Home Owner Peter
We have a lot of accomplished clients - and I'm pretty sure that's the neatest part of the Catskill Farms story. The diversity of our clients. I would shout out a few, but the ones that catch my eye arent' always the ones that the NYTimes would fawn over. I like the young business woman vaulting to the top of the new media world, the communications entreprenuer, the international shipping business owner, the personal assistant to a billionare, the naturalists, the artist, the architect, the researcher, and a host of others serving up their A game in the rough and tumble city. I know the NY Times would love to fawn over over the Broadway music producer, the A-list comedian, the rock star or that amazing builder I keep hearing about, but that's just so easy. So here's my friend Peter, who retained us to build him a new home in Walton New York. Actually, he stalked us, told us we had to build his home, that we didn't have a choice - even if it was 2 hrs away. So we designed and built his Gothic Cottage last year. James played a big part in the design, and I think's it's where Kevin our architect got his start with us. Well, anyway, Peter Sorenen likes to design things for Michelle Obama, and here is a link sent to me by Van, partner of Eric, who is a pretty fancy style writer for the NY Times (talk about uncomfortable when I found that out - actually, just kidding, I don't take it personal if the Times writes about the wrong things and while shouting it's the right thing). Hope you don't mind the shout out, Peter. I mean, you are in the public eye now. I wonder what type of security check he had to go through, and what type of cloth examination was required?
Construction - R - US
Here's my new cow painting, hanging nicely above my type writer collecetion, set against the board and batton walls. The Painting came from an artist Lisa and I really enjoy (I was going to write "Lisa and I's favorite local artist', but the correct grammer got too complicated). We bought it at the River Gallery in Narrowsburg, run by Tony and Barry. It's one of my favorite stores in the region. I'm a pretty picky shopper, but everytime I frickin walk in there, Tony's got something 'right back here' that 'you're gonna love', and the guy is right - I'm always walking out his store with a big painting. Office taking shape nicely. Interesting material arrangement - board and batton on the rear wall, sheetrock on the right, and corrugated sheet metal on the left. Polished and stained concrete, with radiant heat, a stained wood ceiling, and a Mid-Century Eames chair to nicely complete the room.
Cottage 28 is way past the point of this picture, but I always love the booms, and lifts and stuff that facililate our efforts.
And this is a lovely picture from the rear right angle. It's a little dining room off the kitchen, with tile floors, lots of windows and a cathedral ceiling. It's a great shape. We found humungus bear prints in the mud around this house the other day. I was half expecting the bear to be sitting at a table inside the house.
Cottage 25 is moving right along and we should be turning the home over to Steve here in the next few weeks. Not much left to finish.
And the porch of all porches at Farmhouse 12. Rounded, exposed rafters. Just the right size for lots of diverse activities. Their kids are going to love this porch - actually maybe the parents will, now being able to just 'stick the kids on the porch'. Inside is done, and just need to paint and finish the grading on the land.
Tito and his helper painting the brick fireplace.
And, since we don't waste time, here is the foundation of Ranch 3 - our newest mid-century masterpiece. It's going under contract here shortly.
Nice lot, with great views, just a few miles outside of Narrowsburg, NY.
And here's Mark, our local floor sanding craftsman. We're lucky to have him - he makes our floors look great. He's at our offices here, on a Thursday afternoon, and I needed it resanded, stained, and 3 coats of poly by Monday Morning. Of course, no problemo. Note Jake, who has become a real camera whore.
This is a cool construction photo, below - usually, it's man and his machine. Here is just machine, in an empty room.
I love when they write about upstate. I'm immediately swamped by emails and phone calls. Thanks New York Times - it's much appreciated. Keep up the good work.
TV Interview
Wow, ok, now we are on TV - Channel YNN is an affliate of NY1, which covers the upstate region and they just added Sullivan County to their coverage area - which is great, since this area has zippo local news, at least zippo local news in a timely fashion. I mean a hurricane could come through and unless it hit us, we wouldn't know until the paper came out at the end of the week, or a neighbor happened to mention it. So the TV reporter, Lori Chung, is from Brooklyn and took a job at YNN out of the Middletown office, in order to have the opportunity to spread her wings as a TV journalist, and she's in charge of finding local stories. So, she found us, and it's a 2 minute spot about Blog Cabin 2010. For those of you who don't know which interviewee is me, just look for the handsome guy saying a lot of smart, insightful things. Now, one thing about this link, is the first time you watch it (since it's primarily TV, not web-based), there's a lot of buffering and I just about threw my computer out the window when I watched it - I recommend letting it play once while shaving or showering, then coming back to watch it after it ran once, - the 2nd time seems to run fine, the first time download sucks. Enjoy. YNN TV Spot. And our latest DIY Vlog, with guest star James K.
Big Regional Press
Ok, so maybe the Times Herald Record article this morning gave us a little more credit than is fairly due us in their great article about the DIY project. While we do know that Catskill Farms remains the driving contracting force behind Blog Cabin 2010 in Bethel NY, we won't know until after final production whether we will be the TV stars they ambitiously outline for us. I'll be happy with a few well-shot cameos, a project that comes in on schedule and a successful facilitation of DIY's efforts up here in Sullivan County. DIY deserves it - probably the most solid bunch of folks I've ever had the privilege of working with.
