Ranch V - Sold

We hung on to this little baby for awhile in what I suspect was a two-fold issue of a strengthening economy (homes got bigger) and the fact that it was a niche product.  1 bedroom (though with the manshed it's now a one bedroom with a sleeping cottage), concrete floor (which means no basement) and a pretty modern design approach.  In the end it took us about 9 months to sell which is far below the standard time to sell a home in this market, but longer than our typical 'sold before we finish' process.

It's a real sharp house with a ton of personality.  Catherine unloaded her London flat to buy this place.  I've said it before that I'm really complimented when women buy our homes cause I think there is typically a higher level of skepticism and caution among these buyers and the fact that they trust us to respectfully deliver on our promises is validating.

We carried a grayish stone motif through the home, starting with the floors, segueing through the cabinets and the walls, and complimented with the fireplace stone and hearth.






Radiant heat, wood burning fireplace, super high-efficiency gas wall-hung boiler, spray foam insulation and a small footprint results in a very high-performing home.

Like in most of homes, a touch of whimsy, of not taking ourselves too seriously, comes through loud and clear.

The covered entrance with the retro door helps define the house and the space.

I personally liked the apple green paint in the bath but Catherine decided to tone it down a little with a new coat of English white.

The carport, like I've said before, is one of my favorite spaces.  It's like no party will ever be rained out because you comfortably duck into the carport area.  Easily screened, and actually easily turned into a bedroom if the circumstances demand.

The Ranch sits on 5+ acres outside of Barryville and borders state land of 1300 acres - so it's like having a big piece of usable land right behind you.

We staged it nicely - a retro couch, ikea chair from way back and a few other simple touches.

All in all, great little house.  It's a welcome addition to the architectural landscape of Sullivan County.

Bike New York 2012

Bike New York - that 36 mile jaunt through the five boroughs was last weekend and my sis and two friends took the ride with me.  That's us with our heads in the posters.

Back in the late 90's and early aughts ( I hate that word) when I lived in the city we did it like 5 years running, but this was the first time since 2003 I made it.   30,000 riders starting in Battery Park City, heading up 6th, through Central Park, up into Harlem and the Bronx, back into Manhattan over to Queens, into Brooklyn and then into Staten Island and the ferry back to Manhattan, then back to our car in Brooklyn.

This is a poster if you can't tell.  And below is my car all ready for the ride into the city.  Funny story about how at the end of the ride, meaning about 45 miles once you add in the getting to and getting home from the organized portion of it, I was pretty beat and trying to get my damn bike on the roof rack was proving difficult, mostly due to lack of patience.  So I'm in the Brooklyn Marriott parking garage putting my bike on and the two parking attendants who didn't speak great english are saying something to me.  It seemed aggressive like non-english can sometimes, so I waved them off and actually was a bit rude and dismissive.  It seemed like they were implying I shouldn't be doing this labor inside the garage but since the garage was very non-busy, I thought they were full of it and kind of told them so.




So I get the damn bike eventually tied down right and start getting in my car and realize I can't get the damn thing out of the garage because the entry point is very low and that actually what these guys were trying to tell me.  So I got out the bread that Lucas had left behind and made myself a big crow sandwich.

And a true test of my talent, turned it into a joke without actually having to actually apologize and got the guys to help position the swaying yellow ceiling height bar so I could squeeze by without having to take the bike off the car.


Doesn't it seem like it should be very easy to type some text to the right of this picture.  It may seem that way, but it's not, and that why the formatting isn't what I'm striving for but many times complete is more important than perfect, I'm just going with it.

We ate in Little Italy at what I think is probably the oldest school Italian restaurant in that area.  The inside hadn't been renovated ever and there was a big fat italian guy looking very Goodfellaish hogging up one of the few tables in the joint, not eating or drinking anything.  It's funny how big Chinatown is and how difficult to navigate out of it, and how little Little Italy is.  Very telling in an 'boots on the ground' way.



About 6am, getting ready for some breakfast and riding over the Brooklyn bridge to the starting point.

And my sister below.




At the starting gate with the quickly assembling 30,000 riders.  We were near the front, which is where you want to be.  There have been years where bottlenecks from too many riders created some serious bicycle traffic issues.

That's most of our team below.  Team Petersheim.  That kid in the background was 15 and he thought he was going to smoke the old man but didn't happen.



Starting line below.  It was a perfect day for riding - about 65 degrees and the sun shaded with clouds.  Partially sunny I think they call it.

Lots of fun sights and sounds.  One of the funniest reoccurring sights is the unexpected early riser pedestrian who ventures out to walk the dog or get a cup of joe before the ride begins and finds 30,000 bike riders going past when they try to get home.  Seriously, it is nearly impossible to cross the street for hours once the race begins, at least without taking your life in your hands.  One of the funnier attempts was a group of 6 strangers who attached themselves to each other and moved as a blob across 6 Ave up by the Park, I guess feeling safety in numbers.

Up in Harlem some Sunday Morning gospel singers.

So at a rest stop on the BQE, I stopped by the water station to refill and got this water bottle from the guy manning the station.  So I'm shooting the shit with the guy behind the counter who keep yelling out to passerbyers 'get your NYC water here' and it fucking turns out to be the Commissioner of the DEP, all casual, alone and talkative.  

So of course this is super interesting to be one on one in a casual environment with the head of the DEP, considering all the hubbub about hydro-fracking and all that.  You know he has been part of a lot of high-level conversations- political, environmental, financial.  So when he says things like 'Just goes to show how many people need a cause', and 'the gas companies did a terrible job when they entered these towns' and 'it would be nice if science played a part in the debate' and 'Pennsylvania's strategy of letting them in and then tightening the screws' and 'it's possible the opportunity has now passed that gas prices are so low' and 'we aren't worried about underground migration but rather spills from the pits'- those are super interesting comments to a guy who has had his life disrupted by the fading threat of gas drilling in the areas where we build homes.

I agree with him.  The hysteria and fear produced by the gas companies, who should have spent $100m educating, informing and complying with local regs and fears before they leased an acre of land, are overblown.  It's amazing to me that the largest industry on earth was so amateur as to create this unmendable public relations fiasco for themselves- when they could have created a responsible roadmap for domestic energy production.   But it was interesting to see and hear off the cuff remarks from a high-level real politic guy.


But, speaking of bananas...

And then across the Verrazano.  We crossed like 6 bridges which was pretty cool.  The only hills on the ride.  Whenever I ride my bike somewhere flat I am always reminded why people like riding bicycles for exercise.  Up here in Sullivan County, riding bike it tough, with hills galore and never-ending.  A flat piece of land is about as likely as trying to lose 5 lbs once you turn 40.

Over in the Staten Island Verrazano Park they had free massage and lots of music.

Back across the water to lower Manhattan.  The ride is a great way to see the city and a great way to experience New York and New Yorkers.  I always love it and for some reason I was really digging the city experience - it felt new and fresh.  Maybe cause I was on a bike the whole time.

And cool man Luke - with his buzz light year pez dispenser that Diane up in the Woodstock office of Coldwell Banker bought for him.

Cottage 38 and Miami

Random South Beach sports bar on a rainy Sunday afternoon.  I'm pretty sure it was a tongue-in-cheek display of gay haute couture.

Lucas had something different in mind with his Avenger shirt from below.  The Hulk, Mark Ruffalo, sends his kids to the same school Lucas goes to.  So does Michelle Williams.  It's an 85 acre Montesorri school in Glen Spey NY called the Homestead School with gardens and live animal births, and barns and hills and woods and pretty perfect (... narrative rant deleted cause Wife told me too).

I was in Miami for a few days and it was real tropical windy stormy, which I didn't mind - but I did feel bad for the people who did.  It was like 3 days of bluster, heavy winds and 'getting wet' storms.

Cottage 38 in Stone Ridge is looking good and nearly done.  A lot of action this past week.

Hey, how did this picture get in here?

I stopped by the job site on Thursday to find a lot of busy bees.  There's John the Electrician, - been with us since Farm 3 back in 2004.

Steve the Tile guy jamming along.  He throws up a lot of tile for us.

A little bit of everything scattered about as everyone is fighting for space.

The appliance install...

Someone staked out the porch for some elbow room...

And the Man Shed...

Truck galore and a dumpster ready to be taken away...

The gas guys, there to take care of the ground floor gas fireplace and the Wolf Stove.

Nice bluestone patio coming out of the basement...

And then I ended the day with Bryan of Cottage 34 at the politically incorrect Narrowsburg Inn watching the bartender play a wii fishing game on the big screen.

Yes, you know you are in the country when you end the day with an order of scotch and beer (one of each for both bryan and me) for $18, sitting around watching someone fish on the big screen.

FH20 Guy Strikes Again

FH20 Guy Update #2 –
Starting the Process

While Chuck was busy running the land closing process, I started thinking about and planning for the actual farmhouse. First, buying and closing land is different than your typical experience of buying a coop or condo in New York City. Thankfully there are no coop boards, interviews, gazillions of forms to fill out, references to obtain, and so forth. Even better, Chuck does all the
work for you... communicating with the various stakeholders, organizing the professional survey, conducting perc tests for septic, title/deed searches, and so forth. While I’m sure there’s more
than one way to skin the cat, I’ve been very happy so far with the professionalism, performance, and pricing of Chuck’s contacts (real estate lawyer for closing, survey firm, title/deed company, etc.) and expect nothing to change as we move towards closing. Why bother figuring this out when someone’s already figured it out for you after building hundreds of Catskill farms? Plus, I have to imagine all of these guys will want to continue to get Chuck’s referrals and business so they’ll do a good job. So far, everyone’s been an A+ professional.

Offloading this work allowed me to totally geek out and start working on the actual FH20. It’s
been an amazingly fun and educational process so far, and this is what we’ve done so far:

* Agreed on the basics of FH20, shapes, layout, and so forth. With so many existing designs and
examples, you can copy or modify entire cottages or pinpoint specific rooms or design features from the Catskill Farms galleries. I loved walking through actual farmhouses at different stages of production...framing going up, windows being installed, drywall and porch railing being secured, and of course finished products.

* Planned for a separate structure, probably a classic red barn we can use to garage a vehicle, serve as a man shed, and provide power/water for my wife’s attached, integrated greenhouse.

* Strongly considering green technologies for HVAC and other utilities. I should devote a separate post for this because it’s been fascinating learning experience, but in summary, we’re probably going to use (a) ground-source heat pump and forced air (ducting) for HVAC, (b) LP backup power with automatic switching; check out this New York Times article at http://tinyurl.com/c2m2xnd where the writer profiles Catskill Farms, (c) LP hot-water tank, not on-demand, tied into the heat pump as well, and (d) a possible grid-tied solar photovoltaic
(PV) system for electricity production.

* Spec-ed out a tricked out bathroom, affectionately named POJAB™, or the “Pimped Out Japanese Awesome Bathroom.” Chuck came up with this acronym after hearing me describe the concept, and I’ve ripped it off from him and trademarked it. I’ll definitely have to devote
another post to the POJAB!

* We recently walked the actual property and have yet to decide the actual placement and orientation of the structures. There are several considerations (seclusion, unique property features, proximity to utilities, driveway length, tree and brush clearing, etc.) so we’ll evaluate a few possible sites, write up pros/cons, and most importantly attach costs to each site. With the greenhouse and potential solar PV system, the barn or garage will definitely have one side facing south, the optimal orientation for maximum sunlight. The rest of it will probably be determined by cost... trying to get the biggest bang for our buck.

It’s fun to write about this stuff right now to “mark the moment” and record the thoughts and considerations currently going through our heads. I’m sure as the process evolves, we’ll have to modify or even delete certain things due to cost, but we’ll revisit that when it comes. After we
close on the land, we’ll hammer out the construction schedule and budget given all the information we have and we’ll go from there. Yep, we’re really motoring now!

Additional reading and information:

(Above) The GO Home in Belfast, Maine (LEED Platinum, Home
Project of the Year 2011):
http://www.gologichomes.com/featured-projects/passive-house.html

Ground source heat pump:
http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/home/heating_cooling/geothermal.html

Energy Star products, including heat pumps and LP hot water
tanks: http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=products.pr_find_es_products

More Press about amazin' Catskill Farms

We had some good press lately about a variety of things.  I'm down in Miami taking a few days off but before you get too jealous let just say it's been raining since Friday, which I why I guess I'm blogging on a Sunday morning.

Times Herald Record covers our upcoming TV appearance on Selling NY -

Manhattan Media and their five neighborhood newspapers cover our homes and ideas -

Brownstoner gives us a shout out last week and one of our houses for sale-

And the trusty Hudson Valley Business Journal -  with a real handsome shot of me!!

That's it for now.  Got some real good blog posts incubating in my head so stay tuned.

Appliance sale, Eldred is Hot, and Contractor Blues.

Eldred NY seems to be the hot spot.  Tom Givone just made a big splash in dwell magazine with his renovation of a house over off of Airport Road.  No link available, but I think the feature story is available in this month's issue.  Tom's done a few projects up here over the last decade - all of them interesting with unique approaches.

And a fun 'upstate projects can be painful' article in the NY Times - "Pre-Fab Short on the Fab" - something we are well aware of and really the inspiration of the whole Catskill Farms business model.  Upstate living and the transition thereof does not have to be a test of endurance and financial/emotional survival.

It can be real easy - The Catskill Farms way.  Perfected over 10 years of experimentation and improvement.

Around Town (and Woodstock's Levon Helm)

Since I've been hanging around Woodstock area a few days a week, I was up close and personal to the reaction to the passing of Levon Helm of the Band.  Between his history as the backup band to Dylan, and then the Band and the movie and songs, and then later the close connection and participation with the Town of Woodstock, where we are building a half a dozen homes.

That's Lucas below in Saugerties, NY with one of his funny faces. outside a cool mid-century antiques and furnishes store named Green, where the hours are long and the owner is pretty attached to his pretty Labrador.
 

Google sprung a suprise on my, or at least blogger.com did, with a whole new layout for my blog - after 600 posts and 4 years of posting, I was definitely used to the inadequancy of the old blogger - in a way, it wasn't even romantic in its simplicity - it was just a poor program when put beside something like wordpress, etc...

Barn V in Narrowsburg NY

Seems like a lot of easy neat features like this new post method to the right or left of the photo - that's the A team excavation leader Norm.  He's a master of the earth.  He's very important to us 'getting out of the ground' with a house, and critical to the our constant aspiration and consistent achievement of our 'on-budget, on-schedule' approach to things. 

That's the Big Barn down below, coming along pretty nicely.  It's big, it's bad, it's cool.

 

See, I'm already having formatting frickin issues with damn new upgrade.  So down below are the Arma-Lite Garage doors - 3 of them, with tracks and with remotes, looking over the hills.
 


 The Garage ain't bad lookin either, for sure.  Room for cars and a few motorcycles and down the road maybe some guests.   It's modeled after my friends Benoist house.

Cottage 39 in Eldred NY is making some progress as of late.  It's one of the few homes we have for sale, and is pretty good looking, has plenty of space, and sits on a sweet piece of land.

Cottage 40 in Woodstock is making some progress even though our framer held us up by going on Vacation at the wrong time, and worse, coming back with a twisted knee.  But we are making progress and the first site meeting is set for Saturday a week.
 

It's always fun to go up top before the roof is on.



Ranch VI is making good progress as well - we are in the final weeks before turning it over to the owners, who are friends of Barn IV folks.  This is a very cool house.

 

And then Joe and Robin who are building Farm 19 with us, in area we like a few miles outside of Narrowsburg.  10 acres, some views, some privacy, some lake rights, some elevation.  Actually a piece of perfect.

That's Bryce from Cottage 17 on the left, tagging along to see how its done.  He's got his real estate license and hopes to sell some homes up here in his spare time from his store in Barryville, NY.

And then Mike and Suzannah of Farm 20 fame (I think I'm misspelling her name, but I'm not in the office to double check).  Mike is aka as F20g, who as been guest blogging on occasion about his process, his thinking and his journey into country-homedom.  Mike's worrisome cause though I'm a pretty bright guy, he runs circles around me and I'm left picking up the morsels of brainpower he kindly leaves around.  I often say we are really without competition in terms of style and approach and intuitive communication and collaboration with our clients because our clients are a talented set of designers and professionals with good tastes which constantly pushes our knowledge and comfort level - Mike and his team push us forward into new territory on a more mechanical basis - geothermal, solar, smart wiring, etc... It's all good, cause the more we know, the more we know.  and the more we know, the more our clients appreciate that knowledge leveraged on their behalf when needed.










Cottage 38, that handsome devil up in Stone Ridge, ready for a late May closing.  Actually, we will close on a few in May  - Cottage 38, Barn V, Mid Century Ranch VI.  I feel I'm forgetting one.  And then we are starting on Cottage 40, Arts & Crafts 2, Arts&Crafts 3, Barn VI, Farm 19, Farm 20, possibly the Glasco Cottage in Woodstock and who knows what else, - it's hard to keep track of, to be honest.

Lucas and I went up last Sunday to Stone Ridge to meet up with the Tuck family and show them our wares, and then some land over on Old Sawmill Rd.  Lucas just got an IronMan mask, so he likes to wear it and likes to share it.  Here is letting our stone mason wear it while learning the trade.









He's an apprentice.









Then over to the Sawmill Properties in Saugerties.

 

 

While cruising around the areas, we went through High Falls, and Rosendale and this fun outdoors antique market.  Lucas had to take a break.



 








He eats a pretty narrow selection of bread and water, and here he is chomping on some bread in the Price Chopper in a shopping cart in Saugerties NY.


Picture below left is in Kutztown PA on our way to Lancaster and on the right in my apartment in Saugerties.

 

Another pic of my Saugerties apartment.  That is one dangerous spiral staircase, let me tell you.  I go up and down it like a grand parent.    

The owner of the Big Barn took a big western Rockies and desert and California motorcycle trip last year when he was switching jobs and had few weeks off.  I salivated about it then, and have been scheming since to make it happen so after I finish hiking Yosemite in September for a few days, I'm going on a 4 days western motorcycle tour through the ghost towns of western Nevada, skirting Death Valley and back up the west side of the Rockies back to Sacramento....

...where that big jetliner will take me back east.

The Band -
Up on on Cripple Creek, as she sends me
If I spring a leak, as she mends me
I don't have to speak, as she defends me
A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one

I took up all of my winnings
And I gave my little Bessie half
And she tore it up and threw it in my face
Just for a laugh
Now there's one thing in the whole wide world
I sure would like to see
That's when that little love of mine
Dips her doughnut in my tea

Up on Cripple Creek, as she sends me
If I spring a leak, as she mends me
I don't have to speak, as she defends me
A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one