My hydrangeas are the garden stars this year. My limelights -- I have at least 8 between the front and back yards--all look fantastic. Pink diamond, quickfire, incrediball and annabelle all look good with lots of blooms. My endless summers are in the first year in the ground and have healthy foliage and a few blooms. One in shade has no blooms, so I need to move it. Another I think is getting too much sun and needs to be moved to a shadier spot. Even the hydrangeas I rooted from cuttings last year and that made it through the winter are doing good. One potted up and in a holding bed even has a bloom. They will go in the ground this fall. My bombshell is bloom-less but I will give it another year. I am looking around for what else to add. One I don't have is the classic Nikko blue, and I want to get a pistachio. I also have a bunch of cuttings taken from hydrangea stems from a recent wedding. Does anyone know if they will root? They don't have any foliage but some of the stems seem to have buds on the stems. From a cutting:

I wouldn't put a door on that shower at all. Just leave a nice wide opening. If you put your shower head 16 inches from opposite end (and buy one that you can adjust if you want it pointing further in the middle) - your spillover into the remaining part of bath will be minimal. We had our bathroom built so we could add a door if we wanted to but wanted to try without. Boy howdy! We will never go back. Really keeps a spacious feeling in the bath and so nice not to have to hassle with "opening and closing" of door. Cheaper too. I know I've posted this pic a jillion times but it seems relevant in case you haven't seen - shower size is 5X5:

Morning Beth, Love the bathroom wall! Super cool! Just very cool and super interesting.(Japanese garden seat is an interesting twist) Next time we have a bathroom to redo you're getting the call for the design! Here's an outdoor shower that one of our customer's built using 5/4x6 FSC Cumaru Shorts and last photo is a door we built using genuine Burmese Teak. It's a lovely wood and I if I remember correctly we were around $24 bd/ft for 8/4. Teak can be very expensive depending on the sizes you're using and the old adage of "measure twice cut once" could be upped to 3/1 because mistakes are costly. Yes, as you well know, these woods are super hard, but don't require any special saws to cut them. Carbide tipped blades and a little bit of patience and it will go right through. It does not cut super quick and easy like a piece of PT. Morning Tony! Welcome to the conversation and so glad your happy with your PT deck. It looks fantastic! There are few lovelier places to be than outdoors in your neck of the woods during the summer (Go Badgers!) Few points of note. Hardwoods require no more nor less maintenance than PT. Period. The choice is one about usable lifespan, pricing, aesthetics, and the environment. Beth oils it because she chooses to oil it not because she has to. The "maintenance" is an aesthetic choice and that's all. We've known individuals in Wisconsin and Chicago and Buffalo who go years without oiling their Hardwood decks and the color doesn't fade. (We're sure we already posted it here in this thread, but just in case we didn't, to see how easy it is to Oil a deck go to our video gallery and watch our "How To Oil" video https://www.soluslumber.com/gallery-how-to-videos/ )The main factor is the amount of sunlight it is exposed to as opposed to snow and rain and cold. If you place your respective woods next to each other and wait 25 years one will still look great and the the other will need to be replaced. Ipe was used on the Coney Island boardwalk and was down for roughly 75 years untreated before it was replaced. Contractor who won the bid kept the reclaimed material, surface planed it, and resold it. We personally have a boardwalk in Massachusetts using 2x6 PT boards, it is 20 years old, hasn't been oiled with any preservative, had to flip the boards because they got too bad to walk on and now the second side is done and desperately needs to be replaced as their useful life is over. Our porches are 1x4 Cedar left totally untreated and they're still doing great. Composite ( there are so many different kinds that now fall under that heading but too early in a Monday morning to open the can of worms on that discussion), but agree they do get hot to walk on and you raised a great point about the sagging. With composite we do not EVER receimmend a 24" OC center joist span for this very reason. 16"OC is the absolute minimum we recommend independent of what a manufacturer may say and we're not opposed to 12" OC depending on board size and what you plan to put in top of it. Very smart move on the stainless steel screws (304-305ss will do the trick) Joist tape is never a bad idea. It will help protect your joist from water sitting in them and rotting the wood. Some water will still get in around the screws and that's where the problems will start, but the tape will definitely help mitigate that.

It sounds like it's just you living in the home most of the time, right? The first house that my husband and I ever bought was 800 square feet. We lived in it with two dogs and never felt like it was cramped (aside from the lack of closet space which was par for the course in a house built in 1910). I'm a big fan of smaller homes if they are well-designed and not so tiny that it feels silly. One of my favorite small home architects is Ross Chapin. Check out his website. He builds pocket neighborhoods of smaller homes, but also has a ton of plans on his website. I think that you can do better than what you're currently looking at, but think that you're on the right path. Be careful that in your quest to build as cheaply as possible that you don't end up with a house that isn't very livable, especially as you age.