Onward Christian Soldier
The Jakester. The Jakeman. The Jakeappotamus. The Jakerama. The JakeMasterJam.
I'm building a very cool series of homes over on Tuthill Road, which is a Town maintained dirt road in the Town of Lumberland, the hamlet of Barryville, just a few miles from the Delaware River that runs from Canada to the Chesapeake. So there's a lot of action over there every morning and Jake and I like to go over, park the car and walk around checking shit out. It's a pretty good walk, since we are building 4 houses, and they are all on 4+ acres. So Jake runs that way, and this way, and up the hill, and down the hill, and sprints there and sprints here. Anyway, being a 8 month old puppy that exertion of energy serves him well all day, keeping him even tempered and mostly dozing off in various positions and surfaces in the office. It's a great thing that he doesn't run off and play hard to get when he's off the leash - since that enables me to let him run. A few fun things happening this morning in diverse directions. First, ole Hall from the reclaimed wood place down the road delivered our hand hewn fireplace mantle beams and mantle posts. Hand hewn means old, since hewn implies and is given away by the actual ax marks on the beam itself. It's true history incorporated, and a pretty cool accent. That's Mark and Henning getting ready to help unload, cut and install.
The Reclaimed Farmhouse which we are pimping out is currently on the market. I haven't showed it to many people, because until these homes reach a certain phase, the genius is a little hard to see to the layman or laywoman or laychild. But it's there, and it certainly becomes poignantly evident at some point, when the details, product choices, and construction techniques are visible. The duel brick chimney gives this house that Philadelphia federal-style look.
Richard the art gallery insurance expert's Barn house in the painting stage.
Steve the picture framer's house in the soy-based spray foam insulation phase.
John and Wendy's Shaker-style house in the trim phase. And also, while subtle, is a big deal. See the little stone path going to the house. If the excavator was a little less intelligent, a little less thoughtful, a little less committed to seeing the big picture, he would have neglected putting this path in as he put the driveway in - leaving us tramping through some serious and job-stopping mud.
We just got our latest credit card statement and it was illuminating to see our life's patterns through the lens of our credit card activity - in line item/black and white narrative. Target, Toys -r- us, various gas stations, Baby-r-Us, liqueur store, animal hospital, netflix, grocery store, repeat. The repeated liqueur store was a good one, I thought. Well, I'm flying solo for 10 days as Lisa is down in Florida again (must be nice), watching and taking car of my faltering 73 yr old Dad. I mean there's young 73 and old 73, and he falls squarely in the latter description. So Lisa, a caregiver by instinct, loves the bond Lucas and Dawdy, have had from early on. And now she's got her new flip cam to capture all the slow-moving glory of Lucas and Dawdy, - though Lucas ain't that slow anymore. Lucas is also fast friends with our neighbor Tanta, who is a young 73 - it's like a Harold and Maude relationship without the funeral fetishes and without the sex. Sure, I agree, that's inappropriate for sure.
We're Famous! (finally)
Here we go - Blog Cabin on the DIY Network announces Catskill Farms as their builder for the 2010 Blog Cabin renovation- Hello waiting list (whoops, we got that already). Hello more demand than supply (whoops again, we got that already). Well, anyway, you get the point. Enjoy the Blog Cabin - I've been working with DIY for 6 months or so now, and nothing but nice competent people who know how to make it happen. Hey, wait a minute. That sounds like us too. And you know it takes two to tango. Also, we started a big ad run in New York Magazine - 12 weeks of cool Catskill Farms ads - check it out near the back of the mag just before the massage and body work ads.
Bethel Farms Eliminates Link
Wow, now that's funny. In my last post, I linked to Bethel Farms' Brand New Country Cottage, which in effect, is nothing more than an architect I fired (Irace Architecture), and Realtor who could never sell nothing for us, and a developer (Bethel Farms) who no matter how much guidance he gets always chooses the wrong direction at the T teaming up to try and compete dishonestly with us. But, what's funny about it is that I graciously linked to the cottage to help them out - although it might be said I meanly did it just to juxtaposition our homes with theirs. I'm a big meany like that. Well, anyway, to make a long story short, the link is now disabled - they took down the house from the link. That's got to be an embarrassing rebuke to Irace Architecture and the whole team over there. With Catskill Farms, I don't even like to use the same paint color in our homes, even after 60 homes, because I respect the desire of our customers to be original, to be in an original home. I think it reflects directly on our integrity as artists/designers - we value the integrity of our designs, they are not commodities that are to be sold off to the lowest bidder. Look, the thing is I don't want to sound mean, or spiteful, or anything like that. But Irace Architecture used to be our architect until I found out he was selling our award-winning plans to our competitors. And Bethel Farms, you know, I didn't care much about their non-existent or extremely lackluster sales until they attempted to steal our identity, confuse the marketplace, and borrow heavily from our marketing, our strategies, and our home designs. I mean, the owner of Bethel Farms actually leveraged his relationship with one of my associates in order to get inside info. We live in a very non-dynamic marketplace - this isn't NYC with competing condos that look exactly alike and have exactly the same amenities. Here you had this developer with unlimited funds just taking what he wanted from a small little successful company. To no avail, but still, it's the principle. They even named their stupid cottage "Country Cottage #1". Not the Charleston, the Bettoncourt, Not the TimberLine like all the other dumb suburban homes in dumb suburban developments. They even took our simple little technique of numbering our cottages and farmhouses. How Unoriginal. And the marketplace has spoken firmly in favor of originality.
A Masterpiece - 50's Ranch #2 Sold (3rd one in February)
The thing is, dog, (I've been watching too much Randy Jackson on American Idol), that it is real early in the morning. Not even 4:30, but I really was pretty pooped out last night after just a whirlwind of activity in 100 million directions last week and went to bed real early. Just a sampling of this past week's activities include kicking more ass on the DIY renovation than genghis khan at the battle of Chakirmaut, continuing to build 6 new houses, getting the planning and construction ready for 5 spring starts, spearheading a new marketing push, spearheading a new PR push, managing about 9 employees, 20 subcontractors, 3 businesses, 24 pieces of real estate. Not mentioning being the perfect dad, husband and dog master (just kidding but I do do (note the dog pun) my best). Not that I'm counting, or trying to rub it in those competitors who just can't quite get it done in this challenging real estate environment, but that's our 3rd sale this year, and leaves us with 4 homes under contract that will be closing in the next two months. Last yr we sold 14 homes, and it looks like we might be able to do that this year as well. And for an underfunded little niche boutique business like we were/are, that's a huge amount of homes.
Wow, 50's Ranch #2 is a masterpiece. I mean, you all know I'm pretty biased about these houses - that i think their size, pricing, value, design collaboration, land selection, land placement, etc... is just about as good as it gets- but this house just really has that one-two punch of great design and owner-risktaking that worked out about as well as it could. What I like about it as well was the fact that I was able to pull a good well-framed picture of the future owners - most times my portraits are so pathetic. What didn't hurt either for this post was just a perfect sunny friday morning for picture taking, with cool shadows and fun accents.
Like I had mentioned earlier, Tony and Laurie had been contacting us throughout their upstate getaway search - which lasted a few years. A long search is not that uncommon, since it's a big decision, becomes almost part of a family's lifestyle (looking for homes upstate on the weekends), and, in the end, is a pretty difficult decision because there are a lot of towns, and for the most part, the architecture is not incredibly appealing.
So, after going in that direction, and then this direction, and almost buying a place way upstate, they decided to come into our clan, and I think everyone is pretty confident it was the best decision the Owners could have made - especially when the combined talents of them and us produced this mid-century classic.
And that's the thing the losers who try to copy us don't understand - our homes aren't static, they don't stay the same, we are always pushing the envelope of what is possible design-wise and construction-wise, we are always taking chances, moving one way, then another, then another. I had a guy telling me the other day that he's aware of several companies that are out there studying our stuff with a microscope - but, in the end, a microscope can't capture soul, or that feeling people get when they walk into our homes. Our homes emote a strong design personality- and that is something that is not easily mimicked.
What is overlooked as well in our originality is what our homeowners bring to the table. It seems like everyone we work with has great taste - some work in creative fields, others do not, but either way it seems like the customers who are attracted to us have a strong creative bent and a real creative itch they are dying to scratch.
Granted, it may be considered a bit over the top to scratch that itch by building a home, but hey, I'm not judging.
I mean there is so much debate about what constitutes value, especially in these turbulent times - but there is little debate among our new homeowners, who can easily see a well-built, well-designed, inexpensive to operate, upstate getaway is valued in many ways other than dollar and cents. What I love seeing as well - loving healthy competition and respecting it's ability to force us to continually raise the bar - is when one of our bad imitators (and believe me, they are all bad for some reason) buys the land, has the house designed, builds the house, tries to sell the house, lowers the price 10 times and then finally overpays a commission (if they ever sell it), is the realization that there is no money left for the developer/builder. From the outside, it appears Catskill Farms is raking it in (granted, we do make a nice living and try to compensate everyone reasonably) but once you try it, you realize how expensive it is - the nice piece of land, the curved driveway, the distance the house is from the road, the placement, the wood siding, the metal roof, the security system, the audio system, the very cool radiators, the fine kitchens, the tile, the backsplashes, the perfect lighting, the wide plank floors, the railings, the crowns, and details and details and details. Believe me, we exasperate our competition with our vertically integrated ultra efficient process. It's a military operation in it's efficiency.
Fireplaces, radiators, cantilevered countertops, wide plank floors - on time, on budget.
The key to what we do is two fold - one, I'm diversely talented with a good eye and a pretty good appetite for risk-taking, and two, it's our team. I mean, I have developed a team that is motivated, quality-conscious, forward-thinking, and always improving - we don't have a weak link in the chain. And, as opposed to say that going-nowhere-fast Bethel Farms project where everyone is just trying to milk the cow for as long as possible (check out their Cottage here - you have to wonder what Irace Architecture was smoking when he designed this one - unattractive from every vantage), our team of engineers, surveyors, excavators, painters, plumbers, electricians and dozens of other professionals have our best interest in mind, go the extra mile, understand the opportunity and position we occupy is based on a wide array of people doing their best work. It's not perfect work - but it's work done with a good attitude, with attention to detail, with respect for me and my customers.
I mean, you got to love it - 60 little unique homes scattered about in the woods, hardly there. It's such a modest proposition - build small well designed homes, stand behind your work, keep experimenting with architecture and materials. Keep the prices low.
Famous sliding barn door above.
Big window of one of the bedrooms.
And even our stairs to the basements look good. And some feedback - "Thank you, we couldn't agree more. It's amazing what can happen with the right combination of talents. Thank you for your vision and expertise." So, there you have it. It's 5:33am, I'm listening the BBC, the cats and dogs and baby and wife are sound asleep and it's just me and the creaking old house in Eldred, NY.
