Cottage 6
The Owner (actually I'm the owner until we are finished, but who's nitpicking) visited his house-in-progress today after a 4+ week hiatus of work and travel. We hope he was quite pleased at the progress. Today we laid out the electric inside the house, and discussed the bathroom designs. We also designed two pretty neat porch systems - one with open rafters, the other with exposed rafters and screened-in porch. To really pimp this place out, we are thinking about stoning the entire chimney, and maybe the foundation as well. Borrowing from a barn motiff, we are using rough hewn vertical board and batten siding on the exterior, and a bold black shingled roof.
By the numbers -
Our newest project is really moving along - we are cooking with gas. 850 ft of country road. 1000 ft of winding country driveways. 3 houses well under way. 3 propane torpedo tanks buried and waiting. 3 wells drilled for a total of 1200 ft of earth boring. And boy did we hit water. At Lot 2, we hit over 1o0 gllns a minute- mind you that 10 gallons is considered fantastic. 3 septic systems well on their way. 1100 feet of over head electric feeding the houses, 4 electric poles. 700 feet of underground buried electric directly feeding the homes. I'll save the rest until I have some more pics. Let me just say its a bit hairy out there, everyday brings 4 micro climates through the area - icy rain, snow, mud, freezing temps. Not much to worry about from your office - but start adding 14 vans, trucks, dumptrucks, delivery trucks, etc... trying to access the houses, and it's not hard to imagine the chaos of unexpected hurdles being hurled at us as we try to keep on keeping on. And, if you have been following this narrative for any length of time, you may be wondering how the race between the baby and the farmhouse 9 is going - well, it's neck and neck, and we are working weekends to gain an edge.
Highland Farms Infrastructure
Just in the nick of time, our infrastructure went in. Electric poles, electric wires, underground electric to the houses, and the underground natural gas takes that will power the homes at Crawford Farms.
Cottage 3
If my readers have any friends (or maybe they are like me, friendless), this house is FOR SALE. Amazingly, it's the only house we have for sale, having had our inventory bought up like used records outside a disc jockey conference. We like to experiment, and we like to keep things real - so we stepped outside our comfort zone and did a little Modern. Kind of like the pre-fab, overpriced, over-designed Dwell houses, except not pre-fab, not over priced, and not over designed.
This house is 1200 sq ft, 2 bedrooms, open loft living/dining/kitchen, 2 full cool baths and a ton of outside living space. Lisa said if we owned a country house, this would be it. My electrician calls it 'the fort', I call it 'modern cottage #3'. The above picture features the staircase, salvaged wood rails, and local bluestone floors that are warm to the touch because of the radiant heat beneath it.
When we built this house, we had 'green' in mind - not fake green, not marketing green, but true attention to how we could build a house that used less energy. This house is built into the earth, taking advantage of the thermal insulation, is positioned to take advantage of passive solar energy, has an abundant amount of insulation, a super efficient heating system, and radiant heat on the ground floor.
This is probably the most unique house for sale in Sullivan County in the $300k range. Not for everyone, but definitely for someone. Catskill Farms has made a good living creating niche houses for niche buyers, or, as our marketing says - 'unique homes for unique individuals."
What doesn't hurt this house is the 6+ perfect acres, private and beautiful, or the security system we installed, or the mack-daddy whole house audio system. Pretty perfect.
