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

It may be warm, and the snow might have melted, and the frost might be coming out of the ground and what that means to us country (or 'rural' as someone called us the other day) folk is mud. Pretty serious mud actually. Muck boot mud, if you will. In a telling reflection on my friends, family and co-workers, no one mentioned that I had mislabeled my last post, mis-identifying the Cottage.

The real Cottage 39 is being constructed as we speak. The framing just finished, we wrapped the house in, believe this, house wrap, and are installing the fascia so the roofers can do their thing tomorrow with a shingle color named Biscayne Blue. With the cedar shakes, it should a have a 'wow' effect, certainly. In the country, we just start fires at will. this was a pretty big one. The 2 bedroom cottage comes with 1340 sq ft, 1.5 baths on 5+ acres in Eldred NY comes with this Man Shed. It also comes with a full walkout basement that we will finish off, adding another 600 sq ft and a bathroom. Lots of porch as well. The framers built this house in 5 days. 5 f*&(king days. That's good, even by my rigid standards and high expectations.

The interior is wide open...

and the second floor ceiling's are lofty and high at around 9.5 feet.

There's Kevin the architect checking out his handy work...

and Henning the carpenter (and chef) high up on his ladder, with both hands occupied, helpless from this photo.

And there's Job. Not to sell the kid down the river, but he did go to the wrong job this morning and left everyone waiting and wondering on him.

Then up to the big barn with lots of tree clearing and, yes, another fire.

And the barn from the rear...

It's a Tuesday, and I think we've done a week's work already.

lyrics from a song I like currently, 2nd verse - "For once I didn't say anything stupid-- my lover never once looked bored. And soldiers come in smeared with lipstick, like the last day of war. The band divided up the money, but the drummer could not stay. He said he's gonna meet us later, at The Dream Cafe." Got some great unexpected gifts over the weekend - happy early birthday and belated Christmas to me! Here's a handmade, hand-painted teapot fashioned into a typewriter. From England no less. From the clients of the Big Barn. Who's fancy now!?

And then a very nice A. Lincoln portrait from his pre-presidency congressional days. It's now the centerpiece of my Saugerties apartment (which didn't have any heat last night - Lucas and I cuddled up under the blankets with the temps in the mid-40's - don't tell protective services pwease.)

Picture of my office, and the Eames chair, the aeron chair, the River Gallery cow painting, the road bike, polished concrete floors, CB2 red rack, barn light electric barn fan, and shelves of typewriters. The only question with the new teapot typewriter is should it go on the typewriter shelf, or in my kitchen.

Lots of business conducted in this office for sure.

We got a lot of construction going on - helped by the warm weather, hurt by the mud - typically it would be frozen solid by now. Pete Kestler and his drilling rig. Think Paul Bunyan and his ox. Been drilling wells for decades - a hard job, not for the feint of heart, or weak. He also builds his own airplanes and flies them. he's drilled 100 wells for us at least. That's typical of our team - a lot of houses done together, which is why we can start building in faraway places - everyone knows what to do, and how to do it, so our management can be of the 'light touch' variety, not the minute to minute micro-management necessary of yesteryear.

Cottage 39 going up outside of Barryville NY. It's unspoken for and should be preeettttty sweeetttt.

Here's Barn VI with siding up and the metal roof. It's a very well-designed home. it's under contract.

and Ranch VI coming along nicely on Lake Ridge Road. It's under contract as well.

And the Big Barn coming along - with the white plank super high ceilings.

A weekend trip to the Intrepid...

with Lucas and his First Mate...

I had them convinced that the photo below was of the spy plane above, but spy planes don't show up on cameras...

Lucas is taking swimming lessons now at the local resort/spa, Woodloch Pines.

and at the Saugerties apartment, kick ass upstairs bathroom...

since we on a busy quasi-urban street, he likes to wake up early and look out the window at the school buses and other assorted trucks that go by 2 stories down...

and this picture doesn't have anything to do with anything, but I bought it anyways.

Just downloaded a Bob Dylan cover album from a lot of well-known singers - 78 songs, pretty radical interpretations with 1/2 of the proceeds going to Amnesty International no less! Don't think I will be listening to it too often. I hate when I do that - like when my first itunes download exercise was downloading every Prince tune known to man and then never listening to most again...

I caught Clark and Andrew (the handsome guys in the center) snooping around Cottage 38 in Stone Ridge a few weeks ago and instead of calling the cops, I sold them the house. Just kidding - they had actually signed up a few weeks prior. Interestingly, this was a brand new process for me, Mr Control Freak. Not only did I not directly sell them this house, it was sold through the tried and true Ulster Cty MLS system - with our team listing it, and another team bringing a client to the house. Clark and Andrew were already familiar with our work, had been looking for a house for a while, and knew the area they wanted to be in - more or less primed to buy a perfect not-so-little cottage on 3 acres with a stream, stone wall, interesting topography and a great little dead end road.

It's a real testament to our management abilities that we are able to build in far flung areas like Stone Ridge and Woodstock and Bearsville and Saugerties. I waited for years to get started in these areas since I figured we would need to be pretty good to get spread out. It's one thing to look good when you are building close to home (also not super easy) it's quite another to look good halfway across the state.

So far, so good. Different building departments, highway departments, electric companies, etc... It's a big job getting to know all the idiosyncrasies of all the parties involved, and building the credibility in the eyes of the authorities, which makes things go better.

It wasn't long ago that this was a newly purchased piece of raw land... then the foundation...

Then the frame...

Then the sheathing...

then the tyvec, fascia, corners, ice and water shield on the roof, windows, etc...

then we got our framing inspection which we passed with flying colors, and now the security guys, the heating guys, the electricians are working away. Oh right, forgot to mention we installed the 350 of underground electric, and the siding starts tomorrow. Ye ha Cowboy. you'd never know we have 8 other houses going at the same time.

Think if you owned a restaurant but you could only put tables on half the floor space, the other half was required to remain open. Of course it makes the prospects of success much less, but also is a bit intrusive. Or if you rented office space, but then you were told you could only use half of it. Maybe Luiz was offended or concerned about the noise, the traffic, or even the parking on a busy day, with deliveries and everything. Or if you bought 100 acres to hunt on, but then Luiz thought at least 50 should be hunt free, so fauna, animals and vegetation could grow unimpeded. Or you bought a nice big king sized bed, but were only allowed to use the half. Or you had an art gallery, but could only hang pictures and paintings on half the walls. Or maybe you renovated Barryville Square, - Maybe half the stores should remain vacant so it didn't look so cluttered with cars. You get the picture. Flexibility is key in business success, since it's so damn hard to succeed to begin with. Take away half that flexibility and you reduce your chance for success by more than half. Luiz should know this - or if he didn't, he could look around or even speak to some real life people to see if what he is advocating has any chance of success. Or maybe that's the whole devious point -by making something economically impossible, you halt all development, homebuilding and progress. Good for open space, very bad for a lot of small businesses and people trying to earn a living. But hey, what's a few lost livelihoods in the quest for 'keeping things pretty'.