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

There's Lucas in red with his two Richmond buds, Elijah and Sam. And then the damn 12" of snow that rock Virginia Beach the day after Christmas. Like I said, no one had snow shovels or window scrapers or sidewalk salt or anything like that. Below is the broom I used to shovel a path to my car and rid my car of all the now. Luckily, while not the best looking broom, it was pretty hardy and got a high performance rating from me - I mean, that was a lot of snow to move for that little, out-dated, seen-better-days broom.

Lisa's mom and brothers and sisters cavorting about who didn't bring the shovel. The house is Lisa's grandmother's house which she has owned since way back in the '40's.

The cavalry then arrived, 48 hours after the snow began. Lisa and went on a date to see 'Social Network' the night before.

And then my favorite - the ol' 'sno fro'. Not a great example of the ol' sno fro, but they were everywhere in Virginia for a couple of days, making driving a bit dangerous as the fro's came flying off and dislodging from various roofs.

That's me, by the Christmas tree, marooned at my in-laws.

Anyway, now it snowed up here in the Catskills today, maybe 5' inches when it was all said and done. We needed it. Anytime January comes around and the ground is bare, well, it's a bit depressing. Snowed most of the day so I broke out my new 2010 dump truck/sand truck and hit the road. You don't really realize how many properties you own until you got to plow all the damn driveways. The shop, then Cottage 29, Cottage 33, Micro 2, Farm 14, my house, my neighbors house, Cottage 31, Shack 2, Farm 15, Cottage 34, Cottage 36. That's a lot of driveways, and at $70 a pop for a plow job, you can see why we do it ourselves. Many storms take more than one plow to keep the driveways open, meaning a good snow storm can easily cost me a few grand. Plus the fact that we like the drives open early so the myriads of contractors can get in and get to work. Got 4 closings coming up in the next two weeks, so we are focused in on bringing 'em home to daddy.

Kelly and Gianni came to us in the fall and were not sure exactly what they wanted, where they wanted it, and when exactly they wanted it. Like most of our customers all those questions were easily taken care of by traveling from our large stock of sold homes, and the one or two we had for sale. It's hard to overstate how being able to see, touch and feel facilitates the design process for our customers. I like that rail, I don't like that countertop, this bedroom is the right size, oh that's what an on-demand hot water heater looks like, what color is this floor stain? No guess work, no multiple showroom visits. Add to that our online gallery of photos and suppliers, and lots of customers nail down the general aesthetic and some serious details of the homes pretty quickly and painlessly.

Kelly went on and on about how they may need help and more guidance from us than our typical client, which we are more than happy to provide. James and I both pretty intuitive and get on the same page pretty quickly with a wide array of design directions. But it didn't take long after hearing the first few design choices where we realized that once again, we were dealing with some pretty seriously talented design persons. The dark slate stain, and galvanized metal roof, white trim, and grayish roof. It was an instantly classic exterior choice with colors we had never used before in our previous 80 homes.

We see it all the time. Even our customers who aren't using the creative side of their brain to earn a living, it seems like people who end up building with us have a real good sense of style and taste. Up above is our beaded plank ceiling, stained Early American. White barn light sconces, red cross buck door, white trim and some deep grayish blue siding.

The powder room is a simple combination of white plank wood ceiling, a nautical light, clean mirror and angle sink. A straight-forward light blue complements it all.

A couple of shots of the general layout. This Cottage is just under 1000 sq ft and was inspired by Cottage 29, which is just down the street. Open stairs, clean white spindles. And interesting design direction was the use of stained wood at the posts - not salvaged posts, or painted white. Staircases, the stairs and the posts and spindles can really define a house in these smaller spaces.

The mudroom and powder room are pretty expansive for this house, with plenty of room to take off the boots, rid oneself of outerwear. The stone is local, laid irregularly with random shapes. We used salvaged barn wood for the wainscoting.

A center fireplace, gas fireplace, moderate hand hewn beam, and a big bookshelf/wine shelf, stained to match some of the other details of the house.

In front of the bookshelves we built in a wide screen retractable area.

The fireplace with open tread staircases.

Below is a landing that leads up the bath in one direction and the bedroom in the other.

Looking down into the dining and kitchen area. This was a pretty amazing design feat - fitting in this open loft-like open area into 1000 sq ft. Lot's of light, and lots of openness.

The bath was another stroke of genius - pretty fast with simple primary colors and sharp clean fixtures. Black, red, white.

The main bedroom on the other side of the upstairs landings. Couple of barn doors, a 4 panel entry door. A jacobean stain accents the floor.

The details of the homes are really their essence - a wall hung radiator.

Hand crafted barn doors...

A straight-forward kitchen, shelves, and a vibrant stove.

Going down into the basement, with bricks defining the descent into the basement.

Doorknobs...

Handhewn beams...

Old school closet door hardware.

A pretty slick light. The first time we used this series of lights.

6 column radiators...

Schoolhouse lighting...

Just an instant classic. The first in 4 houses we will close on this month.

I've made a living out of being contrarian, not following the herd, etc... I build new old when this old house was a naive fad, I build small when the mcmansion was raging, I develop small little 15 acre pieces while everyone else was buying hundreds of acres and getting caught up in the planning boards for years. Which leads me to - you say 'green', I say baloney. Not that building green and making homes more efficient is bad, it's just that many of the ideas are either nonsensical, unaffordable or so small in their impact to be hardly worthy of the energy it takes to describe them. When the green thing started catching on in 2008 it was the first time I really realized how uncreative and copy-catty the press is - I mean, green was everywhere, on every magazine, every newspaper, every tv commercial. It was just a big echo chamber of mostly nonsense with some good ideas buried under tons of makeup and marketing. I am a pretty serious builder with some pretty fast customers, and luckily I had the good fortune to be selling some homes during this initial green rage, and I tell you, I was shocked that my customers, - these cutting edge, hip (so, not you Gary or James :}) urban professionals didn't give a cat's ass about green - they cared about their tile, their kitchens, their wainscotting, but they saw right through the green baloney being offer up as value-added. It wasn't as though they didn't care if there house was efficient or not - they just weren't buying into the whole idea that recycled cardboard was a good countertop, or that if you weren't composting your garden with your own feces then you were contributing the early demise of your children. Green to me is high-performance, best practices, keep-your-eye-on-the-ball best practices. For instance there is a company out there- New World Home - a modular company who claims that their houses 'are the greenest in the country', that their homes use '50% less water', that by buying one of their County Living modulars, you are saving the planet. Baloney. And homebuyers are smarter than that. Sure, if it was a faucet, or a light, or a paint claiming these things, no big deal. People will take it in good faith, whether the claims are true or not. Ask someone to spend $400k on a dubious claim, and you have exactly the problem they have - people don't believe it, or at least they want some serious quantitative proof. Which brings me to my next point. I had no idea LEED did not measure a building's final energy performance. Here you have the good standard of green building, and to get LEED certification, you do not have to show any superior performance from your home. You have to pay a few thousand dollars, and you need to navigate a forest of paperwork and administration, but you do not need to meet any performance criteria. Are you kidding me? Isn't it scary that the gold standard of green building has no capacity or tool to measure a buildings final performance? So, like I said, mainline green building is baloney. LEED organization is now being sued by a mechanical engineer who is claiming that without a final performance test, their accreditation is somewhat pointless, a marketing ploy. I'm looking forward to the lawsuits from homebuyers and condo buyers who claim to be paying the same amount in energy bills as their non-LEED house they owned before. It's a real opportunity for an enterprising attorney. Here are a few green building truths, and while you don't need an army of administrators to achieve them, and you don't need to pay thousands of dollars in inspection fees, - they form the foundation of making the housing stock better - insulate with spray foam insulation, build small, and use your brain while building. I know our homes would measure up to any quantitative measurement and I have never used the word green in our marketing. I prefer 'respecting the intelligence of our buyers.' Relately, an Interesting New Yorker article hypothesizing that increased efficiency in homes and vehicles and what have you only leads to increased usage, because it's cheaper. So the more efficient we become, the more energy we use. If we drove a non-efficient uncomfortable Model T we would drive less than an ultra-efficient hybrid Escape - more efficient, drive more. We can use more air conditioning because it is more affordable because it is more efficient. If our light bulbs and appliances are so efficient our electric bill keeps dropping, we can keep buying more bulbs and appliances and electric gadgets. It was a very interesting article about the pickle we are in.

(Previously published on FaceBook - if you like this blog, feel free to 'like us' on facebook) Ok, so maybe first I can use this social networking to figure out what to do about this social networking. Never one to procrastinate, here goes: 1. My first piece of confusion is how to differentiate between the blog and facebook. Obviously, right now, I just feed my blog into Facebook, so sometimes I get comments on Facebook, and sometimes directly on the blog (after my review). Should these resources be kept separate, are they redundant and not necessary? Do you get the same SEO points for Facebook links and verbage as a blog offers? 2. Am I wrong to think that I should encourage 'friends' who are kind enough to 'like this page' to become 'people' who 'like this page'? Actually what is the difference? 3. Of the 165 'people who like this' and 27 'friend who like this', how many get a feed of my posts as they occur? i guess I thought everyone saw everything once it was posted, but that seems unlikely since some people have a lot of friends and that would be a lot of noise. 4. Would it be better if I toned down the blog and became more 'corporate' so 'people who like this' page aren't embarrassed that people know they like it? I mean, this would have several positive repercussions (like easier to find liability insurance coverage), but the essence of the blog is 'the world according to Catskill Farms' (or more accurately Charles Petersheim)(I love talking about myself in the 3rd person). 5. What's the best way to attract 'people who like this' and start this social media viral thing going? 6. How do I control the comments? I get a fair amount of pretty rude comments, that I cut off at the pass before they hit the public's eye? Anyways, there is a start. Any suggestions? Does Facebook have spell check? It's going to be an exciting year for small businesses with some dry powder. the problem with recessions for most businesses is that between the lack of active cash flow and need to lay off some good people over the course of the 4 year retrenching, even when consumer demand picks up, many companies are wounded and just faint shadows of their former selves. That said, we are raring to go. Ok, just found out Facebook does have spell check and spelling suggestions. Cool.