Client in the News

Eric Wilson, a fashion writer for the Times, does a nifty little number with this review of the wedding dress from the Royal Wedding -

Kate Middleton's Dress is a Flawless Success

Rock and Roll

Wet, dreary, lots of rain and limited progress, for us. Of course, we did start and get two foundations in the ground and are kicking the Yankee Lake renovation in the ass, but oh, give us a little dry weather and we will really be off to the races.

Here are the cement boys pouring the slab at Ranch 5 on one of the few sunny days we've seen.

And a couple of cute shots of Lucas in order to keep this whole blog cute and warm and fuzzy feeling. He's playing nicely with Ruby who will turn on man, woman or child on a dime with a quick sideways claw stroke. Having been rescued from one of those 'have a heart' traps in the Brooklyn, she came to us smaller than my palm and mean as a whip. We were concerned for the baby at first, since her unpredictableness was a bit concerning. But now it's one big happy family with Jake the lab, Lucas the little boy and Ruby the cat all combining to create quite the daily circus.

I think this was a picture of Lucas killing time after being stuck inside for 4 days (actually 4 months) because of the crapola weather - just before we went on big road trip to Scranton PA to the Steamtown Train and Locomotive museum (with a quick stop a Old Good Things afterward).



He's cute, happy and healthy.

Construction is under way at Micro Cottage 4. Dean just started framing it the other day and by tomorrow he will be wrapping it up.

And another mid-century version of country living - Ranch V is 750 sq ft, and 1 bedroom on just under 5 acres. it even has a roofed car port.

And Farm 16 will go on the below 8 acre piece of property shortly. A 3 bedroom mix version of Cottage 21 and Cottage 28.

And Farm 11 goes on this nice 12 acre piece of land. this was a house we designed a few years back but never got around to building it - it's one of my favorites and I've been dying to build it.

And then Cottage 36, with a full finished basement on this 15 acres of land.

Barn IV is ready to start as well, and this one should be a real winner at 1300 sq ft of lofty living.

With 2 more to build in Saugerties NY and another couple in Sullivan County and this is shaping up to be the Year of Construction.

Yankee Lake Renovation

Interesting job came our way from our good friend David - a good sized renovation on Yankee Lake. We took a kinda hurtin' house and are turning it into a thing of beauty.


I mean, it's a gut renovation, everything is being removed and even new window and door locations. It's one of those houses where everything was just a little wrong - the decor, the layout, the fenestrations. So what the hell, let's improve it and improving it we are.


Before we got started with James and Curtis checking it out .

About the only thing that will be left standing is this original fireplace. These old lake shacks are always a surprise, and this one bigger than most. Structurally, it just started out as a very small one room house, and over the years became a weirdly laid out 3 bedroom 2 bath. And it was just pieced together almost haphazdardly - so one of the big challenges is just stiffen it up structurally.

That's Kevin the architect, and Job the demo guy.

We made fast progress stripping it down and removing what needed to be removed - which was more or less everything.



One of the best lakefronts I know of and of course one goal of the renovation is to open of the lake views from the house, which were pretty much blocked by the interior layout prior to our construction.



You can see all the add-ons and patch work over the years, demonstrated with the varying roof lines and odd angles. Almost looks like a planned modernist endeavor, but not quite.

So we blew out the front.

Demo'ed her down the her bones...

Another picture of the house once the front was removed. It's always darkest before the storm.

This pic below is the prior to use ripping the front face of the building off. They call that siding 'poor man's siding', cause it's that type that comes in a roll, have a brick pattern to it, and you just kind of roll it on, nice and easy like.

We ended up adding an addition, as well as sistering new timbers to the existing for strength.

New 1/2" osb plywood over the existing planking for strength.

And a good pic of the new section being added to the front.


Well, that's about it. Quite a challenging little project but a great design and a stubburn construction company won't let much stand in our way of progress.

Roof and windows go in/on today.

More pics later.

2 Closings on Thursday (or Just another day)

It's warm, it's sunny and it's a good day here at the Farm (Catskill Farms). We started 2 houses yesterday, and sold two of them today.

Above, the happy new homeowners standing on the porch of Cottage 34. it's a winner, for sure.

And the cleaning ladies giving the house one final scrub.


I've built this classic at 960 sq ft (Susan's Cottage 20), at 1280 sq ft (Pedro/David's Cottage 23) and now at 1480 sq ft for Bryan and Heather's Cottage 34.

I think its about perfect.







And then old Cottage 29 left us today, and will welcome new homeowners tomorrow. So congrats to Melissa and Gabriel.

Some vintage salvaged reclaimed barn flooring used as wainscoting was a nice touch even if I say so myself.

A big powder where we painted the floor a nice old country grayish blue.

It was a great morning to snap photos with the sun dynamic after a few days of crappy cold rain.



7+ acres of big country living.

Good bath with subway tile and a bluestone vanity top.

A nice stone detail going down the cellar staircase.

And a big-ass basement.

That's 2 more houses closed in 2011 - keeping us on pace to kill it in 2011, shattering all heretobefore records for sales of cool ass country homes outside of NYC.

Little time to rest - we are going to be busy this year.

Spring, Weddings, Visitors, and other RSMT (random saturday morning thoughts)

Winter's been so long and spring's been so nasty that this 58 and sunny Saturday is being met with a lot of happy feelings and happy thoughts - so much that I'm just leaving the weather report up on the computer. This past week we had snow, frost, ice on the windshields and other generally depressing weather events. It's been real annoying and causing a lot of havoc with our blp (best laid plans).

This summer, two more Catskill Farms homeowners are gettin' hitched, so that will make 3 weddings in the last 2 years. And if the laws were more liberal, I'm sure we'd have more weddings since we have sold a lot of homes to our gay clients over the years. Being at this for 8 yrs now, we've seen a lot of life events drive past our window.

Holy smokerenos, March and April have been busy - I mean, if my marketing motivates 3 or 4 people a month to come up and visit us, that's always been a pretty good measure of success. Since early March, we have had literally 4-6 clients a weekend, more or less quadrupling our typical showing schedule. Like I said last year, I should get a little bus to tool around in and the homeowners who are so generous to allow us to view their homes (mostly all of them) should charge some admission fees and everyone would be doing just fine.

Of all those visits, we've got 6 homes presently scheduled to start in the spring, and who knows what the month of April will bring.

Today I got appointments at 10, 2:30, and 3:30 then have to be out of the house by 6 with my son Lucas since Lisa has a ladies only book club where not a lot of book discussion ever seems to occur. Tomorrow, got an 11:30 then a double team at 1pm.

Another TV show called last week who thought we would make a great 'Flipping Out" of the east coast. He said all we needed was a gay guy in the office - he says the networks are always asking 'where the gay guy is.' I told him maybe we could turn the stereotype on it's head by doing a creative straight guy for once. Either way, there is no doubt that between our employees, our clients, our vendors, and subcontractors we have enough personality to fill an epic mini-series like the new Kennedy's drama. I told him it's doubtful we'd be interested, - we are busy and our first commitment of energy is always to our customers (I love LIOT on a Saturday morning)(laying it on thick).

Farm 15 - Sold

You know, we have a lot of great customers from a lot of different backgrounds and a lot of different professions. We also see a lot of reasons and rationale for building and buying with us. It's personal, it's a big investment, it's a big lifestyle change, etc... And we take our part of the transaction very seriously.

I mean, it's a delicate situation to be in - half the people I know up here I've done business with - not just small potatoes business, but like the largest transaction of their lives and that comes with some responsibility on our part to do our best. We've sold 80 +/- homes, we've renovated and restored another dozen - I can't go around the corner without running into someone who has exchanged 6 months of their lives and hundreds of thousands of dollars with me. And for the most part, we've successfully navigated the nuances of big business in a small town. Not entirely, but mostly.

Chris came to us a year ago or more and liked our stuff and fell in love with Farm 12 and now here we are - it's no longer my baby, it's hers, and they closed on Friday of last week.

Which was annoying. I think of my 5 closings this year so far, 4 of them we the days of big snowstorms, where you didn't really know how it was going to play out until the morning of. And considering it takes a lot of scheduling gymnastics to get the bank and the attorneys and the clients and the title people all to the table, it's all terribly stressful for everyone.

Farm 15 is cool. It sits on 7+ great acres, a few miles outside of Narrowsburg. The exterior will have black trim, and we are installing a big stone patio out the back. The exterior painting, final land grading, seeding and patio has to wait until Mid-May or so, so the ground dries out.

The kitchen is getting rave reviews. Superb design and layout and a little experimental with the low slung cabinet depth/height refrigerator. Everyone I take through there is always looking for the fridge. But it's got all of our famous tricks - black rad, open shelves, nice range hood, island with cantilevered top, farm sink, lots of light, white washed wood plank ceilings, fan to keep things cool, polished stained wide plank floor.

and even our trademark barn door.

Any time I can create a little extra elbow room upstairs, I do it. Walking up the stairs to light and open-ness is a lot different than walking down an alley of doors.

Pretty classic -
Rads and a fireplace. and a good paint color.

Wood burning fireplace and salvaged barn beam mantel accent.

Catskill Farms has pretty much perfected the clean open simple floor plan look.

6 light 2 panel front door.

2 light, single panel, wood ceiling. This door is like 8' high.

One of the bedroom with lots of light and 5 panel interior doors.

Painted wainscoting, double sinks and mirror.

The guest bath with a nice gray.

BIG shower.

A neat small radiator, painted gloss black.


And a very unusual site at our homes - a garage!

So there you have it. Chris and her mom (who I enticed to the area by subtlety mentioning the Catholic church down the street) and her brother and the Catskill Farms team collaborated and made it happen. Another beauty, on time, on budget. Nice work team.


Life goes on, and so does the work at Cottage 35, who had a really interested viewer over the weekend, so we will see how that pans out.

And little old shack, looking sharp. Still unspoken for.

And then a renovation we started at Yankee Lake. Taking her down the bones, adding a lot of windows and bring the whole house into a more modern sensibility.

Sooooo,
Cottage 29 in contract, set to close next week.
Farm 12 just closed.
Cottage 34 closing very soon.
Cottage 35 looking real good, although dateless at the moment.
Shack 2 is awesome, also waiting to be asked to dance.
Cottage 36 is in contract, and we are starting in a few weeks.
Cottage 37 is moving towards contract.
Farm 11 is moving towards contract.
Micro-Cottage 4 is just starting, and is unspoken for.
Ranch V is just commencing as well, and is unspoken for.
and the Yankee Lake renovation is full steam ahead.

Not a bad performance for the Great Recession.