I agree that composting in place is a good idea, especially if it would enable you to keep all the material onsite instead of sending some to the landfill, saving you both time and money. The concerns you have about turning the compost and covering the bins would be important to address if you wanted compost faster or had limited space. In your case, since you're not in a hurry, you have lots of land, and what you are doing is effective, the less work the better -- I think it 'll be more productive to figure out how you can spend less time on the composting process (move piles only once, to their final locations, for instance). I have 6 compost bins and a relatively small garden plot (at a community garden, so I have to use bins). I turn them rarely, and I get good compost. Without turning, it takes a little longer. My understanding is that turning can speed up the process if you monitor temperatures daily and turn after the temperature spikes and then declines, and that otherwise turning doesn't make so much of a difference. Covering compost does help control moisture levels and help keep the compost critters warm and happy, but if it works without covers, that's ok too. I have one bin made from hardware cloth, which was drying out too much during the dry season, so I added some cardboard to keep moisture in. It's not pretty, but after one dry season, it does look like it has been very effective. Again, the cardboard sides and the cover help speed up the composting process by conserving moisture (and, to a much lesser extent, heat), but I got compost the old way, too. When I do turn my piles, it's because I see ants, which tells me there are dry spots, so I water it and then (if I have time) turn it and make sure the materials are more evenly distributed. But dry spots usually occur if I've put in a bunch of stems and twigs, and not enough small loose stuff to fill the spaces, so the stems and twigs stay dry. If I were composting only horse manure and watered as I went along, dry spots probably would not occur.

What a pretty piece of land!!! And since you have a corner lot you have all sorts of options regarding exactly which way to face your front door! On the other hand, because of the corner lot, you're also going to want both facades that face a street (south and west) to be "pretty" enough to be a front elevation. You won't be able to get away with thinking "well, this is the side of the house so if it doesn't look terribly well balanced, well, no one will ever see it anyway...." In fact, it appears as if people will also be able to look across the pond and see the east face of your home from the road as it curves back around the pond. So even that side can't just be left "plain" like one sees with the back and sides of many tract houses. So, all my comments remain tentative until we see the upstairs and basement plans and can start getting a sense of what the exterior elevations will look like. LOL! With either option, you should bear in mind that if/when you have children, it is going to be a long hike from the master bedroom to the bottom of the staircase and an even longer hike to junior's bedside when he wants a drink of water in the middle of the night. Other than that tho, as far as the floor-plan goes, both options look pretty livable although there are a few minor tweaks I would recommend. Eg., with both options I would suggest swapping the locations of the toilet and shower in the master bath. You don't want noise from the toilet waking your spouse up in the middle of the night so it is better not to have the toilet up against the bedroom wall. I'd also personally prefer having the vanities on either side of the tub instead of shower and toilet because vanities don't "box in" the tub as much as a shower unit and the walls of a toilet room. I think a garden tub looks prettier when it is more "open." In my mind, boxing a garden tub in with shower and toilet room walls recreates the typical "alcove tub" found in every tract house in the country. On both options I'd probably also want to reposition the powder room a little bit. It isn't terribly bad where it is right now but I feel like you would still have a little bit of a view of the toilet while standing in front of the kitchen sink and that would bother me. On both options, I'd definitely make the island a little bit smaller so that the aisleway between kitchen sink and island was wider. Since you might have someone squeezing past to reach the master bedroom while you're washing dishes (even tho there is another way they could go!) I would want 4.5 feet of space there. On both options, I'd probably want a second door directly from garage into the pantry in order to avoid the walk around carrying groceries. On both options, you have a "door conflict" between the closet door outside the laundry room and the laundry room door. On both options, the master bath area/master closet area is HUGE. If you find yourself needing to cut some square footage, I'd start there. BTW, I'm curious as to whether the square footage of either option is anywhere near the 2500 sq ft max you mentioned on your earlier post? I like the two double garages of option 2 but would want a man-door somewhere on that side of the house to make it easier to access the detached garage. I'd also want a man door into the detached garage. Who wants to have to open two garage doors to get to a car parked in the detached garage? I think I prefer the location of the office in option 1 to its location in option 2 and I know I prefer the larger front porch on option 1 to the small front porch on option 2. I suspect the front facade of option 1 can be made to look nicer than the facade of option 2 which, to me at least, seems out of balance with the office sticking out almost in the middle of the house but not quite. I like the u-shaped stairway of option 2 better than the C-shaped staircase of option 1 but wish there was someone to turn it so that you could have the landing up against the exterior wall so you could have a landing window. On both plans, I don't like that the only way to reach the powder-room from the office, lving area or dining room is to walk right thu the kitchen. Just my 2 cents. I'm sure you'll get opinions from lots of others.

marti8a -- Floors are post & beam with joists, then wood sub-floor. The flooring is 3/4 inch engineered "Antique, Reclaimed Heart Pine" It was a nail down installation. My DH and I did the entire install of this floor so I know it very well. It is one gorgeous floor. The pictures don't begin to show the character, warmth and beauty. It has a 1/4 inch wear layer so can be be refinished as many time as solid wood. The substrates are 7 layers. I love my floors, so glad I went with my instinct. No one in our area gets these kinds of floors but knew this is what I needed for my "new" old house.

I can't speak for pre-cast concrete, but we have a pool with natural stone coping which obviously can't have a rounded edge. It is free form, too, and the chiseled edge looks great, so I don't think the aesthetics of straight vs round should concern you. As for leaning your neck on it, I would say the amount of time people use the spa vs the amount of time people spend hanging out by the pool at the fire pit pales by comparison, and the way it will feel wouldn't be my first consideration but rather the way it will look.