Catskills - Sullivan County - Ulster County Real Estate -- Catskill Farms Journal

By all the mimicking, mirroring, copying, imitating, stealing, borrowing and all the other words out there to describe the flattery of being followed in our design and business approach - I must have colored myself a lot less original and smart than other people color me - but that's the advantage of coming from Lancaster PA, a modest place of unassuming hardworking God fearing folks.

Here's the post from 15 months ago, reflecting on the impossibility of Chapin Estate offering Cottages for $275k.  What I said then was 1.), it is impossible to build and sell a nice 1500 sq ft home for $275k, and 2.), underestimating your clients intelligence and coming up with 100 reasons why, well, actually, it's not really $275k but $350k does not work in this buyer's market and is a great way to lose a sale.

Well, according to the Sullivan County Democrat, Chapin is now offering 1500 sq ft Cottages for $375k.  So my point was obviously well-heeded, and the truth of the assertion remains - honest dealing rules the day and don't underestimate (insult) the intelligence of your buyer.  It's a hard lesson for these slick salesmen, but eventually the reality of depressed sales levels forces a 'come to Momma' moment, when ego is forced to bow and concede the race to the reality of business survival.

So you take a builder of multi-million dollar log cabin homes with scarcely a sale over the last few years and evolve into a proud builder of cottages.

I love small homes.  We build them cause we love them.  We have been enterprising, nationally-recoginized, lovers of small homes.  I wonder if they can say the same thing.  I wonder what it will like to be a 2nd class citizen in this Sotheby's Development.  I just can't imagine many of my clients, who are quite established, and successful wanting to be 2nd class to anyone, especially to the Gold Coast of Jersey.

And one more thing - my neighbor Bryan was making some snarky comment about my grammar in my posts, and a lot of "too"s are "to"s, 'thens' are 'thans' , spellings that the checker doesn't catch and a lot of other simple grammatical errors.  let my point out that I am aware of this, I'm not some grammar neanderthal, in fact I take great pride in my knowledge of the rules and usages.  However, I'm busy, yet still come up with the time to blog creatively, and rarely do I reread while writing - it's a stream of conscious thing, which I think adds to the blogs value.  And when I do reread it's typically on my phone, while waiting for something else, with no easy ability to edit.  it's a rule of mine to not rewrite a post after it's been posted for the simple reason that would probably increase the likelihood of retracting or rewriting the previous night's thoughts - believe me, there's been plenty of post I'd of liked to take down.

But thats the whole idea - to capture a moment of my mind's wandering in terms of the nexus of my business building, my challenges, and life that gets woven through this all-consuming upstate design and build journey.  To rewrite it to (ha ha, just a joke - TOO) carefully would turn it into the perfectly polished pitches we are bombarded with daily -

And seriously  - who really needs another perfectly polished pitch?  It's so lame and so yesterday.

Or, as Fergie would say - 'that's so 2008, and you're so 2 thousand and late'.

Driving along the road the other day home from Farm 20 which is coming along just fine with floors going down and interior doors and such, I drove by Cottage 14, finished and sold in January 2009.  Sharp looking house, sharper looking scary scarecrow out front.  

We suffered electrical outages and lack of internet and a lot of trees are down.  Here is the Corner in Eldred preparing for the storm.  NYSEG seemed to hit Narrowsburg and the Barryville areas first, which was really nice for me personally and for a lot of our clients who have homes there.

Here's a shot of Lucas's toys in the yard after the storm.

And a bunch of trees down and a porta john casualty at Cottage 39.  Glad no one was in there, but then again, if you are in a porta johnny during a hurricane, you probably have bigger things working against you.

Here's an ingenious rigged cord that Bryan over at Cottage 34 rigged up.  Take your standard generator, rig up a cord that plugs into your dryer outlet, turn off the main electric, and back feed the house's electric power needs with the portable generator.

During our 'no electric' days, I tackled a project long overdue.  Reorganizing my house plans.  Considering we are 100 homes and ten years into it, it's quite a few plans.

And the pictures on the walls tell the same story - lots of homes designed and built.

And the keys in the box tell much the same story - lots of homes under our belts.

Pretty serious out there.  We weren't much impacted until I started hearing stories about gas stations closing because the gas was being diverted elsewhere.

It's amazing how quickly things can go to shit.  What did it take - 5 days before panic and gas shortages set in?

For all of our clients (and others) that have been displaced by the hurricane, and find themselves without electric or internet at their upstate home, we are offering our offices which is warm, and the electric and internet is back up and running.

If you need to catch up on work or whatever, give me a call.  917-838-5342.

Please circulate this post.

Thank you.

Charles Petersheim
Owner, Catskill Farms.

Here comes the storm, right?  Seems like a big one and we will see shortly.  What sucks about it is that I have 3 perfectly scheduled houses to finish up and close and another 3 to start and having a week of uncertainty and then the cleanup time post-storm, let's just say my money may be on the street a week or two longer, depending on what happens to the appliances deliveries, bank inspections, punchlists, subcontractor availability, etc...

Barn VI - a really great adaption of Barn V.  We used a vertical cedar siding, metal roof and what we call a 'horse rail' for the porch system.  Pretty sharp house.

I especially like this view of the large dining room windows and the back porch.

A very modern and traditional take on the barns we like.

The painting and carpentry crew on the last day of the job.

Kitchen with lots of symmetry.

Front door, open stairs, bath straight ahead hidden in a cove, and a bedroom off on the left, behind the front door.

All light, all the time.

Above and below are pictures of the first floor bath, with a sharp stainless steel vanity.

Salvaged barn wood at the top of the open treaded stairs.

1st floor bedroom.

2nd floor foyer.

A  bedroom with salvaged wood and a hand built barn door.

And the 2nd floor bath with tub and shower.

And the 2nd bedroom.

And Tito, pretty good guy who keeps our houses looking good.

Barn VI has left the building and will soon be a home.  Now we have Farm 19, Cottage 39 and Craftsman 2 to get closed before Thanksgiving.