Finally Bought Some Land

[dubrat]

Haha yup heaps of pythons and those little critters are growing more and more each day....

Getting out of the city is the best thing we have ever done:

Not sure I like the commute to work now tho

[j44ke]

Haha yup heaps of pythons and those little critters are growing more and more each day....

Getting out of the city is the best thing we have ever done:

Not sure I like the commute to work now tho

Yep, that's the way we feel. Right now we are only up there on weekends mostly. Very tough to drive back to the city on Sunday evening.

[j44ke]

A few snaps from today and before. More photos on Sunday when I'll have a chance to take photos without the crew on-site.

WINDOWS! And doors too. So far so good!



The old walls are part of why we bought this property, but the parking area near the house needs retaining walls with some strength, so our stone and cement contractor brought his masons over and they disassembled the old wall and replaced them with two beefier sections. Mighty nicely done.



I've been walking around the parcel we bought earlier this year. This morning I found this. No other bones around. Side of the head caved in.



And this is probably why. Our game camera caught a coyote pair out for the evening. The deer skull may have been an earlier starlight dining experience.

[j44ke]

Windows and doors. Aaahh.

[mnoble485]

Jorn,

Really starting to look great. I think Mr. Saunders and I need to come up there to create a punch list. Plan on it taking at least a week.
No need to thank us.

Mike

[72gmc]

Super cool

I enjoy visiting homes that are under construction. This one's a bit far from me.

[j44ke]

Jorn,

Really starting to look great. I think Mr. Saunders and I need to come up there to create a punch list. Plan on it taking at least a week.
No need to thank us.

Mike

Thanks! The garage awaits!

Actually the garage will have hot and cold water, Internet, workbench, electricity, gas heat, and even Internet. So it ain't too shabby in NYC apartment terms.

[rwsaunders]

Mike, please help Jorn locate a pad and a hook-up for Too Tall's Airstream and more importantly, his traveling pizza oven.

[j44ke]

Airstream! Excellent. I've got to find my photo of our general contractor's sorry-ass trailer. Everything else he owns is A+ but this trailer must have something on him or something. Like an old girlfriend with a tape recording. I think he moves it by helicopter, because goodness knows it doesn't roll.

For you gluttons for punishment, here is the garage. Yes, it will get another panel of siding. They had to put in that door first.



Another house view. Note chimney. We couldn't wrangle a flat one due to code and fire hazard, but now we have a wood stove installed.



Master bedroom and beginnings of our rock garden. Same stone the house is sitting on. This will get planted up as per landscape architects design.



Movie/Guest room. "Pop-up" room also has a Murphy bed and sliding windows for summer sleeping.



Entry door. The doors are so nice. They weigh a ton and you can open them with a finger, even the sliding ones.



Courtyard from the inside with its glassed in hallway to the guest bath.



Dining room to living room view. That's my wife back there dreaming.



Living room through dining room to kitchen view.



My wife's office on the roof.



The Murphy bed goes at that end. Stairs are being made.



Okay enough of that. Feels like showing baby photos. Everyone nods but most are looking for where the key to the liquor cabinet is stashed.

Next is radiant heating, cement floor, porch(es) and surrounding edge to the house (which has a name but I cannot remember what it is.) And a bunch of other things.

Thanks as always for looking, giving advice and encouragement.

[rwsaunders]

Looking good Jorn!

[gt6267a]

was the house made for the office? its going to be sweet up there.

[davids]

Okay enough of that. Feels like showing baby photos. Everyone nods but most are looking for where the key to the liquor cabinet is stashed.

Thanks as always for looking, giving advice and encouragement.

Nah, this crowd is more like the doting grandparents. More photos aren't enough.

Thanks as always for sharing. And I can't wait to see the "after" photos in three years, the house complete and lived-in, the landscaping mature enough to look natural.

[72gmc]

I'll look at as many photos as you care to post.

Qs:
What brand are your doors? A good door is a great thing.
And what is the fire hazard issue with a flat/rectangular chimney? I live in a 1926 house with a brick chimney, I only know tuck pointing.

[j44ke]

was the house made for the office? its going to be sweet up there.

Oh definitely. After the very first drawing, the architects smartly realized my wife would be the hardest sell. Next round of drawings had the roof-top office. Genius!

Nah, this crowd is more like the doting grandparents. More photos aren't enough.

Thanks as always for sharing. And I can't wait to see the "after" photos in three years, the house complete and lived-in, the landscaping mature enough to look natural.

Thanks - you and me both. We seem to have a stellar landscape architect. Our GC and concrete/stone guy said we should hire her before they knew we already had. They are a bit smitten.

I'll look at as many photos as you care to post.

Qs:
What brand are your doors? A good door is a great thing.
And what is the fire hazard issue with a flat/rectangular chimney? I live in a 1926 house with a brick chimney, I only know tuck pointing.

Fleetwood Windows and Doors. Made in the USA.

Well, maybe not really a fire hazard - or it might be, but code said we could not make the stove pipe flush with or even just 2" above the roof of the pop-up room. We had to make the exposed stack 2-3' (can't remember which) higher than the nearest flat surface. So it looks a bit like the smokestack on the Merrimac ironclad from the Civil War. But rules are rules, and this is undoubtedly a good one.

[ides1056]

yow

that's all I got

[davids]

We seem to have a stellar landscape architect. Our GC and concrete/stone guy said we should hire her before they knew we already had. They are a bit smitten.

As an utter newbie to the world of landscaping four years ago, I remain kind of stunned at how relentless the natural world can be.
Even as early as this (third) spring our front yard was more dirt than greenery.
By mid-summer it was a verdant riot.
So great.

[Mabouya]

Jorn,

Very, very nice.

Not to be a downer, but have you given any thought about what you're going to do to help out the local birds? All that glass looks like it's going to be a lethal problem for them, and given the huge reductions we've had in bird populations lately, they need all the help they can get.

[j44ke]

Jorn,

Very, very nice.

Not to be a downer, but have you given any thought about what you're going to do to help out the local birds? All that glass looks like it's going to be a lethal problem for them, and given the huge reductions we've had in bird populations lately, they need all the help they can get.

Yes, definitely. We are going to try a few things. My sister has some static stickers that she says work really well. She has patio windows that birds were hitting almost daily, and then she put up these flat black shapes on her window that have worked. I've also looked into micro-lines - thinner lines than you can draw that the window contractor says he can supply. They are also static attached. Evidently you just have to break up the "logic" of the reflection enough that birds avoid the direction, and straight lines do a really good job at that (as noted in the thread on bird conservation elsewhere in OT.)

Also almost every section of glass on our house has a sliding door in it. On the front window for example, each end is a sliding door and the center section slides open in two sections. As a result, there are four sections of floor-to-ceiling sliding screen that will be the outer layer that should do a lot to prevent collisions. Similarly 50% of the master bedroom and the guest room windows will have screens as the outer layer.

But it has been a major consideration since early in the design process.

[Mark Kelly]

Another house view. Note chimney. We couldn't wrangle a flat one due to code and fire hazard.

Air flow over the roof causes flow separation at the wall / roof boundary with reattachment somewhere downstream. Your chimney needs to be above the separation zone.

[Colinmclelland]

Well that doesn't suck. It's either a nice place or some great photo-shopping!

I'm worried about your writing though. It doesn't seem like the pad of a tortured, starving artiste. I am still amazed that you can do something like that closeish to NY without needing to be a gazillionaire.