Yep, it's getting quite wild in here. Knock on the door and I'll take you for a tour :-) In summer it's wonderful, so many leaves everywhere, a jungle of green. Winter is bleak but the evergreens are growing. Eventually the skeletons of the deciduous will also be massive and interesting. Lots of birds. 17 giant sequoias and they are doing very well. Read that they really like Portland. Lots of other evergreens, but they're slower. The grass / mix of groundcovers is very beautiful. Eventually it will all be miniature ivies. I seriously thought of moss but don't have time to keep leaves off it. Have a blower/vacuum and just bought a shop vac, have rakes, but sheer volume, could never keep the moss clean enough. The rain last night was so luscious and welcome. These trees LOVE rain! For those thinking of alternative "lawns," the Fleur De Lawn or ecolawn disappears in winter, at least in my yard. I don't want any brown or mud so that is a drawback. But the miniatures ivies will completely cover everything in a few years, whew. The BEST thing I did beside planting lots of trees, lots of variety, was put down large flagstone paths everywhere I have to walk. The mud was unbearable and dangerous. Now I can run around the yard even in the pitch black middle of the night moving sprinklers and it's safe and easy. Fleur de Lawn is not meant for high traffic so if you don't have pets or children, use flagstones or stepping stones or something durable for your walking paths. Pets or children: Don't plant Fleur de Lawn.

We moved to a house in the country on 7.5 acres in December. We immediately saw (& heard) 4 wheeler tracks through the woods & suspected our neighbor's kids. We put up several no tresspassing signs & piled some brush on the heavily travelled routes & thought that would take care of it. Yesterday I was home & heard them in the woods very close to the house. I went outside & as soon as they saw me, they'd zoomed off. They'd also moved some of the barricades & signs. I called over there - kid answers & demands to know who it is - I say "Your neighbor" & he puts on his older brother who does a very poor impression of his father. Laughable, really - but annoying still. I go through my spiel to let him know he was busted & he says "I'll talk to the boys" --- haha --- and I mention that my husband & I will drop by later to talk to him & his wife about it. About 15 minutes later we go over there. Mom answers door (we've not met her yet) - he's fessed up to her but very argumentative to us, she's not too friendly even though we explain it's a liability issue - our land is rough & we have a pond that we don't want anyone near, etc. Her comments "it's spring break, they're bored", "we're gonna have this problem with lots of kids" (not true), "they were here first, before there were any other houses" etc. She did shoot him a dirty look when I asked who I just spoke with on the phone since his daddy was not home. Busted again. I'm hoping this does not become a big issue with them. I like having good relationships with neighbors - we're pretty good ones ourselves. It just seems like a common courtesy to me - not to mention that we posted legal signs. We're planning on fencing the property eventually - but were getting settled in first & it wasn't top priority. I guess now it will be sooner than later.

You will have an economic war between a Very expensive remodel and just moving. Does moving to a larger home with a more desirable layout appeal to you more than six months to a year of dusty disruption? They are likely to cost about the same. What you are proposing is Not at all inexpensive.

Every site has its challenges, I'd just like to get the best compromise for every day comfort. Here's a diagram with shaded relationships between adjacent spaces. Darker are relationships which are strongly preferred. For instance, I'd be pretty apprehensive to put the master bath and bedrooms beside each other since we work with two very different schedules. The sun room is the only room that I'd say would be easily shifted to any other space. However, it would take some convincing to move it to the "front" of the home. It's meant to be a retreat while entertaining, so it still needs to be accessible from the interior spaces, and currently that only leaves me with placing it between the Living and Master Bed/Bath. I feel like I'm just stacking rooms with redundant purposes on top of each other at that point. I also didn't mention that the dining area isn't really meant to be "formal" by any means. The wife actually would prefer this space to be more intimate. Here's a plan which fits pretty in line with what I'd like to accomplish: I've seen this plan a few times on this forum. The parts that don't "fit" to me are: - The garage would have to run lengthwise along the house. - The mud room/laundry area is all together too large and another entry would be better suited toward the back of the house. - The Master bathroom and closet are reversed from the preferred arrangement - I would like a full bath (5' x 8'-6") off the study, but feel it might be awkward right off the living area. This could eliminate the entry powder room. - The foyer and dining area protrude too far out. I would like to recess the porch flush with the study's exterior wall. There doesn't need to be a connection between the foyer and dining area, but the staircase is centrally located (minimizing the upstairs hallways/wasted space). - The plan is about 100-200 square feet too big. The living area is larger than we really would ever use, by about 50-100 square feet. This plan, to me, is about as perfect as I've seen and has a very intuitive path or major/minor axis through the house.