New Years Eve In the Country
Pics are worth 1000 words, so I'll let the pics speak for themselves. Lisa, Lucas and Me hit 2 new years eves' parties and considering we live in the middle of nowhere, it was pretty impressive both parties were only minutes away. Gavin and Emily continued breaking in their house at breakneck pace, first with the inlaws, and then with the New Years Eve party, which included a talent show in the basement movie room with built in disco ball effect. Here's a sampling of some of the raw talent outed last night -
Our hostess, fueling up the baby and herself (this routine was set to the pee wee herman anthem).
And here's the man of the house - Gavin, literally pulling an ace of hearts out of his ass (no pic necessary).
And the crowd - tickets were scarce.
The weird puppet show.
The weirder routine with these 2 people in contamination suits.
A gay dance routine to 'Gloria'.
The guests and the Christmas tree.
Trevor and a dog and a child.
James came on down from Livingston Manor with the wife and two kids. As seen in the photo - I brought my double chin along - no party is complete without that lively participant.
And then Lisa and Lucas and Me cruised over to Schumacher Pond Road where Pablo and Ana were kicking it with 2 good friends. We brought in the new year with them and a few bottles of champagne. Pablo told a great story of how much time him and Ana spent at the paint stores picking paints for the house. Only those readers who have spent every free moment for weeks debating, cataloging and dissecting 18 shades of red can share their pain - good news, though, in the end, since the defining red wainscotting was a perfect pick.
It was a big year - coming on the heels of a few previous big years - and at this point, we seem to be really hitting our stride. Not bad for a Depression.
Our 2008 sales.
Chapin Lot 45 - 6000 sq ft
Cottage 5 - 750 sq ft
Cottage 6 - 1300 sq ft
Farmhouse 9 - 1700 sq ft
Cottage 7 - 1300 sq ft
Cottage 8 - 1300 sq ft
Cottage 9 - 1300 sq ft
Gavin and Emily's House - 2700 sq ft
Cottage 15 - 1100 sq ft
Cottage 3 - 1100 sq ft
Not too bad all. With 3 sales set for the first 3 months of 2009, we are on track for a quick start.
Cheers. www.thecatskillfarms.com
Cottage 14 Nearly Done & Sold
Sure, I realize it's a bit unlikely, but we are getting ready for another closing in 2 weeks for this beauty of a Cottage - Cottage 14. I met Jeanne and Deb probably a year ago, and then they went away to think about it, and one day I get a call saying they are ready, and now here we are - days away from their new Catskill Farms Cottage. We used a blue roof, cedar shake accents and cedar clapboard. We still haven't decided on the final color for the siding - any suggestions from the peanut gallery? (I forgot, this is a one-way soapbox.)
This house has a pretty unique layout and the big lofty kitchen/sports bar really has it going. I have to admit, I'm pretty impressed with their choices of lighting, fixtures, colors and stains.
Here's a pic looking down from the bedrooms.
Another one of the Kitchen, stairs leading up the bedrooms and bath.
Big barn door separating main house from mud room and 2nd full bath. In the living room looking out into the mudroom and kitchen. Note the lowboy radiator.
And a bedroom photo highlighting the red chestunt floors and our handmade signature barn doors.
Every country house needs a cool mudroom and this mudroom is downright hot. Barn door, radiator, bluestone floor, great color and a shot into the bath.
And the fireplace, leading out to the back deck.
It's great to be bringing another one home. It's a good one, with uniqueness and modest elegance tatooed all over the place.
Last House at Highland Farms
Another one done and sold. I'm not counting, but that's 3 this month. This 2000 sq ft cottage has pretty much everything a modest down-to-earth man could want - 4 bedrooms, 4 acres, lots of windows, 3.5 cool baths, cool details such as the black tile fireplace, the dark stained wide plank floors, white and black color palette, glass rail partition and a finished basement that includes that rubber snap together play foam for the kids, a pimped out office, a movie projection area with surround sound and most importantly and a first for us, a urinal. The above photo catches the home after our most recent big snowstorm which dumped about 10 inches of snow on us. Below, this photo captures the big windows, the 20 ft high ceilings, the balcony and the tempered glass railing system posted with some hand-hewn posts.
Here's another from inside the bath.
Looking up to the trees and sky, and looking out onto the beergarten.
Living room with black tile with white grout, and the beginnings of the move in.
Simple and extremely usable kitchen with recessed lighting, shelving, and a 'bar' area for breakfast snacks. White wood cabinets with sparkly black granite. And the caribou horns that need a home somewhere in the house.
Ground floor Bathroom.
Upstairs looking at the closed door of the kids' room.
The double closet in the Office.
And more of the office, with shelves, stain, black paint, blood red carpet.
Up the stairs and a radiator to keep it all warm.
Rolling barn door track, with attached chalkboard door for notes, when speaking is not desired.
Another shot of the caribou horns and farm sink. Gavin has quite the story behind those horns, but I sort of stopped believing the yarn when it segued from 'I found it at the flea market' to 'it was the last of an nearly extinct breed, and I paid top dollar to be on the hunt group charged with extinguishing the genetic line.'
Another old skool radiator made by my good friend Michael in Canada.
And another shot of the rolling chalkboard door looking out into the quarried bluestone mudroom.
And that's it. Merry Christmas. To those about to rock, we here at Catskill Farms salute you.
Winter Snow At Christmas
Here's my main man Juan, who has been building houses with me since 2002. Now, he's a great man, mostly close to my heart since he is a pillar of honesty, hardwork and integrity and understands that those qualities are few and far between up here. Not so much anymore, but we used to work with a large amount of true idiots, and Juan always understood how much abuse I took in order to keep the houses moving. Especially when the economy was overheated over the past few years, this little area had a true scarcity of labor that made every endeavor impossible. Now, Juan is not so close to my heart in this picture because he left my lights on yesterday and now we had a dead battery.
We had a great snow storm arrive on Friday, starting about mid-morning, and snowing hard all day. Pretty fabulous, and definitely quintessential, it was a spectacular showing of why people love it up here - it's beautiful to be sure. Here's Cottage 15 all snowed up. Gayle's house.
And Cottage 7, the abode of Pablo and Ana from Argentina.
Senior Citizen, old Lady Storm testing out the powder.
And my modest little farmhouse all decked out with winter's white. And Theresa in the foreground - she's our neighbor and she was bringing me dinner since Lisa and Lucas are out of town.
And Gavin and Emily's house, which we just finished and into which they just moved. Now, in a questionable strategy, the entire family on both sides are coming up tomorrow to break in the house. Their neighbor David, from Cottage 6, is our most productive client in terms of referrals - he's sent 2 other families our way after we finished his house.
And then here's Farm 9 from last winter, if you all remember. Soon after I sold it to them, the owner's husband/boyfriend thought he would start a construction business and starting soliciting my workers who worked on his house. As you can imagine, that was a bit demoralizing, but as Curtis said -'it doesn't take a genius to see that shipwreck on the horizon.' Especially after he planted his garden on top of his septic. That's one way to fertilize your vegetables.
And then they were upset when I refused to send my worker's over there without some sort of understanding. I lacked 'integrity'. Maybe, but that's a definitely debatable conclusion
.
I think it's one of the deadly seven sins, or the 11th commandment- "Never touch thee another man's workforce'. Besides the impact on my business, most customers are affected in some manner by any labor disruption, through quality or through our quickness, of such actions.
I think if I lack one thing that is detrimental to my business it would be my lack of 'thick skin' - I'm a big sensitive softee. My business acumen is sharp, my honesty, integrity, intentions and efforts are pretty strong, but it's that sensitive artist in me that makes me bristle at being wronged. Actually, I think it's easy enough to understand when I was wearing a few hats stretching anyone's talent to the limits, but now that James, Anouk, Juan and Curtis are kicking it, my efforts can be more focused on matters other than a missing light fixture.
Hats I was wearing when we had no staff (just deborah the bookkeeper and me) - Developer, designer, builder, procurement guy, purchasing agent, construction manager, marketing manager, sales manager, administrative assistant, customer relations, complaint department, strategy department, IT guy and the one I excelled at most - all-round nice guy with faults too slight to mention (oh yeah, that was someone else).
50 homes down over the past 4 years. Now that is saying something.
But not saying as much as the fact I almost purchased "Hip Hop Abs" this morning from a TV ad before I sat down to watch Jeremiah Johnson, commercial free. I mean, who could ask for more - tightening up your 6 pack while learning the latest hip hop moves. I found it very compelling.
