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.