Get Down On It.
Hangin with Kool & the Gang, early morning like - "What you gonna do? You want to get down? Tell me what you gonna do? Do you want to get down? What you gonna do? You want to get down? What you gonna do? You want to get down? - Tell me. Get down on it get down on it" Some groovy tunage for our samba like advance through the construction of a few homes. Below is Ranch V, another Mid-Century experiment. They've been big hits - one to Cheri, one to Erin, one to Tony and Laurie, and one to Kat and Gregg. This one is on the small side - about 720 sq ft, one bedroom, 4+ acres and borders 1200 acres of usable State land. That's right - borders 1200 acres of usable State land.
We are keeping it fresh and real over at Yankee Lake where the guys are kicking like it's some Olympic sport with 7 virgins waiting as a prize. I mean, jesus, we've only been there 6 weeks and we demo'ed the damn thing, rebuilt literally every inch, slapped up 16 sq of siding, roofed it, installed the windows and doors and now we are roughing her in for the plumbing, heating, electric and security phase. It's impressive, even to me, who is typically not easily impressed.
Kevin the architect just reinvented this whole house from a flow and usability vantage.
It's a lake front piece, at Yankee Lake, in the Town of Mamakating.
From the master bedroom.
That's Rich, Al and James take a good look before getting started. Very atypically, this house came with 7 ft ceilings and through some miracle twist of fate, we were able to lift them up to 9'. Usually, if you got low ceilings, you are stuck with low ceilings - that's just the way the cookie crumbles.
And then our newest Micro Cottage 4, which wasn't even here 8 days ago. Sort of, the 'now you don't see it, now you do' play on phraseology.
And then at my house Norm's tooling around in his big equipment while Lisa is away. Fixing the pond spillway which blew out because of all the rain, and a bunch of other little projects.
"How you gonna do it if you really don't want to dance By standing on the wall? Get your back up off the wall tell me. How you gonna do it if you really don't want to dance By standing on the wall. Get your back up off the wall 'Cause I heard all the people sayin': Get down on it come on and Get down on it - if you really want it Get down on it - you gotta feel it." (not a bad post of 4:48am). Coming up on 500 blog posts since I started.
Client in the News
Eric Wilson, a fashion writer for the Times, does a nifty little number with this review of the wedding dress from the Royal Wedding - Kate Middleton's Dress is a Flawless Success
Rock and Roll
Wet, dreary, lots of rain and limited progress, for us. Of course, we did start and get two foundations in the ground and are kicking the Yankee Lake renovation in the ass, but oh, give us a little dry weather and we will really be off to the races. Here are the cement boys pouring the slab at Ranch 5 on one of the few sunny days we've seen.
And a couple of cute shots of Lucas in order to keep this whole blog cute and warm and fuzzy feeling. He's playing nicely with Ruby who will turn on man, woman or child on a dime with a quick sideways claw stroke. Having been rescued from one of those 'have a heart' traps in the Brooklyn, she came to us smaller than my palm and mean as a whip. We were concerned for the baby at first, since her unpredictableness was a bit concerning. But now it's one big happy family with Jake the lab, Lucas the little boy and Ruby the cat all combining to create quite the daily circus. I think this was a picture of Lucas killing time after being stuck inside for 4 days (actually 4 months) because of the crapola weather - just before we went on big road trip to Scranton PA to the Steamtown Train and Locomotive museum (with a quick stop a Old Good Things afterward).
He's cute, happy and healthy. Construction is under way at Micro Cottage 4. Dean just started framing it the other day and by tomorrow he will be wrapping it up.
And another mid-century version of country living - Ranch V is 750 sq ft, and 1 bedroom on just under 5 acres. it even has a roofed car port.
And Farm 16 will go on the below 8 acre piece of property shortly. A 3 bedroom mix version of Cottage 21 and Cottage 28.
And Farm 11 goes on this nice 12 acre piece of land. this was a house we designed a few years back but never got around to building it - it's one of my favorites and I've been dying to build it.
And then Cottage 36, with a full finished basement on this 15 acres of land.
Barn IV is ready to start as well, and this one should be a real winner at 1300 sq ft of lofty living.
With 2 more to build in Saugerties NY and another couple in Sullivan County and this is shaping up to be the Year of Construction.
Yankee Lake Renovation
Interesting job came our way from our good friend David - a good sized renovation on Yankee Lake. We took a kinda hurtin' house and are turning it into a thing of beauty.
I mean, it's a gut renovation, everything is being removed and even new window and door locations. It's one of those houses where everything was just a little wrong - the decor, the layout, the fenestrations. So what the hell, let's improve it and improving it we are.
Before we got started with James and Curtis checking it out . About the only thing that will be left standing is this original fireplace. These old lake shacks are always a surprise, and this one bigger than most. Structurally, it just started out as a very small one room house, and over the years became a weirdly laid out 3 bedroom 2 bath. And it was just pieced together almost haphazdardly - so one of the big challenges is just stiffen it up structurally.
That's Kevin the architect, and Job the demo guy.
We made fast progress stripping it down and removing what needed to be removed - which was more or less everything.
One of the best lakefronts I know of and of course one goal of the renovation is to open of the lake views from the house, which were pretty much blocked by the interior layout prior to our construction.
You can see all the add-ons and patch work over the years, demonstrated with the varying roof lines and odd angles. Almost looks like a planned modernist endeavor, but not quite.
So we blew out the front.
Demo'ed her down the her bones...
Another picture of the house once the front was removed. It's always darkest before the storm.
This pic below is the prior to use ripping the front face of the building off. They call that siding 'poor man's siding', cause it's that type that comes in a roll, have a brick pattern to it, and you just kind of roll it on, nice and easy like.
We ended up adding an addition, as well as sistering new timbers to the existing for strength.
New 1/2" osb plywood over the existing planking for strength.
And a good pic of the new section being added to the front.
Well, that's about it. Quite a challenging little project but a great design and a stubburn construction company won't let much stand in our way of progress. Roof and windows go in/on today. More pics later.
