Project Completed and Picked Up Another Acre

In between various community projects we are involved in (we are pretty much busy through the first week of August..had the truck anf tractor pull, next weekend is the 4H Junior Fair and Draft Horse competition, 2 weeks later the Missouri Foxtrotters horse show) and combating the annual Japanese Beetle invasion we finished the rock garage endwall and door project and bought another acre from a neighbor...which of course will mean more fencing.

The original doors were severely weathered and flexed a great deal because they were not adequately braced but they were in just good enough shape to preserve. As you can see we added "L" brackets at the corners and pressure treated 2"x4"s as zee bracing and it stiffened them up considerably.

We added some more pressure treated wood on the outside as well which added stiffness and cleaned up the rather ragged edges. You cant see it in these pictures but we also cleaned up and strengthened the door opening and framing. 

So here it is finished. We sealed and painted the wood, added new hardware, and re-tuck pointed all the mortar (and sealed it) on the stone end wall. We think it came out nice and complements the rest of the house.

Again you can see this looks like it belongs now with the rest of the house we have redone and this is what we had envisioned when we bought the place. Re-doing the rock garage was on the list of projects for this year we posted back in January and we have now just about completed the outside save for the roof. When we bought this place this rock garage had broken windows, no electricity, the side door was just a screen door and of course this end wall was all but shot. All of that has been corrected and its a very useful structure for us now.

One of our neighbors got in a pinch and offered to sell us an acre of pasture and a small copse of woods and we decided to take the offer. From these corner posts that we still need to finish fencing the new acre goes to the right of the trees in the background (left) in this shot...

All the way to the back woodline in this picture (which is taken from the other side of the woods in the last pic).

Its hard to convey in pictures but this is halfway to the back lot lone from the previous picture.

You can see the survey stakes at the back of this picture and to the left is a peach tree we gained. Behind all this is 70 acres of pasture and woods owned by our only other neighbor who surrounds us on two sides. We had asked about buying some land from them but his wifes folks used to own all the land around here (and they built out house) and they just didnt want to sell what she considers part of the family homestead. They went on to relate they bought the 70 acres so no one else could encroach back there and we couldnt be happier. They are great neighbors about our age with grown kids and they like their privacy so we dont have to worry about any future development. They also offered that we could walk and enjoy the piece whenever we wanted since we are in to photography so we feel like we really are fortunate. 

This is looking from the back of the new piece towards the copse of woods shown in the first photo and our shop is in the background right.

And again, midway up looking towards the copse of woods we just bought. Its a long narrow strip of mostly pasture that we are pretty happy with. The cedars in this photo show our existing fence line and now that will have to be moved over to the left in this shot to the outside left of the trees in the background. The old fence posts will be used for cross fencing.