River House Diary

The last of our tile arrived yesterday — a custom glass mosaic from Oceanside Glass & Tile — for our Master Bath shower. An 8- by 24-inch field tile will be installed from the shower floor to 6 feet up the wall. Then there will be some trim and the glass mosaic will be installed above that to the ceiling. The tile is paper faced, so this is the back of the tile. Oceanside Glass & Tile Tessera Veil mosaic glass sheets; personal collection

The siding and drywall for our house was delivered recently. It looks like it takes up most of the front yard. Courtesy of Dawn Jennings And the crew didn't waste any time getting started drywalling the ceilings and walls. Courtesy Dawn Jennings

I very much wanted a metal roof for River House but the cost was so prohibitive even I couldn’t do it. So we have a shingle roof, which I think will look nice with the blue-gray siding. Courtesy of Austin Bayliss

Construction seems to be creeping along at River House, though Pete has been making several infrastructure decisions. What type of heat pumps do we want? Do we want a generator? If so, which one and where should it be located? The generator is fueled by propane as we do not have access to natural gas. My brother has a 60-gallon propane tank just for his fireplace and recommended we get a 100-gallon tank. But with the generator, we are in 360-gallon range; and feel like a tank so large would be unsightly. So it should be buried, which means buying the tank instead of renting. And then where should it be located. Honestly, I feel like we are running out of space for infrastructure “stuff” between the sewer collection box, heat pump compressors, generator and now the propane tank. Our builder recommended burying it in front of the pantry window. So that is the current plan. Add caption

The tile we chose for the kitchen backsplash is Maiolica from Roca Tile USA in Aqua Crackled. It was used in the Southern Living 2019 Idea House . Photograph by Laurey W. Glenn

My sister-in-law made her weekly photo stop at River House yesterday. She must have been there early in the morning as the moon is still in the sky and the sun is low in the eastern horizon. View of the river from Pete's office window; courtesy Dawn Jennings There hasn't been a lot of visual progress, but the electricians and the heating, air conditioning and ventilation contractors have continued the rough-in work. The roof still is not finished, which surprised us.

One of the many downsides of aging has been the worsening of my close-up vision. Without a magnifying mirror, I can no longer see those pesky, wild eyebrow hairs. A lighted magnifying mirror was one of the many extra lighting fixtures we added to the electrical layout. So far, electrical has been our biggest area of overage costs (not including site prep and additional foundation piers). Nameeks Glimmer Square Wall-mounted Magnifying Mirror ; courtesy Amazon.com I have to admit the mirror wasn't on my mind this morning until I got this text from our builder. Builder questions and answers; personal collection I found the specification sheet and then had to figure out how many inches from the floor I wanted the mirror. Who knew I'd be measuring how high my eyes are this morning? Yes, there truly do seem to be a million and one decisions as so many people have told us.

The electrical plan for River House specified eight flood lights. Today, the electrician's question was in which direction should the front porch flood lights point? Should the beams be directed to front toward the road or to the two sides of our property? Because we also have exterior lights at either side of the front door, we decided the flood lights would point sideways. We thought it would be better aesthetically, too. Location of the front porch flood lights; personal collection

Zuniga Interiors sent the design concept for the Great Room. Great Room furniture; courtesy of Zuniga Interiors A gallery of coastal art along one wall. Furnishings and decorative items; courtesy Zuniga Interiors A simple chest between the French doors. River view wall; courtesy of Zuniga Interiors And a place for Octopussy, our name for the silver sunburst mirror with octopus tentacles. Fireplace decor; courtesy of Zuniga Interiors

My brother and his wife looked in on our house this morning. The French doors in the great room had been secured but had been blown open and were flapping around, a lot of the erosion control fencing was gone and we may have lost some roof shingles. Ted was amazed at how different the conditions were right on the river. This morning the wind was blowing about 20 mph at his house but were still about 60 mph at our house. The river is still an angry beast. The angry Neuse River; courtesy of Ted Jennings Looks like our erosion situation fared fairly well; courtesy of Dawn Jennings

Hurricane Dorian has strengthened a bit and may make landfall at Cape Fear, Cape Lookout or Hatteras. Even if it doesn’t make landfall, its brush with the North Carolina coast is predicted to bring monsoon rains and storm surge Thursday and Friday. At least it’s moving faster than Florence so its effects on the area will not last as long. Our builder spent yesterday trying to limit the erosion caused by water pouring off our gutter-less roof. More Dorian preparation; courtesy Austin Bayliss

The National Weather Service is currently predicting tropical storm or hurricane conditions for New Bern this Thursday and Friday with 5 to 7 inches of rain, 4 to 7 feet of storm surge and, of course, high winds. Our builder has begun prepping our house for Dorian. They've shored up all the silt fences along the property line and river, had the trash dumpster emptied and will move all building material and supplies in the garage. We are still fighting an erosion problem, which will be permanently resolved when a French drain and our gutters are installed. We wish our roof could be completed before the storm. Silt fences along the seawall; courtesy Austin Bayliss Erosion area; courtesy of Austin Bayliss

When Zuniga Interiors sent the design concept for the upstairs Bonus Room , the pillows for the sofa were sourced from Joss & Main , a flash sale website with rapidly changing inventories. Finding the perfect pillows to complement a design is not something at which I excel; so I ordered the pillows right away as I didn’t want them to go out of stock. The pillows will live on an 89-inch sofa and the the sofa they are staged on in this photo is only 73 inches. They’ll have room to breathe on their “real” sofa. Pillows from Joss & Main; personal collection Details: Kalista Throw Pillow in Blue (20" square or 22" square) Adali Modern Cotton Lumbar Pillow (33" wide x 13" high) Gloria Morgan Cotton Lumbar Pillow in Santorini (22" wide x 14" high)

After falling in love with the UGG Napa shower curtain , I changed the floor tile color in the upstairs bathroom from Lagoon (deep blue) to beige. I wasn’t crazy about the change, but felt it was the only way that shower curtain would work. Then I got the design concept for the Bonus Room from Zuniga Interiors and it was all about indigo blue and sand with lots of woven textures and geometric shapes. It was perfect and it was designed to complement that lagoon blue penny round floor tile in the adjacent bath. So I flipped back to that color from the beige I was never really wild about in the first place. Plus, Pete and our builder’s interior designer shamed me into changing tile because of a shower curtain! I went looking for a new shower curtain. Googling “lagoon blue shower curtain” resulted in nothing very exciting the first time around, but Googling “indigo shower curtain” netted much different options, including this hand printed, from hand-carved wood blocks, shower curtai...