamp that matched some track lighting. It was a $60 lamp, clearanced for $17! We grabbed it, and some insanely expensive light bulbs for it, and went to check out. The lamp rang up at $0.01!!! I was no longer so annoyed with not getting the full $42 back on the light fixture.

It's not perfect, but it looks okay in the bathroom, and it works GREAT!