Gateway to paradise

Five years ago, Catherine Tucher was living in a suburb of St. Louis and driving nearly an hour to the stables where her horses were boarded. Unfortunately, the stables and surrounding property were getting pretty rundown, and Catherine was considering moving the horses.

Instead, she and her husband, Michael Spaulding, moved to where their three horses were when the property south of Foristell, Missouri, came up for sale.

A year before, while riding with her mother on the property, Catherine commented that "whoever buys this place whenever it goes on the market would have to be nuts." And some repairmen later wondered out loud if the place had been abandoned.

Catherine recognizes the irony in the situation but has never regretted their decision. Not even the first night when the septic system backed up in the house.

"We saw the potential, even though we had to look past a lot of rack and ruin," she says.