Garage

Awhile back, Jeanie asked about the garage apartment. We can now see that it is taking shape. The area between the 2 garage doors will be the entrance. Inside the door there will be stairs to the second floor. There will be one bathroom, a living room, kitchen and a bedroom open to the living room. We will probably put a sofabed in the apartment for extra sleeping space. The bedroom area has a sloped ceiling so it will not be full height.

Furnishings

This is an idea of a bench we might use as seating around the big dining table. Since the table is so long, we would have to do 2 4' benches.

We also like this bench for the front entrance area.

It is hard to tell, but in the upper photo, the bench is actually perched upon the dining table we would love to have.

On another furniture note, we are now the proud owners of a set of lockers. They are made of a distressed metal, with the doors painted light yellow. We will be using them to house bike gear. They piece is now in use at Traphagen.

Snow

Here are some photos from the house in its first snow storm. I paid the house a visit during the storm and found at least 4 people hard at work.

Furnishings

We are making an attempt to get as much furniture locally as possible. The beds, which we purchased about 2 years ago were made by an Iron Forge place in Millbrook, NY (across the river).

The next big item is the dining room table. We are just about sure that we are going to go with a slab of walnut created by a local carpenter. The same guy who make the arched tresses that are part of the covered outdoor space in the house. We visited his studio, only about a mile from Rose Lane, and got to catch a glimpse of this beautiful piece of wood. It was part of a large Black Walnut tree that was cut down for the Ulster County Jail project in Kingston. The table is going to be 8 feet with a 4 foot extension. It is basically just a slab of wood, planed across the top to make it even, but the sides are raw, like the sides of a tree. We're deciding on the seating too. Probably 4 4' benches.

One item that isn't local (all the way from India) is a set of lockers. They are going in the bike closet to keep everything organized and they will be painted light yellow. We found these at a furniture store in Soho called Boca Grande. They have all kinds of interesting things and it is surprisingly not overly expensive. It is like paying Crap (in a Bucket) prices but not getting Crap. We also are considering getting a metal console to go under the TV in the den.

If you haven't noticed, we like metal furniture!

The Look

This photo gives a good idea of what the house is going to look like. The siding is up in most places, as well as the trim. Some of the "rafter tails" and other roof detail were a surprise and might go.

That large boulder is going to stay put, as a lawn ornament.

Stone

The stone work continues. The dam is just about faced with rocks, some of them very large (500 lbs.) The 2 mini dams below the large (original) dam are also now faced. In order to make this happen, the stonework crew was increased to 10 - all very happy to have work these days.

The Concept

For the first time since the house was a structure, we were able to see the house as it was designed to look: ON the water. We had a big rain over the weekend and SJ closed the dam so that we could see how the house would look with a full pond in front of it. With in minutes of closing the dam, water began cascading over the top of the dam. The dam will be faces with stone and obviously, the construction supplies will be cleaned up, but here's a first look at the house in its element.