Thanksgiving

This post is long over-due, since this is not a picture of a Christmas gathering, but rather Thanksgiving at our home at Chapin Estate. My uncle, dad, mom, stepmom, Juan, Amy, Lisa, my bro and his entourage of 4 kids, a wife and dog.

Catskill Farms Value

Back from Mexico, 2 hours south of Cancun, in a small gentrifying village of Tulum, in the Yucatan. Pretty spectacular, and the peso is not as demoralizing as the euro.

Conceivably, what makes our homes more attractive is many faceted.

First, many times the opportunity exists for a collaboration between myself and the new owners, satisfying the craving many people have to design something- what's better to design than something that will be there forever.

2ndly, search high and low and buyers can't find homes that match the architectural uniqueness of our homes. That uniqueness comes from constant experimentation with processes and materials, as well as the unique chemistry between Catskill Farms and the new homeowners, and what each respectively bring to the design phase.

3rdly, we price them right. I am a student of the real estate market, and we neither shoot for the moon with our prices or firesale them. We work hard, efficiently, intelligently, and toss all the savings of our process into the sales price. Show me one construction contract that is structured where the builder pays for everything - no surprises.

4th, we do our best to stand behind our work. Like the local old-timer real estate tycoon Gib McKean has said - 'you can't eliminate the problems from construction, but you have to minimize them, and address them.' Standing behind your work is important anywhere, but up here in the sticks, it's rare to take the responsibility as seriously as we do.

5th, although most of the customers get to enjoy a thorough design and architecture process, they don't have to pay for. I pay for the drawings, and from there we collaborate, free of charge, until the house is finished to customer specifications. It's a $15,000 savings at least, and a true advantage to working with a builder who has good taste (rare.).

6th, I pay for all taxes and interest costs during construction.

All in all, a strategy focused on the needs of our clients - they want a house, they want it to be a great house, they want it quick, they do not want the process to take over their lives, and they do not want to pay out the nose for it. That's fine with me - and is seeming to work out well for everyone - since in these trying economic times, we are selling our houses quicker than we can design them.

Happy Holidays.

Marching On through the Storms

Ouch! Since the last weekend in October, the weather has beaten us up pretty good. Snow storms, ice storms, rain storms, freezing temps, warm temps, etc... On a daily basis at this point we are needing to employ our best winter weather management techniques.

Take a large 2 wheel drive box truck filled with windows, insulation, sheetrock or whatever have you, add one part solid icy driveway, add one part unpredictability, add one part lots of trucks, vans, cars attempting to access the sites, park, manuever, turn around and you get a complicated cocktail of chaos.

Snow is not so bad, but it eliminates parking areas for the tradesmen, meaning everytime someone comes or goes, someone else has to move their vehicle. The ice that is building up everywhere is a true foe, equally competent at causing logistical issues as well as safety issues. Putting on a roof after melting 1/2" of ice off, construction steps covered in black ice, ankle-breaking divots in the rough earth, soft spots, hard spots, things froze together, cold houses.

This week we were attempting to install 2 roofs, among many other things. We encountered an ice storm on Tuesday, a blizzard on Thursday, and an ice/sleet/snow storm today. Onward we trudge.

Cottage 6

The Owner (actually I'm the owner until we are finished, but who's nitpicking) visited his house-in-progress today after a 4+ week hiatus of work and travel. We hope he was quite pleased at the progress. Today we laid out the electric inside the house, and discussed the bathroom designs. We also designed two pretty neat porch systems - one with open rafters, the other with exposed rafters and screened-in porch. To really pimp this place out, we are thinking about stoning the entire chimney, and maybe the foundation as well. Borrowing from a barn motiff, we are using rough hewn vertical board and batten siding on the exterior, and a bold black shingled roof.

Carr Residence Well Drilling

At the Carr Farmhouse, aka Farm #9, aka Lot 2, here is Peter Kestler drilling for water. Straight down into the earth with his boring machine, - first through the clay, then the hardpan, and in this case, after 100 ft - bedrock. Then down another 380 ft before hitting a Jed Clampett like vein of water - 100 gallons a minute when usually 10 glns per minute is considered great. if the Carr's ever want to open a 100 room hotel, they have the water for it.
Well drilling, along with quite a few others, is usually the risk of the home owner. Most builders will give an allowance for so many feet deep, and then the rest is the responsibility of the homeowner - the principle behind it being that no one can guess how deep you will need to go to find the water. However, as in many building contract scenarios, most contracts specify something like 200 ft, which for anyone in the industry knows is setting the homeowner up for that dreaded word - 'upcharge'. At $12/foot drilled, a very common 400 foot well would cost the homeowners $2400 extra.

At Catskill Farms, we don't play that game. We pay for it - period. The risk is ours. The customers can still have that leather couch they laid away, or in the case of Mr Carr - the concrete mixer he's been dying to buy.

By the numbers -

Our newest project is really moving along - we are cooking with gas.

850 ft of country road.
1000 ft of winding country driveways.
3 houses well under way.
3 propane torpedo tanks buried and waiting.
3 wells drilled for a total of 1200 ft of earth boring. And boy did we hit water. At Lot 2, we hit over 1o0 gllns a minute- mind you that 10 gallons is considered fantastic.
3 septic systems well on their way.
1100 feet of over head electric feeding the houses, 4 electric poles.
700 feet of underground buried electric directly feeding the homes.

I'll save the rest until I have some more pics.

Let me just say its a bit hairy out there, everyday brings 4 micro climates through the area - icy rain, snow, mud, freezing temps. Not much to worry about from your office - but start adding 14 vans, trucks, dumptrucks, delivery trucks, etc... trying to access the houses, and it's not hard to imagine the chaos of unexpected hurdles being hurled at us as we try to keep on keeping on.

And, if you have been following this narrative for any length of time, you may be wondering how the race between the baby and the farmhouse 9 is going - well, it's neck and neck, and we are working weekends to gain an edge.

Highland Farms Infrastructure

Just in the nick of time, our infrastructure went in. Electric poles, electric wires, underground electric to the houses, and the underground natural gas takes that will power the homes at Crawford Farms.

Cottage 3

If my readers have any friends (or maybe they are like me, friendless), this house is FOR SALE. Amazingly, it's the only house we have for sale, having had our inventory bought up like used records outside a disc jockey conference. We like to experiment, and we like to keep things real - so we stepped outside our comfort zone and did a little Modern. Kind of like the pre-fab, overpriced, over-designed Dwell houses, except not pre-fab, not over priced, and not over designed.
This house is 1200 sq ft, 2 bedrooms, open loft living/dining/kitchen, 2 full cool baths and a ton of outside living space. Lisa said if we owned a country house, this would be it. My electrician calls it 'the fort', I call it 'modern cottage #3'. The above picture features the staircase, salvaged wood rails, and local bluestone floors that are warm to the touch because of the radiant heat beneath it.

When we built this house, we had 'green' in mind - not fake green, not marketing green, but true attention to how we could build a house that used less energy. This house is built into the earth, taking advantage of the thermal insulation, is positioned to take advantage of passive solar energy, has an abundant amount of insulation, a super efficient heating system, and radiant heat on the ground floor.
This is probably the most unique house for sale in Sullivan County in the $300k range. Not for everyone, but definitely for someone. Catskill Farms has made a good living creating niche houses for niche buyers, or, as our marketing says - 'unique homes for unique individuals."
What doesn't hurt this house is the 6+ perfect acres, private and beautiful, or the security system we installed, or the mack-daddy whole house audio system. Pretty perfect.

Cross Residence Framing

By this time tomorrow - the Cross Cottage will be a completed frame. Then onto the roofing and windows - a little slower then we hoped, but not bad considering November was a shitty weather month, and December isn't starting out much better. I have to hand it to the Framers - if they wouldn't be working weekends and late into the evening we would be waaaay behind. Today, we had to hook a chain up to their van to get them to the house - couple of inches of snow last night quickly turned to ice this morning. Most schools delayed 2 hours, some even closed.

Saturdays are Busy

Saturdays I have to pull double duty - not only do many of the contractors we employ work the weekends, but it's also a day when Catskill Farms homeowners and prospective homeowners are in town. So on top of meeting and strategizing with tradesmen, a lot of Saturdays are spent designing homes, showing homes and walking land. For the most part, Catskill Farms meets with homeowners and possible buyers whenever it is convenient for them. We had one customer who could only meet after 6pm on Saturdays and Sunday - so that's what we did, and got the house built without any delay.

Truth be told, without all the built advantages of building or buying with Catskill Farms, most of our customers wouldn't own a country home. We are available 24/7, we pay the interest charges while building, we pay for anything unexpected, we pay for the architect, we pay for the engineeers, we pay for the permits, we pay to market our homes saving everyone a lot of money, etc..., etc..., etc...

In Sullivan County, most construction projects should include a cynanide pill with the construction contract, since 8 out of 10 projects don't get finished or are so painful, negatively life-changing, and over budget to make ending it all an attractive option.

Catskill Farms consistently delivers brand new old house within 4 months of commencement, a pretty amazing feat anywhere, let alone up here in the middle of nowhere where even simple tasks are complicated by distance, delinquency and dumbness.

We take the home-building/home-buying process pretty serious, and understand the stress on the pocketbook and relationships. We think building/buying one of homes is definitely life-altering, but in the case of our customers, only for the positive. It's a rare experience.

Today was busy. Up at 6am, Home Depot by 7am to pick up 7 misc. items for the punch list at the Jeff Lake house, met Juan at 8 to drop off misc. items and give him the keys to the Uhaul I rented yesterday so we could move furniture out of the Jeff Lake house (we furnish our unsold houses) and finish the punchlist, then to a quick meeting at the Kittay house addition (this addition is for President of the Chapin Estate Homeowners Association), then to McKean Real Estate to finalize the deal on mini-house #1, otherwise known as Cottage 5, then off to look at 14 acres of land priced right, then back to the Kittay residence to meet with the architects and engineers, then down to Farm #9 to meet up with the Carrs. Presently we are designing the lighting, kitchen and beginning to think about which rooms will be sheetrock, where the wainscotting will go, and where we can slip in some perfect plank ceilings.

Then a 2 hour nap, and now Amy and Lisa are in the kitchen (barefoot of course) cooking up a nice country dinner (in between fighting off this very aggressive and active Kitten) and listening to some Christmas cd's I impulsively picked up at the local gas station.