Cottage 17 - Finished and Sold
Yes, it is a bit hard to comprehend - seems like each new day brings a new deal closing for us, and new homeowner and taypayer for the community. I know Dean from Cottage 13 is eating his heart out out in San Francisco seeing this cottage inspired by his cottage come to a glorious conclusion. He took a job out west soon after buying his cottage in the woods and now for the most part it sits there, fully furnished, looking fantastic, like the green light at the end of the dock in Fitzgerald's Gatsby, symbolizing some of the hopes and dreams of his future. We use it as often as we can as an example of what these homes can be - as Dean has generously allowed us access when showing near clients around. Many of our homes - specifically Cottage 19 and Cottage 17 - have been influenced by Dean's design palette.
So, as we often do, we take one of our designs and tweak it, change it, alter it, add to it, subtract from it, rearrange the layout and build it again. Cottage 13 was designed and built last winter and this version, Cottage 17, started in June, found homeowners in July, sold yesterday, and will be moved into this weekend. That's our 11 house design, build and sale for 2009 - directly into the teeth the Great Recession. If you count the land we bought, and a few other things we sold, I've completed around 30 real estate transactions in 2009 - with the requisite process of financing, surveys, appraisals, blueprints, closings, etc... Most times Catskill Farms doesn't hold our land very long - as opposed to some of the other big misplanned projects that have been trying to sell the same land for years - for the most part anything we buy we have turned around and sold - usually with a great house on it - within 9 months. As Gib McKean - the Sullivan County real estate legend has said of me - "that Petersheim, he doesn't marry his land, he just has a quick affair with it."
You'll notice the rocks placed smartly (no extra charge), the grass growing with grade A topsoil (no charge) - a totally turnkey home, completely modern in functionality, and thoroughly authentic in design - and clean as a whistle, in fact, squeaky clean (no extra charge). And that's really the basis of the product we try to offer - stuff as much as possible into the purchase price as possible, instead of the more popular path which is to cry 'upgrade', 'extra' or 'change order' at any possible and conceivable opportunity.
Okay, it's true, we didn't rake the leaves.
1260 sq ft, 2 bedrooms, 2 full baths, fireplace, big ass covered porch and cool deck out back.
Front door, whitewashed ceiling.
Good picture of the interior, with 5 panel doors, Jacobean stained floor with matte finish, glossy black door knobs, stone on the foyer floor and a bird chandelier.
This house pretty much has all of our upgrades - spray foam insulation to keep the heat costs down, security system to monitor intruders and more importantly to monitor any major heat loss/changes when no one is around, wired for a whole house audio system, stone facing up the chimney chase.
Corner fireplaces are great and Juan did a real nice job returning the mantel and stone hearth back to the walls.
Our famous hand constructed cross buck barn doors with 18" hinges and cedar lined closet interior.
Bad picture but great bathroom sink. Brand new.
6' long, 2'+ deep tub/shower area, AKA 'the lap pool'. Huge tub (not extra charge).
And the kitchen. Our clients love their kitchens, - not because they are super fancy (although they do seem be quite nice with the simple cabinets, shelves, tile back splashes and fine appliances).
Bedroom blue gray.
Downstairs bath with pedestal sink and horizontal wood wainscoting.
Ocean blue subway tile with a window to the woods.
The tankless, on demand water heater, - gas-fueled.
Underground gas fuel tank.
And above are the homeowners, James and their friend Gayle who turned these gentlemen onto us a few months ago after the final walk-thru on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. Nothing more satisfying than a referral - so thanks, Gayle. That's her hiding behind the fridge above. And Bryce and Thom. Congrats Gentlemen - great job, and welcome to the Catskill Farms Family- we are very pleased to have you.
What I enjoy most about design and selling these homes is the fact that we enabled these clients to drastically change their lifestyle - and for someone who has called the country home for 8+ yrs now, I think it's always a change well-earned and to be enjoyed for many years to come. I'm hoping a few of these homes in 20 yrs get passed on down to the children or other family members.
Cottage 23
For all of you blog followers, you will recognize this house as one that had barely begun 8 weeks ago. Presently we are painting the exterior, laying the floor in the interior and beginning to make final arrangements for the the soft landing into closing out another deal. Basically, we've reinvented what construction can be - instead of an over-budget, delayed, aggravating headache, we've invented a system where each house is done on time, each house is on budget and each house design and collaboration is high-speed but so well organized and so well-planned to play to our homeowners' strengths (busy but Internet savvy - picky but flexible - interested in collaboration but not to the extent of locating each and every outlet, light fixture, trim detail, etc...). And it works - for the last 2 years, we have slam dunked our new homeowners into their homes with nary a hiccup (unless self-created hiccup, which we are powerless to stop). We have set the bar so high in terms of service, process, creativity, speed and value that at this point our competitors can do nothing but helplessly toss verbal assaults at us - in terms of creating meaningful competition, they seem to have given up on that.
It's all quintessentially perfect and perfectly new. There won't be a surprise for these guys when they move in, no extra expense, no septic to replace, well pump to fix, foundation wall to analyze.
We like to 'stick' our 1x12 wide plank flooring for a few days prior to installation to allow it to acclimate.
1x6 edge and center (commonly referred to as beadboard) defining the angles of the porch.
PrePaint and pre-porch post installation. This porch will get a standing seam galvanized metal roof.
We do a lot of green things to our homes - without all the malarkey of LEED certification, NHBA bureaucracy or the like. James and I spent the better part of 2 months examining how to green a structure and what we could do to achieve LEED status in our homes, etc... What we finally concluded was pretty simple - that homes are pretty green to begin with, and the path to LEED certification was more an effort in paperwork, inspections and frankly, bullshit than anything else. Probably in big commercial projects, the positive impact can be more readily established, but for residential construction, - mostly malarkey. An everyday example would be like this - I bought a toothbrush and efficiently bought the toothpaste at the same time thus saving gas (2 points - if I would have recycled a toothbrush, 3 points). I organized my team (my family) submitted the paperwork, and called the inspector when I was brushing my teeth to validate and verify that I was not leaving the water on while brushing (2 points - if the whole family brushes their teeth at the same time, 3 points). Verified that I did not put too much toothpaste the brush (2 points, using baking soda, 3 points), and on and on. In the end, it seems like if a small builder has the staff to babysit a very intensive paperwork and coordination effort, LEED certification is yours for the taking. James and I wanted to offer a real green house, not a rubber stamped green house, not a green house that has a check list of performance criteria but no real improved performance - we wanted to offer a better-performing house and so we dug in real deep and figured out we could do that at the lowest possible cost. Because in the end, it's all about the money. Our homes are out of the park green - they are small (half the size or less than the average american home), we use lots of salvaged and recycled materials, we use spray foam insulation, our boilers are efficient, our house placement is smart, our covered porches protect from sun and wind, we recommend on-demand tankless water heaters, and mostly and foremost, our homes are built to standards that are high and ever increasing.
We love spray foam insulation - for a couple of thousand dollars, the integrity of the building envelope can be improved substantially and measurably. We are using a product with 47% renewable ingredients including 27% soy. The benefit of spray foam insulation over old fashioned pink fiberglass is the ability of the spray foam to eliminate air penetration and heat loss. Here is the back of the truck - a laboratory of sorts. I was such a believer that this is the wave of the future - that the old pink panther will be rapidly set aside - that we set up a business specializing in insulating homes. Catskill Farms now believes the number 1 thing a homeowner can do to increase their homes efficiency and lower their heating costs is to upgrade to spray foam insulation.
There's the stone facing going up the chimney.
And a pictorial history of this home's construction, which began - believe it or not - in mid-July.
The story of Cottage 23 - as we like to say, the proof is always in the pudding.
Road Trip- More Party Pics
Consequences of playing badminton barefooted.
Brother Steve and his son Josh on the court.
Me with my patented 'slamma jamma', playing along side Steve's other son Eli. After 40 yrs of kickin' his butt in every sport, Steve showed up 'ready to play' and took me down 2 out of 3 games with some steller and impressive play.
Mom inside the barn where the party was going to be held.
Steve's daughter Sarah watching over Lucas in his new wagon.
Lisa and her friend Amy.
Me and Amy's man Adam.
Brother Steve.
Crawford Road neighbor Theresa who helps takes care of Lucas.
Me climbing a tree in order to cut a branch that was interfering with the badminton court.
