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

FH20 Guy Update #2 –
Starting the Process

While Chuck was busy running the land closing process, I started thinking about and planning for the actual farmhouse. First, buying and closing land is different than your typical experience of buying a coop or condo in New York City. Thankfully there are no coop boards, interviews, gazillions of forms to fill out, references to obtain, and so forth. Even better, Chuck does all the
work for you... communicating with the various stakeholders, organizing the professional survey, conducting perc tests for septic, title/deed searches, and so forth. While I’m sure there’s more
than one way to skin the cat, I’ve been very happy so far with the professionalism, performance, and pricing of Chuck’s contacts (real estate lawyer for closing, survey firm, title/deed company, etc.) and expect nothing to change as we move towards closing. Why bother figuring this out when someone’s already figured it out for you after building hundreds of Catskill farms? Plus, I have to imagine all of these guys will want to continue to get Chuck’s referrals and business so they’ll do a good job. So far, everyone’s been an A+ professional.

Offloading this work allowed me to totally geek out and start working on the actual FH20. It’s
been an amazingly fun and educational process so far, and this is what we’ve done so far:

* Agreed on the basics of FH20, shapes, layout, and so forth. With so many existing designs and
examples, you can copy or modify entire cottages or pinpoint specific rooms or design features from the Catskill Farms galleries. I loved walking through actual farmhouses at different stages of production...framing going up, windows being installed, drywall and porch railing being secured, and of course finished products.

* Planned for a separate structure, probably a classic red barn we can use to garage a vehicle, serve as a man shed, and provide power/water for my wife’s attached, integrated greenhouse.

* Strongly considering green technologies for HVAC and other utilities. I should devote a separate post for this because it’s been fascinating learning experience, but in summary, we’re probably going to use (a) ground-source heat pump and forced air (ducting) for HVAC, (b) LP backup power with automatic switching; check out this New York Times article at http://tinyurl.com/c2m2xnd where the writer profiles Catskill Farms, (c) LP hot-water tank, not on-demand, tied into the heat pump as well, and (d) a possible grid-tied solar photovoltaic
(PV) system for electricity production.

* Spec-ed out a tricked out bathroom, affectionately named POJAB™, or the “Pimped Out Japanese Awesome Bathroom.” Chuck came up with this acronym after hearing me describe the concept, and I’ve ripped it off from him and trademarked it. I’ll definitely have to devote
another post to the POJAB!

* We recently walked the actual property and have yet to decide the actual placement and orientation of the structures. There are several considerations (seclusion, unique property features, proximity to utilities, driveway length, tree and brush clearing, etc.) so we’ll evaluate a few possible sites, write up pros/cons, and most importantly attach costs to each site. With the greenhouse and potential solar PV system, the barn or garage will definitely have one side facing south, the optimal orientation for maximum sunlight. The rest of it will probably be determined by cost... trying to get the biggest bang for our buck.

It’s fun to write about this stuff right now to “mark the moment” and record the thoughts and considerations currently going through our heads. I’m sure as the process evolves, we’ll have to modify or even delete certain things due to cost, but we’ll revisit that when it comes. After we
close on the land, we’ll hammer out the construction schedule and budget given all the information we have and we’ll go from there. Yep, we’re really motoring now!

Additional reading and information:

(Above) The GO Home in Belfast, Maine (LEED Platinum, Home
Project of the Year 2011):
http://www.gologichomes.com/featured-projects/passive-house.html

Ground source heat pump:
http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/home/heating_cooling/geothermal.html

Energy Star products, including heat pumps and LP hot water
tanks: http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=products.pr_find_es_products

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We had some good press lately about a variety of things.  I'm down in Miami taking a few days off but before you get too jealous let just say it's been raining since Friday, which I why I guess I'm blogging on a Sunday morning.

Times Herald Record covers our upcoming TV appearance on Selling NY -

Manhattan Media and their five neighborhood newspapers cover our homes and ideas -

Brownstoner gives us a shout out last week and one of our houses for sale-

And the trusty Hudson Valley Business Journal -  with a real handsome shot of me!!

That's it for now.  Got some real good blog posts incubating in my head so stay tuned.

Eldred NY seems to be the hot spot.  Tom Givone just made a big splash in dwell magazine with his renovation of a house over off of Airport Road.  No link available, but I think the feature story is available in this month's issue.  Tom's done a few projects up here over the last decade - all of them interesting with unique approaches.

And a fun 'upstate projects can be painful' article in the NY Times - "Pre-Fab Short on the Fab" - something we are well aware of and really the inspiration of the whole Catskill Farms business model.  Upstate living and the transition thereof does not have to be a test of endurance and financial/emotional survival.

It can be real easy - The Catskill Farms way.  Perfected over 10 years of experimentation and improvement.

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Since I've been hanging around Woodstock area a few days a week, I was up close and personal to the reaction to the passing of Levon Helm of the Band.  Between his history as the backup band to Dylan, and then the Band and the movie and songs, and then later the close connection and participation with the Town of Woodstock, where we are building a half a dozen homes.

That's Lucas below in Saugerties, NY with one of his funny faces. outside a cool mid-century antiques and furnishes store named Green, where the hours are long and the owner is pretty attached to his pretty Labrador.

Google sprung a suprise on my, or at least blogger.com did, with a whole new layout for my blog - after 600 posts and 4 years of posting, I was definitely used to the inadequancy of the old blogger - in a way, it wasn't even romantic in its simplicity - it was just a poor program when put beside something like wordpress, etc...

Barn V in Narrowsburg NYSeems like a lot of easy neat features like this new post method to the right or left of the photo - that's the A team excavation leader Norm.  He's a master of the earth.  He's very important to us 'getting out of the ground' with a house, and critical to the our constant aspiration and consistent achievement of our 'on-budget, on-schedule' approach to things.

That's the Big Barn down below, coming along pretty nicely.  It's big, it's bad, it's cool.

See, I'm already having formatting frickin issues with damn new upgrade.  So down below are the Arma-Lite Garage doors - 3 of them, with tracks and with remotes, looking over the hills.

The Garage ain't bad lookin either, for sure.  Room for cars and a few motorcycles and down the road maybe some guests.   It's modeled after my friends Benoist house.

Cottage 39 in Eldred NY is making some progress as of late.  It's one of the few homes we have for sale, and is pretty good looking, has plenty of space, and sits on a sweet piece of land.
Cottage 40 in Woodstock is making some progress even though our framer held us up by going on Vacation at the wrong time, and worse, coming back with a twisted knee.  But we are making progress and the first site meeting is set for Saturday a week.

It's always fun to go up top before the roof is on.

Ranch VI is making good progress as well - we are in the final weeks before turning it over to the owners, who are friends of Barn IV folks.  This is a very cool house.

And then Joe and Robin who are building Farm 19 with us, in area we like a few miles outside of Narrowsburg.  10 acres, some views, some privacy, some lake rights, some elevation.  Actually a piece of perfect.

That's Bryce from Cottage 17 on the left, tagging along to see how its done.  He's got his real estate license and hopes to sell some homes up here in his spare time from his store in Barryville, NY.

And then Mike and Suzannah of Farm 20 fame (I think I'm misspelling her name, but I'm not in the office to double check).  Mike is aka as F20g, who as been guest blogging on occasion about his process, his thinking and his journey into country-homedom.  Mike's worrisome cause though I'm a pretty bright guy, he runs circles around me and I'm left picking up the morsels of brainpower he kindly leaves around.  I often say we are really without competition in terms of style and approach and intuitive communication and collaboration with our clients because our clients are a talented set of designers and professionals with good tastes which constantly pushes our knowledge and comfort level - Mike and his team push us forward into new territory on a more mechanical basis - geothermal, solar, smart wiring, etc... It's all good, cause the more we know, the more we know.  and the more we know, the more our clients appreciate that knowledge leveraged on their behalf when needed.

Cottage 38, that handsome devil up in Stone Ridge, ready for a late May closing.  Actually, we will close on a few in May  - Cottage 38, Barn V, Mid Century Ranch VI.  I feel I'm forgetting one.  And then we are starting on Cottage 40, Arts & Crafts 2, Arts&Crafts 3, Barn VI, Farm 19, Farm 20, possibly the Glasco Cottage in Woodstock and who knows what else, - it's hard to keep track of, to be honest.

Lucas and I went up last Sunday to Stone Ridge to meet up with the Tuck family and show them our wares, and then some land over on Old Sawmill Rd.  Lucas just got an IronMan mask, so he likes to wear it and likes to share it.  Here is letting our stone mason wear it while learning the trade.

He's an apprentice.

Then over to the Sawmill Properties in Saugerties.

While cruising around the areas, we went through High Falls, and Rosendale and this fun outdoors antique market.  Lucas had to take a break.

He eats a pretty narrow selection of bread and water, and here he is chomping on some bread in the Price Chopper in a shopping cart in Saugerties NY.

Picture below left is in Kutztown PA on our way to Lancaster and on the right in my apartment in Saugerties.

Another pic of my Saugerties apartment.  That is one dangerous spiral staircase, let me tell you.  I go up and down it like a grand parent.    

The owner of the Big Barn took a big western Rockies and desert and California motorcycle trip last year when he was switching jobs and had few weeks off.  I salivated about it then, and have been scheming since to make it happen so after I finish hiking Yosemite in September for a few days, I'm going on a 4 days western motorcycle tour through the ghost towns of western Nevada, skirting Death Valley and back up the west side of the Rockies back to Sacramento....

...where that big jetliner will take me back east.

The Band -
Up on on Cripple Creek, as she sends me
If I spring a leak, as she mends me
I don't have to speak, as she defends me
A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one

I took up all of my winnings
And I gave my little Bessie half
And she tore it up and threw it in my face
Just for a laugh
Now there's one thing in the whole wide world
I sure would like to see
That's when that little love of mine
Dips her doughnut in my tea

Up on Cripple Creek, as she sends me
If I spring a leak, as she mends me
I don't have to speak, as she defends me
A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one