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

Here's our very first blog post, circa Sept 12, 2007. http://catskillfarms.blogspot.com/2007/09/catskill-farms-builds-farmhouses-and.html

I lived in the City from 1997 til January 2002, for 2 yrs at Houston and 6th, and two yrs in pre-gentrified Park Slope, Berkeley Place. On 9/11 I was working as a freelance construction manager on the punchlist at the then new Scholastic headquarters on Broadway. I was up in the glass eating space on the 11th floor when the first plane, then unbelievably enough, the 2nd plane hit the Towers. We were about 10 blocks away and you start to forget all the uncertainty those events bred - like should we get the heck out of the building we were in? The details I remember best are all the ambulances - lined up for blocks - with no one to transport. All the blood donation lines of giving people that were not required. The dust in Brooklyn. Walking home with thousands of others over the Brooklyn Bridge. Being worried about riding on the subways. Seeing a woman at breakfast the next morning duck, then cry, as a plane flew overhead. The next day, as the dust was landing in Brooklyn, I made my way to the site, when security was still light, and took these pictures. The pictures have never been published and have just sat in my photo archives - I guess I'm not sure why, but now it feels ok to put them out there. I believe you can click on the photos to enlarge them, with helps with some of the subtly, like below where advertising says - Choose Success -

I think the scenes that captured the life before the attack - the still lifes of gym equipment and billboards - they remained static although the world had changed. And all the unfiltered unabashed earnestness that existed for a few months.

I made my way down to the site and helped with the bucket lines, but eventually wondered off with a first wave digital camera that maybe held 20 or 30 photos and pushed the boundaries of my courage. On the day after, you had no idea which buildings were still yet to tumble. I explored what I think was the World Financial Building - a very tall building, with no one inside, that could collapse at any time, with alarms going off wildly.

I think the building behind was Building 7 that came down the next day while I was having a beer on 51 street at an Irish Pub.

The folder for directions to a Country Club.

A gym.

A clothing store - ghostly.

This seemed to be on the 2nd floor, where the firefighters and first responders found a little rest.

This is the scene of a kitchen in the buildings adjacent to the collapse, where life's routine suddenly stopped - the staff was in the middle of fixing veggie and chicken wraps.

Just an average breakfast bar, abandoned.

Disaster Art.

These were the bucket lines where thousands of men lined up and bucket by bucket tried to unearth their friends and co-workers. For the most part, these scenes of effort were futile.

This is from deep inside an adjacent building with electric wires, phone cords, ceiling panels and the like. It was unclear whether collapse was possible and or imminent.

Trinity Church covered with the debris.

A firetruck and its inhabitants buried.

The bucket lines, abandoned, as the whistles blew of imminent building collapse. Thousands of men would run for cover in a direction of unknown consequence. And just the buckets remained.

Tired, disheartened firefighters.

This pic below captures the scale of events.

And this was carved into the dust on a window at the site- a quick, spontaneous, early tribute to missing firemen. And the many quests to express the horror was a defining moment of the event to me.

So, I lost my job due to the uncertainty (why continue with construction when the world was ending), I had just bought a $22,000 shack with no heat/electric/plumbing in Sullivan Country (but no car to get there), and my lease was coming due.

Goodbye Manhattan - hello countryside. And now we have built close to 50 new homes for those New Yorkers looking for some country respite from it all.

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Jason and Justin (and I'm not in the office to see if I spelled Justin correctly) came to us in June or July after we had started Cottage 19 - a 2 bedroom 960 sq ft house with a huge bathroom, seriously open floor plan and 5+ pretty amazing acres. Cottage 19 is a reduced version of Nick's Cottage 9 that we sold back in December. As with all of our smaller homes, the details are important.

With the big stone chimney, cedar shake, 2 perfect dormers and the large overhangs, this house becomes something special real quick. James and I were excited about its layout and flow from the beginning, and frankly, it exceeded our hopes and aspirations - just like an overachieving child.

The painters, the carpenters, the plumbers and an assorted mix of tradesmen executing their specialized craft, attempting the bring the house to a conclusion in the next week or two. We have our first certificate of occupancy inspection tomorrow, and since this is a new municipality we are working in, it might take one or two inspections to get everything just right for the buiding inspector. During the course of construction, the building inspector/code enforcement officer does 6 or 7 inspections of our construction processes, insuring we are building to or exceeding code. By any measure, we surpass most other construction quality locally.

There's Curtis, our lead independent carpenter who more or less has seen everything in this decades of construction experience. Skilled with the saw, skilled with the customers, skilled with the subcontractors he works with and orders around - a very good addition to the team 18 months ago. He worked for me when I first started my biz in 2003, then went off to greener pastures, then returned to the overgrown weedy fields of Catskill Farms. He came in and replaced some real yahoos we had been forced to deal with out of necessity - since labor is scarce, and was especially scarce during the construction boom of 2004-2007.

Curtis is installing the kitchen here - in fact, I guess the kitchen is in, he's just adding some open shelves that really set off our kitchens (as well as keep down the cost). Nice cabs, nice countertop, nice undermount farmhouse sink, and mostly, nice ass and love handles Curtis!

Nice simple fireplace with locally harvest bluestone squares (originally designed by Dean) defining the hearth.

One of the reasons why we are the only game in town in terms of quality and service is because our entire business model at this point is centered around our warranty, our ability to exceed our warranty, and our ability to respond quickly to small issues.

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Interesting enough, the nationally-renowned home planner who loves our work successfully sold his vision to the big, primetime network. Now we just need to make a deal on a house - which is a lot more complicated than one would think. Cottage 17 is also rounding the corner towards completion, and in another month we will be turning over this house to the new owners. This house started as a spec home - without a preordained buyer - but, with the help of Cottage 15 homeowner Gayle, we found some buyers who hopped in and started designing - and now, in 30 days, their country day dream turns real. On budget, on Time.

Now that the handrails are on and the entrance steps being built, the lines of the final product start to take shape. As mentioned, this cottage is inspired by one we built over the winter for Dean.

This plot of land and the way we situated the house called out for a wrap-around porch, so not only does that porch add some additional living space, it adds a nice architectural dimension to the structure.

Another thing we did was flip the fireplace/living room space and the kitchen. In this pic, the house is primed for the floor sanding phase. So, that's it. Labor Day weekend. Very nice weather. Living on borrowed time, with the weather becoming unpredictable, with that dreadful feeling that winter's coming. And the thing is - I like winter - with it's attendent hours by the fire, reading books, and guiltless hours not worrying about the garden you should've planted. But not after a non-summer like we didn't have this summer.