Janet and Mike's place

Drove out to visit with Janet this afternoon.  Wow.  Their place is coming along sooo much faster than ours.   Here's the house when they first moved in.  It used to have a double carport attached to the back of the house with a small storage area on the end.  The garage was a detached 2-car garage. off to the side.  Here's a picture I took when they first bought the place.

 Now they've removed that small storage building on the side of the carport and opened it up completely, making it possible to park three cars under cover back there . . . or have a really big outdoor gathering -- even if its pouring down rain. 

And that small garage (well - it didn't seem small at the time, but in comparison to the new building...) has been turned into a gigantic garage/shop/storage area complete with bathroom.  Mike's new building is amazing. 

And the front of the house -- wow!  Here's how it looked when they moved in.  The posts supporting the roof were tiny.  The shutters were tiny purely decorative shutters in a boring dark green.

Now those skinny posts have been replaced with huge 1-foot square posts and the shutters now are actual working shutters with transoms above the windows in a really cool blue/green/grey color.

There's also a huge barn now (visible between the garage/shop building and the house above, and on the left below) as well as multiple fenced pastures, none of which were there when they bought the place.

I love the layout of their barn and pastures.  Each corner of the barn is directly accessible from the adjoining pasture so the horses can come and go as they like.  The barn has an X-shaped aisle so you can just ride or drive right through it from any direction.  The pastures too are divided by spaces large enough to drive a truck through easily - or ride in around the whole property. 

They have a much larger property than we do, but I did the best I could to have a similar arrangement.  The three stalls in our barn each open into a separate 50 X 60 or so paddock so our horses will also be able to go in at out at will.  And each paddock, in turn, opens into a full pasture.  We didn't have room enough to divide those pastures with riding paths, but we did leave enough room around the outside perimeter of the property for a riding trail.  Not quite as good, but okay for our smaller property.