Sullivan County, NY, Pics of my Houses and totally annoying things

Above, my 1880's farmhouse we bought from a retired cabaret singer, then thoroughly renovated it and then totally added onto it. That's the thing about Sullivan County, - there's just a ton of under the radar cool people and places. I mean, we don't even have local news - I know more about what happens an hour away than what's happening here.

Here's Richard's Barn House #2. Richard has had some great ideas on this house, my favorite being the exterior stain color. It's a big wide open lofty barn and will provide some great country entertaining I'm sure.

That's 1x12 shiplap up on the ceiling, -sometimes we paint them, sometimes we whitewash them, sometimes we stain them.

I think the construction process is a bit arty and the whole post sheetrock polishing phase always looks good. Painting starts next week.

And there's the man - Norm with his skid steer (as opposed to skid marks). He owns a lot of machines, if you ask me, and he moved them up to our DIY project today in order to move some snow and extract some bad trees for the cameras tomorrow.

Mud season is here. Temperatures are climbing into the high 30's during the day and the 4' of snow we had last week is going to create a serious mess real soon.

I have this sunken media room at my farmhouse and I have two projects that are just beating me down bad. The first is my pond, out back. I mean, I have the perfetct spot where water gathers in a big sort of marshy area before heading down a stream and into a lake. It's a perfect spot for a pond, with fresh water running in and running out. I have this big idea to couple a perfectly groomed badminton court, pond side topless bathing, celebrity referees and fresh martinis every friday, but after 2 years of trying to put this pond thing together, nothing, nada, not a swimmable spot in the marsh.

Now, you got to remember, I get things done for a living so this falling flat on my face pond failure is a bit alarming. I'm not the guy off the street calling a pond guy from the yellow pages - I know a lot of people.

And the 2nd bane of my existence long term project is to create a seamless high tech media room where the tv, computer, flip phone, digital camera all work seamlessly together in a some commercial-like experience - well, I'm no media-head, I'm not so great with tools, and my latest attempts to complete this project ended in a new tv upgrade that resulted in a tv purchase of less sophistication, a duel cable adapter of the wrong gender, and a computer monitor cord to connect my laptop to my tv - and for some totally incomprehensible reason, both the tv and the computer needed the same end of the cord. Didn't make any sense.

Any way you look at it, I'm keeping my day job of moving mountains, navigating insane stuff, and getting it done while trying to accomplish what I thought was going to be some pretty easy jobs.

It's kind of like I tell Lisa - I should always have least one construction project going for my own home at all times so I never lose that empathy for indecision, crazy behavior and self-doubt. Nothing brings it out in people like a good old fashioned construction project.