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Home HudsonValley SEPT. 14, 2017

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Fall Home Improvement

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Home improvement is us Sometimes everything comes into play at once

By Paul Smart

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’m looking forward to moving. My wife and I found a house as soon as it was listed; fortunately, it matched its online photos. Our bid was accepted, but the closing has been stalled while the bank gets its papers in order (ah, the challenges of foreclosure sales!). Now we have to get our house for the past decade in shape for selling. We’ve got a broker lined up, and got some interest from an early e-mail blast and Facebook push, which indicated our palindrome pricing voodoo was in the right ballpark. But we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.

Have I mentioned that this process has added up to a lot of stress? Especially so, because we’ve been leaning on family to provide a bridge loan for the purchase of the new home, whose cost is well under half what we’ve been told to expect from our current home. And we’re looking at basic home improvement on several fronts at once.

On the one hand, we’re looking at what a new home needs. The place we’re buying is old but clean, sort of like how Paul McCartney’s grandfather was described in A Hard Day’s Night. Some ceiling work is needed above the tub in the upstairs bathroom. We need grouting here and there.

We want to dig into a brick wall to expand the area where the refrigerator’s to fit, and add a water line for its ice maker.

Some rugs have to come up, although the floors underneath them seem in good condition, as they are elsewhere in the home. The heating system needs a cleaning. The basement needs a good dehumidifier. The back deck needs a power wash, and the back yard has to be trimmed back to normalcy.

Then there’s dealing with the modern term, “curb appeal,” for our old home. We love the place, especially the ways in which its separate second-floor apartment and other guest rooms have given us added income potential. We think the massive top-floor artist’s studio and numer-

Contributors this issue: Susan Barnett is a writer and a licensed associate broker with Gary DiMauro Real Estate.

Lisa Carroll lives in the village of Ellenville, the outermost reaches of Ulster County, with her husband and two girls, working hard and making memories.

Lissa Harris is the former editor of the Watershed Post. She lives in Margaretville with her wife and daughter.

Elisabeth Henry is a writer and actress who lives on a mountain.

Ann Hutton has lived in the Catskills since 2004, where she communes with the trees and plays in the garden—and in no way considers herself a horticulture expert.

Chris Rowley is a novelist, non-fiction book writer, journalist and homeowner in the Cragsmoor community.

Paul Smart is moving from one home to another so his 11 year old can be closer to friends. Anyone who wants to help with that move should contact this publication.

Violet Snow writes weekly for the Woodstock Times. Her fascinations include aikido, ancestors, gardening, and studying Welsh.

Terence P Ward resides in New Paltz, where he reports on local events and religious minorities, tends a wild garden, and communes with cats.

Brad Will is a New York and California licensed architect, and LEED Accredited since 2004. He is principal Ashokan Architecture & Planning, established in 2002, with active, sustainable projects in six Hudson Valley counties.

Lynn Woods is co-producer and co-director of Lost Rondout: A Story of Urban Removal and contributes regularly to Ulster Publishing,

DINA PALEN

We all decide to shift homes at some point, or at least change the place we inhabit. As the author’s abode shows, it sometimes helps to assess what one already has as a starting point. Cleaning helps. ous porches have great appeal. Our broker keeps talking about her clients from downstate being used to home-décor-magazine dreams, the fevered allure of Architectural Digest idylls in the bucolic stretches of newly discovered upstate.

In real-life terms, this will mean hiring someone to paint the front of the old house (fortunately, we’ve gotten the other three sides done over the past decade), pulling the old swing set and tub-in-the-ground experiment out of the back yard, and plenty of garden trimming. Inside, we’ll have to redo one ceiling where an upstairs leak left water spotting. There’s a section of the dining room where I started to remove wallpaper years ago only to find weird plastic tiki board, and just left it. Though this seems an easy list, it’ll require loads of work and some expenses.

Finally, we’re tackling all the trauma involved in moving. We like lively conversations about how

we’ve come to hate this process. We’re looking at stashed boxes from past moves, trying to figure what furniture can go where, and what we might want to finally replace. Arguments are brewing about how to shelve books, and what to do with mounds of CDs, albums and cassette tapes. The giant roll-top deck which gave me a hernia the last time we moved it doesn’t seem to fit anywhere except the new house’s basement.

De-clutter, we’re told. Easier word to say or spell than to accomplish.

I’m going to re-read this special section for all it can tell me about contractors, DIY versus hiredhand jobs, grants, garden clean-up, real-estate tips. It will forecast my future, and maybe yours.

There are big shifts taking hold throughout the Hudson Valley these days.

My home improvements are less stressful, in the long run, than is the evening news.

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Home Hudson Valley

Color sells Stating your home is more important than ever

By Susan Barnett

2

017 will likely be remembered by Hudson Valley realtors as the year of the Brooklyn expat. After years of predicting a massive influx of new firstand second-home buyers fleeing the city, the dam finally burst. Every wellpriced property within a 20 mile radius of uptown Kingston, particularly those with character within a walk to a shopping district, saw a parade of enthusiastic young hopeful homebuyers. Buyers who tried to negotiate too hard on price found themselves edged out by someone willing to pay more.

Homeowners hoping to cash out and move on couldn’t pick a better time. But don’t mistake enthusiastic buyers for uncritical ones. Most buyers I’ve worked with are ready and willing to fall in love, but they’re not desperate. They want a good value and a good house. And if they can find a house that is move-in ready, they’re more likely to pay close to asking or even a bit more.

But what does move-in ready mean now?

It usually means that structure and systems are in good working order. But it also means an updated décor. And what they like isn’t necessarily what you’d expect.

One happy buyer is about to close on an extremely minimalist farmhouse in a small hamlet.

The kitchen is nothing more than an old farmhouse sink, a refrigerator and a stove. The ceiling is covered with reclaimed panels from an old, rusting roof. There are no cabinets, just a pantry.

“It’s fine for now,” my Brooklyn-based client said. “It’’s simple and it’s easy. I can add to it later.”

It had given the bank appraiser fits. No cabinets? That’s hardly a kitchen. But it was enough for this buyer.

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ne young family completely redid their country farmhouse, creating a cathedral ceiling in their kitchen, putting in a simple, beadboard-sided island with a gleaming copper top, and adding open shelving made from

PHOTOS BY SUSAN BARNETT

With buyers now savvy to sophisticated tastes, home sellers are looking for new ways to stage Upstate houses. Color is in, now, along with a breezy sense of the modern.

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That, she said, explains the increasing trend toward charcoal and black houses.

“Really dark paint can look great on a house, particularly with contrasting trim. You can get away with deep tones because you don’t have to look at it constantly. It’s outside. But we’re seeing it can work inside, too. Right now the color trends seem to be gray, steel, blue and black, particularly in kitchens.”

She’s also seeing more painted cabinets in kitchens. “Black and gray cabinets, with updated hardware, can be a real update, and much cheaper than a brand-new kitchen. But if you can be sure that new kitchen will give you a fair return, a new kitchen is still a major selling point.”

The influx of downstate expats is literally changing the face of our communities. New homeowners are updating their homes, and streets that were once a study in whitewash now bloom in shades of charcoal, deep red, pale yellow, olive and blue.

It’s not the Victorian exuberance of San Francisco, but it’s pretty adventurous for the Hudson Valley.

TSU EARTHWORKS floorboards found in a crumbling barn and old plumbing fittings. The walls are a deep charcoal.

The décor is comprised of flea-market finds and family hand-me-downs. Their buyers, another young couple, were so smitten they bought not only the house but most of the furniture.

In other words, the old “paint it white” chestnut is just that: old. This year, the Hudson Valley is blooming with color.

Kate Burnell of Kate Burnell Interiors and Design in New York’s Capital District has been working to update a stunning contemporary in southern Ulster County to get it ready for sale.

Designed by NYC architect Peter Pennoyer and featured in Architectural Digest, the rambling wood house is set against a mountainside and surrounded by over 300 acres. It was inspired by Scandinavian farmhouses, with nearly every wall covered by unstained bead board. The entrance opened onto a three-story-high central rotunda.

Each room was flooded with light. Burnell saw an opportunity to update it for today’s buyers.

“It needed a little more warmth,” Burnell said, “and a little more personality. I didn’t want to go overboard, because it’s a gorgeous place, but we needed to add just enough character to help the buyers imagine what they can do to make it their own.”

Burnell advised adding color to the kitchen, the living room and the hallways. “Adding warmer neutrals into the mix, updating some hardware and some light fixtures, it adds some pizzazz, but there’s nothing too permanent. It just gives buyers an idea of what can be done.”

Warm neutrals are what Burnell said any hopeful seller can use to update their home for sale.

“Jewel tones are coming into fashion, but if you want to sell your house you want to stick with neutrals,” she said. “Stark white can feel cold. Cream and taupe can make a big difference. You want buyers to see something warmer than builder’s drywall white.”

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eople have very strong reactions to color,” she added. “A buyer can get hung up on a bright yellow bedroom or an ugly green bathroom. and it colors their feeling about a whole house. You want just enough color to show the rooms off. Think timeless. Unless you’ve got an old-world house with a lot of character, just let the clean lines of your house speak for themselves.”

She recommends plain, gleaming floors without rugs if your rugs aren’t in great shape, simple window treatments. And if your house is one of a dozen just like it, she said, adding some simple things, like fun towels in the bathroom, upgraded light fixtures or interesting hardware can make your house stand out from the rest.

Outside, Burnell said, a seller can be bolder.

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Home Hudson Valley

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While incomes stay flat, house prices rise. The result is increasing interest in making at least part of one’s home into a cash generator through short term rentals.

My home is your home How the sharing economy is changing local real estate

By Lissa Harris

I

n the Fifties, the perfect home had to have a den for family TV-watching. In the Seventies, it was a sunken conversation pit. Now, it’s a private cottage out back to host Airbnb guests.

Local brokers say Airbnb-worthiness has quickly become a universally desired factor for buyers, much like broadband access was a few years ago.

“The bulk of my buyers are looking to do Airbnb along with personal use of any property they are looking to buy,” said Faye Storms, an agent with Phoenicia’s Ruth Gale Realty.

These days, Storms says, buyers are looking for amenities like walkable neighborhoods, dining and things to do — even out in the country. “They want a community feel,” she said. “That’s why they

find Phoenicia and Pine Hill so appealing.”

Peggy Bellar, a Margaretville-based broker with Catskills Dream Team, describes her typical buyers in the central Catskills region: millennial Brooklynites, first-time homebuyers who can’t afford to buy in their own neighborhood, looking for a cute little place to stay in on weekends and rent out on Airbnb when they’re away.

“The typical thing people come up here looking for is a cabin on five acres,” she said. “It’s the fantasy they all have.”

Bellar thinks the burgeoning upstate wedding industry is fueling a rise in second-home purchases by young couples — not just newlyweds, but their out-of-town friends who come for the weekend and end up falling in love.

“They invite their 150 friends. People start to discover the region a little more,” she said.

In the last year or two, Bellar said, she’s starting to see action in a long-dormant slice of the market: houses between $300,000 and $400,000, an often-awkward middle price range stuck between affordability and one-percenter luxury. It’s unclear whether the ability to earn passive income

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via Airbnb is bringing those houses within reach of more buyers, or whether it’s just the economy ticking up. Either way, those houses are now sell-

Fall Home Improvement September 2017 An Ulster Publishing publication Editorial WRITERS: Susan Barnett, Lisa Carroll, Lissa Harris, Elisabeth Henry, Ann Hutton, Chris Rowley, Paul Smart, Violet Snow, Terence P Ward, Brad Will, Lynn Woods Cover photos by Paul Smart, of Uptown Kingston homes demonstrating classic “curb appeal,” and by Dina Palin, realtor, of the editor’s home for sale.

EDITOR: Paul Smart Layout & Graphic Brilliance: Joe Morgan Ulster Publishing PUBLISHER: Geddy Sveikauskas ADVERTISING DIRECTOR: Genia Wickwire DISPLAY ADS: Lynn Coraza, Pam Courselle,

Pamela Geskie, Elizabeth Jackson, Ralph Longendyke, Sue Rogers, Linda Saccoman PRODUCTION MANAGER: Joe Morgan PRODUCTION: Diane Congello-Brandes, Josh Gilligan, Rick Holland CLASSIFIED ADS: Amy Murphy, Tobi Watson CIRCULATION: Dominic Labate Fall Home Improvement is one of three Home Hudson Valley supplements Ulster Publishing puts out each year. It is distributed in the company’s four weekly newspapers and separately at select locations, reaching an estimated readership of over 50,000. Its website is www.hudsonvalleyone.com.

For more info on upcoming special sections, including how to place an ad, call 845-334-8200, fax 845-334-8202 or email: info@ulsterpublishing.com.

Sept. 14, 2017 Home Hudson Valley ing after years of languishing on the market.

Throughout the region, there is an obvious divide between buyers who live and work in the area and those whose economic lives revolve around New York City. It’s the latter that drives trends in the real-estate market. “You have a mismatch between people who live in our economy and people who bring from another economy,� explained Jennifer Schwartz Berky, a member of the Ulster County Legislature representing part of Kingston and principal at Hone Strategic, a consulting firm that does urban planning and historic preservation.

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Demand fueled by a hot market for out-of-town buyers is beginning to outpace local tenants’ ability to pay.

In the last few years, Schwartz Berky says, rentals in Kingston’s tony Stockade district have

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owhere is that divide starker than it is in Kingston. Once plagued with vacant homes and storefronts due to inertia and disinterest, parts of Kingston are now zooming up in value fast enough to have the opposite problem.

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It’s not hard to see what’s drawing people to the Stockade. Walkable, around the corner from public transportation, and home to an increasingly vibrant nightlife and professional scene, it’s a perfect neighborhood for a downstater who wants to

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live a little less frenetically on the weekends without giving up the perks of an urban lifestyle.

“Anyone with eyes could see that uptown Kingston was perfectly situated to double in value,” Schwartz Berky said. “After 2008 it was obvious that that was going to take off.”

But while rents in Kingston have begun to in-

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Home Hudson Valley crease, average household incomes have stayed fairly flat — for those who make their money in the region, anyway. “Median household income hasn’t gone up very much in Ulster County, and certainly not in Kingston,� Schwartz Berkey said.

According to recent data from the federal Housing and Urban Development agency (HUD), over half of Kingston’s renters are living in “unaffordable� housing — meaning that they spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent. Nearly a third of renters are turning over more than half their income to the landlord.

It’s a setup for rapid gentrification, said Schwartz Berky. Local nonprofits like RUPCO and Pattern for Progress are concerned about people getting pushed out of Kingston. But she says it’s not too late for city leaders to stave it off — for instance, by crafting incentives for developers that encourage both urban revitalization and growth of affordable housing.

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hat’s happening in uptown Kingston is just one local aspect of a broader shift in interest towards dense, walkable neighborhoods, even outside of large cities.

Increasingly, Schwartz Berky said, buyers in the more populated parts of the Hudson Valley — and, more generally, nationwide — are looking to buy in places with good walkability.

Airbnb and other aspects of the sharing economy have only contributed to that trend, she says. “A lot of our Airbnbs are catering to locations where people can arrive by Trailways — places where people can have carless weekends,� she said.

The sharing economy is new enough to be evolving fast, and in parts of upstate New York it has yet fully to arrive. It remains to be seen just how much it will transform our economy and our neighborhoods. In any case, Schwartz Berky says, cities and towns are going to need to adapt to the fact that sharing our homes is the new normal. “We’re going to need more flexible zoning to deal with the reality that people can no longer afford for every human being to have 1000 square feet for themselves,� she said.

“In our home, you are on your own but never alone.�

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| 11

We’re a bipedal species Walkability is becoming the new paradigm

By Paul Smart

Y

ears ago, Matt Stinchcomb joined up with a former roommate to start a little business that became a big corporation called Etsy. He lived in Brooklyn for a while, and eventually bought a second home in Sullivan County, easily accessible from Route 17. He was put in charge of etsy.org, a zeitgeistchanging nonprofit that morphed into goodworksinstitute.org in the Hudson Valley and affiliated with shumacherinstitute.org in the Berkshires.

With a young family, Stinchcomb decided the time was right for moving here full-time. Where to? “I figured we needed someplace that was walkable,� he said during a lunch in deep Brooklyn last winter.

Kingston was hip and fun but not quite right for a family, he explained this summer while sitting at a Wall Street Kingston eatery much like the one we’d met at downstate. Uptown’s great for scooting around without a car, as is the Rondout, Stinchcomb said, but he found it not very kid-friendly.

New Paltz had too many college students, Woodstock too much tourism. Hudson’s public schools weren’t ready for citified hipster kids. Same for Beacon, Catskill, Poughkeepsie or Newburgh.

So Stinchcomb and his family chose Rhinebeck.

He spoke about liking the community’s housing stock, its sidewalks, and the centralized restaurants, bookstores, movie house, and general ease of life. Plus, it put him close to everywhere else he needed to be, including the train to New York City.

Settled in, Stinchcomb and his German-born wife felt they’d made a good decision. He enjoyed his regular drives over the bridge to Kingston, as well as his jaunts to Hudson and the Berkshires.

But most of all he liked the idea of walkability, an asset he’d come to treasure back in Brooklyn and now a key attribute for many who find homes in upstate villages, hamlets and small cities appealing.

How important is walkability in today’s larger real-estate market? Which of our communities here best fit the new ideal, or are working to become better described as walkable?

T

here’s been a score of national stories, in print and online, about millennials’ desire for living places that didn’t require getting in the car to fill all their needs. A new website, www. walkscore.com, purports to measure the walkability of addresses throughout the United States.

It analyzes hundreds of walking routes to nearby amenities, awarding points based on the distance to amenities in each category. Things available within a five minute walk get the best ratings, with extra credits for public transportation.

Big cities do best in these ratings, with New York, Boston and San Francisco at the top. Locally, Kingston rates a 56 out of 100, “somewhat walkable.� Newburgh gets a score of 69, Poughkeepsie 65, and downtown Albany, with a busy bus system, is up in the 90s.

Smaller communities in our region tend to be judged “car-dependent,� at least according to the site’s metrics.

From a public-policy perspective, the new push

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Kingston has seen its real estate market boom of late as people seek to move out of Brooklyn for Hudson Valley versions of what they know already. for walkability goes back to the early part of this decade. The concepts of smart growth and sustainability arrived around the same time that researchers started charting millennials’ preferences for cities and towns over suburbs. New York State’s Department of Transportation constructed a protocol around the idea of “complete- street� design, whose purpose was “to make streets and roadways across the state safe and accessible to all New Yorkers.� Actual funds for such projects have finally started flowing in the past year and a half.

Accompanying this push has been a statewide drive, again mirroring efforts elsewhere in the country (and long considered the norm in European urban areas), to use public funds for downtown revitalization projects aimed at transforming derelict former business areas back into livable neighborhoods. We’ve seen these efforts under way in Kingston’s Midtown, downtown Poughkeepsie and Newburgh.

The state recently opened a second round of its initiatives, after a funding stab at improving walkability in places like Glens Falls, Oneonta and Middletown, by seeking “downtowns that are ripe for revitalization and have the potential to become magnets for redevelopment, business, job creation, greater economic and housing diversity, and opportunity� for younger families with a pioneering spirit.

“

T

ies. “They keep telling survey-takers that they view cars as mere transportation, not status symbols.

And there’s some evidence that millennials factor the environment into their driving decisions (although not as an overriding factor)...The housing preferences of millennials — which are equally up for debate — are also closely tied to their transportation patterns.�

Meanwhile, town and county officials get seemingly endless invitations for new seminars on downtown turnarounds and ways to attract Brooklynites. The mayor of Pittsburgh has become a regular on such circuits, and studies in walkability have become the lifeblood of the regional think tanks Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress and the Urban Land Institute. The results? New restaurants popping up in town centers, new discussions about upscale as well as affordable apartments and townhouses. An extension of local bus lines to reach more riders.

Many are looking for clues at our old towns and small cities in terms of what they once were.

They’re trying to bring back grocery stores and pharmacies, libraries and schools. Or at least to provide public transportation and trails to where all that urban fabric ended up moving in the past five decades.

As Matt Stinchcomb is finding out in his new walkable Hudson Valley, what the new blood moving up here wants is a way to walk one’s kids to school, head out as a couple to a local restaurant for lunch, shepherd the family safely on foot and in strollers to corner stores and restaurants, movie theaters and book shops. They also know they can take a train or a bus to those very walkable urban agglomerations not that far away.

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Personal museums Hudson Valley architecture from an architect’s perspective

By Brad Will

T

he Hudson Valley has long been a petri dish of innovative and iconoclastic architectural design. From Calvert Vaux’s stately early-19th-century brick structures in Kingston and elsewhere to Woodstock’s Byrdcliffe arts colony developed over a century ago to 21st-century architect Steven Holl’s recent, uniquely sculptural Rhinebeck house, New York’s first certified passive house in Cold Spring, and Hudson Woods, the planned community in the Town of Rochester.

Here we find a rich heritage of almost every architectural style found in the United States, as well as innovative building technologies used to meld sustainable building practices with both historic structures and modern designs.

We can look at design and building trends in the Hudson Valley under five basic categories.

Sustainability Maintaining a light footprint on the land by constructing two stories and designing with passive solar heat or active solar PV systems makes a positive impact. Use of continuous insulated sheathing such as Zip Systems combined with energy conservation are great ways to keep utility bills down. These measures are easier to achieve with new construction, but efficient insulation types such as rigid panels or blown-in cellulose can be retrofitted onto older structures.

Ten years ago, geothermal wells were state-ofthe-art for whole-house heating and cooling. The investment was greater than with a convention-

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The home is a contemporary split and is a one owner home which certainly shows pride of ownership with not many amenities overlooked. Home features Ͷ ǡ ͵Ǥͷ ǡ ϐ Ǥ ǡ ǡ ǡ ǡ ϐ to ceiling windows which look out to deck and the “spectacular” views of Ashokan reservoir, Mohonk and Illinois mountains.

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Author Brad Will’s Ashokan Architecture has found that people want houses that feel like museums to one’s personality and taste, while retaining a classic homey sense. al fossil-fuel-based HVAC system, but the simple payback made it palatable. With advancements in electric-heat pump performance, the economical up-front cost and straightforward equipment installation has supplanted exotic geothermal systems. Avoiding petroleum-based products wherever possible, and including high recycled-content materials are smart choices for sustainable house design. The checklist for sustainability is expansive, and includes high performance windows and doors, rainwater harvesting and many more factors.

Style and accessories The range of choices between vernacular (Dutch, Colonial, Italianate, Greek Revival and Victorian are the most prevalent) and modern design is ever present, and primarily a matter of personal choice, the ‘bones’ of a house, and the condition of its finish features. New construction can be open-ended (i.e. Steven Holl’s Rhinebeck house) or more traditional, such as the planned community at Amenia’s Silo Ridge Field Club.

The Hudson Valley is stealthily supplanting high-

end hamlets of the Hamptons as a preferred vacation destination.

Residential design in the Catskills and surrounding areas has correspondingly been impacted by the Dwell Effect, named after the influential lifestyle and modern house magazine. Thoughtful, creative application of classic, time-enduring materials such as wood siding, flooring and detailing, stone veneers and surfaces, concrete floors and countertops, porcelain and glass tiles have all enjoyed a resurgence, unlike overprocessed products like vinyl siding and asphalt shingles. Designer and homeowner furnishing selections have similarly been informed by Design Within Reach in making “authentic modern design accessible.”

Fortunately for us, the Hudson Valley boasts a wealth of both local craftspeople and furniture showrooms (found in Hudson, Kingston, Rhinebeck and other towns) such as Hammertown, Exit 19, Spruce, and The Future of Hudson Valley Architecture - An Architect’s Perspective Nectar.

There’s a local presence for great furnishings, light fixtures and home accessories.

Sept. 14, 2017 Home Hudson Valley

| 13

nous fruit trees add functional variety to a yard or courtyard.

Adaptability

ASHOKAN ARCHITECTURE

Where does an old house start and a renovation begin? How do new homes fit into old communities?

These are the questions contemporary architects ask themselves, and their clients.

Space and light Today’s families want large common areas combining living, dining, kitchen and entertainment activities. These uses could be within a single space defined by built in cabinetry, chimneys or stairs. They could also directly communicate with each other via wide doors and openings that create opportunities for larger gatherings.

Natural daylighting using mulled, expansive windows calibrated to house design and vintage often enhances our appreciation of well-finished interiors. For older houses, spaces can be enlarged by carefully selecting interior walls for removal, dependent upon their structural attributes. Exposed structural members, where appropriate, add shadow and detail to the spatial experience. Colors and textures complete our perception.

Site considerations Maximizing well-planned area for modest-sized houses on smaller lots places more attention on outdoor entertaining, hardscape and indigenous landscaping. Views of the mountains, creeks and natural beauty of the Hudson Valley and Catskills is what draws us here. Ease of movement between interior and exterior spaces creates an enhanced connection to our surrounding environment. In describing a house his late architect father Eliot Noyes designed, son Chris wrote: “Simple in form and using indigenous materials, it merges with the landscape while accommodating the ever-changing chaos of family demands.”

The land around a Hudson Valley house take its cues from the greater landscape. Is it secluded, private, in-town or in the country? Simple plantings and hedgerows can create scaled English gardens even on small parcels, with organic and natural settings preferred over formal plantings.

Beyond scenic value, edible berry and herb gardens (protected from deer foraging) and indige-

Airbnb has become a factor in residential design, with homeowners offsetting their river and mountain house expenses through short-term rentals. Being mindful of local regulations, homes can have separate, detached units, or attached efficiencies with independent entrances and offstreet parking for guests. Multi-generational family arrangements can benefit from integrated, flexible living spaces such as first-floor master suites to accommodate part-to-full-time exodus from the New York metropolitan area. Most properties lend themselves to phasing construction, allowing the houses to grow with the family.

Regardless of whether it’s a weekend/vacation home, retirement home or restoration project, extended family or investment home, the Hudson Valley attracts people to move here and to stay, to make their dreams come true. Today’s homeowners are savvy. They know what they want in house design.

Their architects can give form and performance to a widely-arrayed vision of what makes the 21st -century Hudson Valley house, which could as easily be a modernized 18th-century abode as a high-style, newly constructed smart home. While design trends ebb and flow, good design should be timeless. Our connection to places is deeply memorable, and reflected in our homes, the personal museums of our experiences.

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Among the glories that once defined Kingston was its massive Midtown post office, now barely a memory.

Kingston, lost and found How can our small cities save themselves?

by Lynn Woods

T

he small, formerly industrial cities of the Hudson Valley are where you’ll find repositories of diversity — places where the sea of white people is relieved by the presence of African Americans, Hispanics, even a smidgeon of Middle Easterners (such as the Pakistani who runs the gas station and attends the local mosque). I’ve talked to a few transplanted Kingstonians who moved to Kingston precisely because of its diversity.

And yet, as I’ve discovered in making Lost Rondout: A Story of Urban Removal with Stephen Blauweiss, a one-hour documentary about the destruction of downtown Kingston from a 1960s urban renewal project, at least one part of the city, Rondout, as the downtown waterfront district is called, is much more homogenous than it used to be. “We’ve lost our diversity,” said one woman at a recent screening of the film at Kingston City Hall for the alumni of the class of 1967 at Kingston High School.

Another had tears in her eyes, recalling the rich mosaic of ethnicities — Italian, Polish, Jewish as well as African American — that characterized the now mostly vanished downtown. In our film, both black and white interviewees testify to how black families lived next to whites and the community school was fully integrated. Everyone looked out for each other. It was a poor but vibrant community whose stores, banks, churches and synagogues, small manufacturing facilities, houses, apartment buildings, docks, ferries and regular bus service met everyone’s needs. Kids played on the streets until dusk,storeowners extended credit to families awaiting their weekly paycheck, and no one locked their doors (locking your door was considered “an insult,” noted Joe Van Dyke, who grew up on now-vanished Mill Street and was the son of Kingston’s first black alderman).

Many fathers worked in the brickyards that then lined the Hudson just north of the city, and many women worked in the garment factories, including, it seemed from our interviews, everyone’s grandmother. Prior to 1960, when the neighborhood began to slide into dereliction as retailers moved to Uptown and buildings were abandoned in preparation for clearance by the federally funded Broadway East urban renewal project, the only sign of lawlessness were the winos, known locally as “the bottle gang.

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”The bakeries and grocery stores did home deliveries, as many people didn’t have a car. People seldom went away, given that vacations were short (nonexistent for the store owners) and salaries modest. Even Uptown Kingston was exotic, a world away. When elder Doris Edwards Schuyler, pastor at Riverview Baptist Church, moved as a child from Ponckhockie to East Strand, in Rondout, she called it “moving across town.”

W

hen urban renewal planners drew a line around the 90 acres of densely packed urban streets and designated them for destruction, nobody could do anything about it. It was a loss people still grieve over. Adding insult to injury, the promised new construction (envisioned as a supermarket, shopping center and modernist apartment buildings grouped along cul de sacs) didn’t happen. Even today, much of the area consists of huge expanses of grass. The remaining buildings, on the west side of Broadway, were mostly boarded up. Frank Simpson opened his Speak Easy bar on West Strand in the mid 1970s, sparking a recovery that took decades.

But let’s not fall into the trap of sentimentalizing the past. Rondout was its own little world, and beyond its borders, racism was rampant, preventing many of the displaced blacks from finding replacement housing and forcing them to leave the city. Rev. James Childs, for example, who then worked at IBM, couldn’t buy a house on Andrew Street (he and his wife subsequently purchased one on Hasbrouck Avenue by using a white person as a front). When Joe Van Dyck moved with his Caucasian wife to Stuyvesant Street, some whites moved out, Van Dyck recalled. There were distinct boundaries in the city that everyone understood African Americans were not to cross.

It was an outsider, IBM, that helped bring change to the city. IBM raised wages and adopted liberal hiring practices, enabling both whites and blacks to move up into professional jobs. Likewise, the renaissance of Rondout was fueled mostly by artists from elsewhere, who bought up the dilapidated buildings and breathed life back into the devastated area.

Today the transformation of the old working-class city by the “creative class” — transplants from Brooklyn as well as places like Woodstock,

Sept. 14, 2017 Home Hudson Valley Rhinebeck and New Paltz — has accelerated.

Empty storefronts that once housed stationery stores, dime stores, and taverns are now filling up with chic restaurants and cafes, clothing boutiques, curated wine stores and shops showcasing artisan goods. Unfortunately, as Schuyler commented in our film, while there were several black-owned businesses in Rondout pre-urban renewal, there are none now. “Basically it’s watching how the blacks and ethnicities were moved out and a bunch of white people moved in,” is how one friend summarized the film.

In mid August, MAD held its third annual Celebration of the Arts concert in a big tent set up on Broadway. Watching the frenetic syncopated movements of the female hip-hop dancers of Energy Dance Company, listening to the bossa-nova fusion of Stephen Johnson’s Future350 NU Bossa band, chatting with the owner of a local farm who was selling his produce, hearing

| 15

the lyrical droning notes of the Catskill Mountain Gamelan, and especially experiencing the rhythmic funk of Room Service, a local band discovered playing in a Midtown barber shop, I felt proud of Kingston, of the multitude of creative expressions found in these few square miles.

I felt I was part of something dynamic and good. I felt the excitement of the city.

W

hile I, an ex New Yorker, welcome the resurgence, which has brought Kingston’s commercial areas back from the dead (ten years ago on a Sunday afternoon you could hear a pin drop on Wall Street), I also lament the demise of the old working-class city — the bakeries, which infused the early-morning air with a delicious fragrance, the butchers, the independently owned drug stores, stores selling fabric, hardware, toys, tools, appliances — you name it — which once characterized the neighborhoods of Hoboken, Brooklyn and Manhattan where I had lived in the 1970s and 1980s as well as Kingston.

Urban renewal devastated populations by ripping up communities and warehousing many of the displaced in prison-like public housing projects. It fragmented formerly intact urban neighborhoods into a wasteland of highways, banal and featureless buildings, and parking lots. Other factors as well led to the demise of the working-class city: the collapse of the manufacturing base; the car and subsequent suburbanization, which one historian called “the greatest work of social engineering in known history”; changes to the retail distribution system, which favored the efficiencies of the big-box store over the corner store; and societal shifts, in which a new generation, many of whom were the first to attend college in their families, had aspirations beyond tending the family store. The ethnicities that once gave Rondout and Ponckhockie their character became assimilated.

Today, elements of old Rondout can be found in Midtown. It is home to the restaurants and businesses of Mexicans, Guatemalans, Hondurans and other Hispanic immigrants, which are injecting a new vitality into the area. Back in the late 1960s, some of the displaced black families migrated to Midtown, whose racial mix and blend of residential, commercial and light manufacturing is a distant echo of downtown.

O

ne desires both. Both the diner and the French-style café, both the hole-inthe-wall Mexican restaurant as well as the farm-to-table place with the inspired entrees that cost four times as much, both the neighborhood bar and the microbrewery, both the soul-food eatery and the upscale housewares store with the $5 soap, both the local barber who reminiscences about the bookie operations that once flourished in Kingston’s back rooms and the elegant gallery with the wine bar. It’s a precarious balance, one Kingston is struggling to maintain as real-estate prices escalate and rents soar.

Today there is a collective redefinition of Kingston’s resources as not just its economic base (which, with the departure of IBM 20 years ago, continues to be problematic, leading to high taxes and a dearth of employment) but also its historic buildings, recreational waterfront, cultural and civic amenities, and homegrown talent. Many city officials, businesspeople, educators and residents seem committed to not repeating the mistakes of the past, as is evident in the planning for the new Midtown Arts District. MAD, as it is called, seeks not just to attract new artists, arts-related businesses and projects to the area as well as support and promote the existing ones, but also to leverage the substantial talent in the area to empower the dominant population of low-income people and to ensure they will share in the benefits.

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Anything goes The time comes when you need to shed your stuff

By Elisabeth Henry

I

t’s time for the second act. Or perhaps the eighth.

No matter. Moving from one home to the next is physically challenging and emotionally exhausting. One must throw out the old, the irrelevant, the unnecessary. Life is changing. You are moving on.

It’s not easy for anyone, but it’s more difficult for some than for others.

I do not believe the people featured on the reality television show “Hoarders� are in fact mentally ill. I think they just don’t give a hoot about housekeeping. Every glance provides an item chockfilled with memories. Or potential. “Oh, my. There is the wrist corsage I wore to Larry’s prom. Of course, that was the year before mine. Now, what did I do with those elbow-length gloves? They’re here somewhere.� Or, “Let me just get those rubber bands off that bunch of broccoli stems.�

An anal-retentive person with OCD might apply the same thoughts, but going a step further catalog the items according to some internal indices and then store them neatly. I’ve been around both sorts. It’s really a question of style.

But I digress. The subject at hand is the road ahead, and what to carry. Or pitch. And how to determine the appropriate action.

At one point in my life I thought my acting life was over. I gathered my collection des chapeaux in a big plastic bag and deposited it in a public trash can on Second Avenue. “I’ll never need that velvet cloche with the big, beautiful silk yellow peony ever again.� Wrong. (See the role of Rose in Enchanted April.) I did not want to end my acting life. I thought the impending move ended it.

R

ule number one is that the move doesn’t change your essence. It just changes your personal stationery.

It may be time to get rid of photographs of that warped-minded lover from those regrettable teenage years, and every epoch after that. Likewise, the beloved apartment you were forced out of because of the corrupt landlord, the random group of guys you and your girlfriends shared a boat ride with in Boca on spring break, immigrant friends of immigrant grandparents, people you probably knew (drugs, booze or time has erased the ability to identify them), beautifully presented meals long ago digested, bouquets from prospective or apologetic suitors, past cars, past teachers, past barbecues. Burn ’em. Get rid of bad memories or puzzling artifacts.

Books. Ah, books. I work at a church thrift shop.

WIKICOMMONS

Anyone with a large home and even the slightest nostalgic bent can easily scare themselves with thoughts about hoarding.

One wall is a honeycomb of volumes by the same five popular fiction writers. This makes me believe that if you have a cool collection of a more, um, diverse authorship donating such may actually be good for world peace, somehow.

There would be your books on display, off to one side of Nora Roberts’ (who is prominently featured) house in an old building dimly lit. The ancient door opens. A group of figures, bent and frail, enter. They look parched at first. One by one, each pair of hooded eyes lights up. Sallow cheeks blush. Whispers of “Oh, my! Muriel Spark! John Barth! Anais Nin! Marianne Moore! Lydia Davis!� and so forth, on and on, like the reprise in “Night on Bald Mountain.� Then birds twitter and all that rumbling underneath Yellowstone ceases, and the air is clear.

So donate. Who are you kidding? You’ll fill your new shelves in no time. But please check for first editions and sweet salutations from authors in your collection. Volunteers like me get so sad when we see the evidence of momentary distraction or callous disregard.

T

hink about clothing as referenced above about books. Pare down the collection as much as you can. You’re going to add anyway, so why not do so with a clear head and closet? Unless you are an actor. Don’t pitch that 1950s cocktail-length wedding dress or the sequined, feather-hooded opera cape with the toggle-frog closure and satin lining. You’re going to need those. Ditto the topper and cane with brass horse-head handle. And the Peter Max polyester button-down. Be sensible.

If your small appliances are top-of-the-line, keep them. Kitchen Aid mixers last a lifetime. The older the better, for some stuff. The same for tools.

Sorry, globalists. China just doesn’t make the same Hilti tools as the real Hilti people. Keep your old stuff in good repair.

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By the way, a trusted sewing-machine and vacuum-cleaner repairman told me that the Singer Model 301 is just about the best. Newer models have fancy abilities, and for those reasons might be worth having. But, by all means, hang on to your Singer Model 301.

If your furniture is in anyway presentable and useful, sell it. Use the money to buy other stuff for the new place. Why pay to move items that are merely practical albeit unremarkable? If you do have a nice piece, be sure to make arrangements in a timely manner. Move it or try to get top dollar.

One of my friends just picked up a $5000 Italian leather couch for $300 because the owner, moving to Brussels, had waited too long to try to sell it. Time ran out and there was my little cookie, smiling, cash in hand.

N

ow is the perfect time to get rid of paperwork. The rule of thumb is to keep bills and records for seven years. Safeguard the birth certificates, social-security cards, passports, vehicle registrations and titles, diplomas and professional licenses. Dump the first/second/ etc. drafts of that novel, postcards from Tanzania, (and anything else yellowing beneath magnets on your refrigerator door), holiday cards and old calendars. You may want to hang on to that Rolling Stone cover with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, or that prayer for you handwritten by a holy person.

I suppose I could milk this opportunity to opine, and go on and on. ’Nuff said. However, keep in mind. There is always the supernatural. Magic.

And mystery.

You may shed and clean up and move in to your new space and your new life, and be ready for what comes. You take out your Burberry coat in anticipation of chilly weather. And there, in the pocket, find a ring you thought gone forever. Or a ticket from an unforgettable evening with a friend now lost. Or a note from a child that says “Sorry, Mommy, plis forgif me i am sorry i cut my har on won side. i will grow it fast. don foget to kiss me when you come home in my sleep.�

If this move brings with it fears, not just of the unknown, but of loss, take heart. It won’t all fall away.

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| 19

Renovation time Common sense, money and power tools involve saviors and heartaches

By Chris Rowley

T

here are many issues to consider when it comes to renovating a house. Time does not stand still. The marketplace is in constant ferment. New solutions are constantly arising.

Some of the big questions are obvious ones. How do your kitchen chen cabinets look now? If you raised a family in that kitchen, then the odds are the cabinets look like you raised a family there. You may want a new look. If you ever sell the house, you just know that the buyers will sniff when they look at those old cabinets.

What should you do? Hire someone to make new cabinets from scratch?? Buy them online and put them in yourself? Get an online cabinet maker to come in and put in their custom cabinets?

Talk to contractors and carpenters and you will quickly learn some truths hs that are as self-evident as those penned by Thomas Jefferson 240 years ago. One is that at in hiring for many jobs you benefit from experience. “In the real world,” says Ralph Popo, opo, who has been a contractor for decades in Ulster and surrounding counties, “things gs are neither plumb nor square. That’s when you hire experience.”

Take that corner in the bathroom that you thought the cabinet would just st fit in neatly because it was a right angle? When you actually put a square in there ere to check, it turns out that it’s not square!

This is particularly true of older houses. “Oh, yeah, things move, you don’tt notice it, but houses change shape,” says Popo. Every winter the house contracts, and nd it expands again in the summer. Over the years that leaves changes.

Joe Russek, another contractor, paused in the middle of a restaurant renovation to talk about ways to create a good look renovating a kitchen while retaining something in your bank account.

“All comes down to your budget,” says Russek.

“If you go the handcrafted route, that’s serious money. Fifteen thousand and more. Much more.

There’s really no upper limit. At the other extreme, how about paint? Go on line, check Pinterest for ideas to repaint cabinets.”

Russek notes the time factor. “Handcraft will take much more time,” he says. “So if you’re satisfying the eye of a designer and you have a Rockefeller-sized wallet you can achieve pretty much anything. But remember, you pick something up in a big-box store or at Ikea you can literally put it in, in a day.”

Most contractors don’t think that most inexpensive cabinets and other items are all that great.

“Particle board,” sniffs Popo. “How long do you think it will look good if you use it?”

That said, many people have bought Ikea products and been happy with them. Please be aware that skilled Ikea-assembler folks can now be found online in almost any area of the country. If finding how to attach X to D using tool F is more than you can face, you can hire someone to tackle that. Again, it is an equation of budget, time and abilities.

Russek is all for do-it-yourself in the right circumstances. “Saving money, assembling things yourself is fine, if you were good at shop or took a course somewhere in woodwork,” he says.

Popo chimes in, “Bottom line is, anyone can do ASHOKAN ARCHITECTURE it if you have enough tools. Almost everything Not as simple as you thought? comes down to having the tools for the job.” That’s where time and the market have changed the A slightly different path for the aspiring do-itgame. yourselfer is to hire someone who has all the right “Power tools,” says Popo, with another of his tools and learn from him or her. Have them do ominous chuckles. “All you gotta have sometimes a job that you know is beyond your own powers, is more power tools than brains!” and study what they do and what tools they bring.

Combine with a smartphone and the internet, Keep notes. and you can, in theory, do any job yourself, just If those custom cabinets are what you’re deGoogling constantly to get the details. Almost. As termined to have, then the internet is where you Popo notes, “I’ve seen things on Google that are have to shop. There are far too many choices just not correct. Go back to the real world, things there to even begin to list them. A lot of really cool aren’t square, aren’t plumb.” ideas are out there. Check out Shelf Genie for one.

Here’s another major point to keep in mind.

Labor is much more expensive than material in ninety percent of cases. Keeping hired labor cost to a minimum can save you money. Invest in tools.

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Where you have two hard-to-use shelves under the countertop now, you could have three or four neat sliding drawers, both horizontal and vertical.

A lot of design power has been put into this area.

Before you reinvent the wheel, spend an evening or three surfing and checking out what’s available.

Other makers address concerns about things like formaldehyde. Kitchen Magic claims that its wood is always North American and never Chinese. Others promise superior craftsmen who will install everything. There are rebates and package deals, too.

For a reality check on this, talk to real-estate brokers, especially if you’re going to sell the house in the foreseeable future.

“Remember. it’s a balancing act,” says Gail Vesely, who sells real estate in Ulster County. She has a list of questions and suggestions.

“What kind of market are you in? How much is the house worth?” she asks. “Spending a fortune on a kitchen or some other renovation may not pay for itself. Consider cheaper alternatives. If you have older cabinets made of real wood, take good care of them. Real wood shelves don’t bend and warp like the particle-board ones. Update the hardware, the places that show the wear and tear.

Paint! That can make a very big difference, and it’s much less expensive than taking out the old and putting in new.”

Everyone agrees on certain basics: Study the project you have in mind. Do some measurements, see how square or not the angles are. Consider the cost of buying lots of tools, and balance that against the cost of bringing in a contractor.

Keep in mind your own abilities and be honest about your limits. When buying custom stuff, research, research, research, and then E-bay! And note how frequently people say, “Might just need another good coat of paint!”

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limate change is not a linear progression from warm to hot.

That’s why they stopped calling it global warming — because the net increase in temperature worldwide manifests in many different ways, from more frequent flooding to accelerated drought-rain cycles to winters of extreme snowfall. How do these changes affect our homes and

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This spring a forester for New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) showed me a windfall along a path near the Ashokan Res-

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ervoir where a cluster of trees had toppled in unison, creating a vertical fan of dirt and roots. Instead of long, feathery roots, typically revealed by such a fall, the roots were stubby and fragile.

“Climate change has caused an acceleration in the cycle of drought and inundation,” the forester explained. “The roots dry out, and the tips die, and then when it rains all the time, fungus grows and damages them more.”

In other words, trees may not be as stable as they once were. If you have a tree near your house that’s showing signs of decay, consider having it taken down before the next windstorm topples it onto your home. Look for such symptoms as tough, leathery mushrooms attached to trunks or branches; cavities caused by deterioration of the wood; carpenter-ant colonies or sawdust pilings on branches or at the base of the tree; nesting holes occupied by birds, insects, or animals.

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ne effect of this year’s frequent rains has been noted by several of my friends whose vegetable plants have suffered from rotting roots and a failure to produce fruit. It happens that I have the oppo-

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| 21

During these wet spells, you might want to check on the basement once in a while. If it gets too musty, the walls may start growing mold, which is not health-inducing. Make sure you have ventilation in the basement, to keep the air moving.

A good dehumidifier is worth the investment.

You can get one cheap at a yard sale, but if itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s too old, it will use a lot of electricity. The modern ones are more efficient.

In other years, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll have to be prepared for drought. Make sure you have a functioning hose to make up for the lack of rain to your plants. But prioritize, since water will be in short supply. Vegetables, to my mind, take precedence over flowers. Perennials have deep roots anyway and will not suffer as much. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t waste water on the lawn.

Even if it turns brown, it will recover on its own.

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1920s, surrounded by rushing water â&#x20AC;&#x201D; but floods in those days happened about once every 30 or 40 years. Shandaken saw serious, bridge-battering floods in 1996, 2005 and 2011 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; three major floods in only 15 years, attributed to climate change.

I happen to live in a low-lying house near the creek. Luckily, the floodwaters have never risen to the level of my living space, but the garage and crawlspace took on three feet of water in Hurricane Irene. Our flood insurance paid for replacement of the heating ducts in the crawlspace, and as a result, we qualified for a grant from NY Rising to have our house elevated three feet. (See https:// stormrecovery.ny.gov/homeowner-resources-and-forms.)

It was a big project, but now I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have an anxiety attack every time it rains, and our heating system and insulation are no longer threatened.

Items stored in the garage, however, are still at risk. I now place boxes on shelving, leaving the lower shelves empty, or on planks elevated by stacked cinder blocks.

On the bright side, Irene brought unexpected opportunities to my yard and garden. The moraine of dirt and sand deposited on my lawn was perplexing at first. But I raked it out a bit, then sprinkled seeds of low-growing wildflowers and transplanted chunks of wild thyme. Now I have a lovely expanse of thyme, dotted with a few brilliant pinks, and thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s less lawn to mow.

The hurricane struck in late August, when my vegetable garden was still producing cucumbers and baby lettuces. The floodwaters wiped out everything remaining â&#x20AC;&#x201D; except the green beans, which were trellised up the side of the deck. They went crazy, producing the most profuse bean harvest Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve ever had. If your property is subject to flooding, I recommend planting pole beans.

T

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A little preparation goes a long way.

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Home Hudson Valley

All that’s involved Getting ready to move is a family affair

By Lisa Carroll

T

his summer, Tom, the girls and I have been preparing our home to sell it. It has proven a bittersweet journey, wrought with unforeseen obstacles, such as when I injured my hand closing a window or when the kitchenfloor demo lasted longer than anticipated. But the ordeal has had its pleasant aspects as well, such as when Shelby, my seven-year-old, asked to use a drill. She did a pretty good job getting screws out of the wall.

We’ve lived in our home in the Village of Ellenville almost five-and-a-half years. We had moved in when our younger child, Sammie, was just six-months-old. Tom and I are far more country people than city people. Where we bought our two-bedroom, one-and-a-quarter-bath home was sort of a surprise. The location was right us smack in the middle of suburbia.

Initially, it was the massive fireplace and mantle that drew me to our Ellenville house, as well as the beautiful wood center stairs of the circa-1938 Cape Cod. There were stunning lilac bushes framing the place on one side. The street, a dead end, appeared to be a haven for soon-to-be-biking daredevils.

Flash forward five years. The house has become a home. We’ve celebrated many birthdays, holidays, first words and first steps. We each have our favorite spots. Tom likes to tinker in the garage, Shelby and Sammie love to play in the crevices of tree roots, constructing fairy homes. I love to sit in the early mornings, coffee in hand, and watch the day unfold. The neighbors passing by, the birds.

The view of the Shawangunk Ridge is stunning, especially when the fall foliage hits its climax.

In the summer, about supper time, we’d stand in

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PHOTOS BY LISA CARROLL

Working with kids sounds great, but can involve much cleanup. Give them the easier, more tedious work, though, and before long you’ll have greater helpers on hand. our back yard, with the smells of home barbecuing wafting around us. It was a most delicious smell.

In the winter, the smells of various woods burning in chimneys around us were the hallmarks of our cozy community.

W

e’re outgrowing our little home.

The girls are getting bigger. Tom is investing in more toys — four-wheelers and such. I feel an emotional tug to cultivate a larger garden, and to find the serenity only the deeper woods can offer.

We scoured Realtor.com and found a home that fit all our needs and wants. My family created a long list of must-haves that were required for us to be willing to leave our familiar home. Finding this particular home out in the country was sort of like finding a needle in the proverbial haystack.

But we did it. We asked our real-estate agent to take us on a tour, which she did, nearly four months ago. We weren’t prepared to find what we wanted.

Our present home was very lived-in. To dazzle the next family, it required a facelift. And that has been what we’ve been busy doing this summer.

We set off to redo the kitchen. We repainted the front door. We’ve done little things here and there.

The house really didn’t need that much.

Making the improvements and upgrades have proven a bittersweet process. Tom asked what color I wanted to paint the kitchen. “Does it matter?”

I replied. I wasn’t going to have the opportunity to enjoy it for long.

That was the wrong approach to take.

The idea of moving has been a strain on the girls. This is the only home they have ever known, even though both had already moved. Shelby moved with us from a rental home in New Paltz to my mom’s house and then to Ellenville. Sammie moved from my mom’s house to our home here.

Both were so much younger then that the transition didn’t really affect them.

Now they are worried and scared. Sammie routinely asked whether she could bring our cat and all her toys. Shelby, like her momma, is very attuned to structure and order. When things are out-of-whack, it throws everything off for her, and she — like me — gets nervous.

T

om and I, new to second-time-buying, are walking a fine line. On one side, we’re trying to be optimistic, to showcase the fun a new journey can represent. On the other hand, we’re trying to be mindful of the pitfalls the homebuying experience often involves. Along the way, it is hard for me to be internally in angst but out-

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garage responsibly, how to budget our summer earnings to cover the costs of projects as well as monthly bills, how to sacrifice current wants for the sake of future promise.

I don’t know if our blood, sweat and tears will have any effect on our home’s marketability. I don’t know whether my girls or I will be more prepared to close the front door and walk away because we’ve had a hand in preparing our home for the next family. I hope so, because we’re about to list it.

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wardly positive. My kids are like bloodhounds.

They can sense when I’m not confident.

My mom must be part genius. One early-summer evening, we chatted about the girls’ insecurity. She reminded me of what my younger brother and I thought of moving into the family homestead over 30 years ago. We were nervous and scared. The house was new, and had new creaks and shadows.

My dad handed my brother a hammer, and me a small prybar. That summer, we tore up the living-room floor, down to the studs. It was then replaced. Reflecting back on the experience, I think my parents wanted us to feel a connection, an ownership of the experience. Or maybe my parents only wanted cheap labor. Either way, it worked.

So, I handed Shelby a drill and Sammie a paintbrush. They have helped every step of the way.

They painted the bathroom door. They removed screws from the wall. They’ve helped box up some

of our excess things and restored order to the living room.

We picked out the kitchen wall color, and then let Sammie pick the color of the cabinet paint.

She did a fantastic job; it’s a coastal blue-gray. We come to find out, after we applied it to our cabinets, that it matched the dining-room wall color perfectly. What an eye she has!

Their immersion in the home improvement process seems for the kids to have lifted some of the dark clouds of potentially moving. The promise of a puppy also helped.

Along the way, we’re teaching our children valuable skills: how to use tools found in Daddy’s

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Google’s parent company Alphabet is currently pushing large discounts to help launch its new Dandelion geothermal heating systems in the Hudson Valley.

Look hard enough and other grants and deals emerge for solar and other big ticket home improvement attributes.

The grants picture Financial help for home improvement and repair

By Terence P Ward

P

art of the home-buying process is nearly always a bucket list: new windows in the living room to save on heating, replacing that roof in the next five years, getting rid of that old carpeting or awful paint color, adding a porch or guest room, maybe even putting solar panels on the roof or in the yard. The line between what’s necessary and what’s nice is not always clear. Where it’s drawn can depend upon personal wealth and income.

Home equity loans are probably the most common way to pay for projects that are out of reach of savings. Depending on what’s planned and who is living in the home, grants and low-cost loans might be able to close the gap. According to Sandy Altomare, home ownership and rehab manager at the Kingston-based nonprofit RUPCO, programs that come through government funding tend to be moving targets.

“We go through cycles of applying for programs,” she explained. Many of those administered through RUPCO’s auspices are winding down. The agency’s website, RUPCO.org, is constantly updated with new possibilities, and she encourages anyone who is seeking assistance to add their information to the waiting list.

That step is important because “it demonstrates community need,” which can provide a leg up for funding that’s awarded competitively. RUPCO programs are typically funded by an amalgam of state and federal block grants. Frequently the application is for a program on behalf of a particular municipality, such as an effort right now to get a half-million dollars to assist low-income homeowners in New Paltz.

If that grant is awarded, no less than ten low-income homeowners would receive rehabilitation assistance, which could include “failing roofs, window replacement, mechanical systems, water systems, electrical systems, energy-efficiency upgrades, structural or foundation repairs, flooring and building safety and code violations,” according to the town’s website, as well as installation of

solar panels and other such improvements.

Frequently there are multiple needs for a given home, Altomare said, which is why a holistic assessment of the structure is undertaken to prioritize issues and determine what can be addressed pursuant to the guidelines of a particular program, which can be complex. In general, programs for home rehabilitation might be suitable for “anything that’s not cosmetic,” including hazardous issues relating to asbestos, lead, “conditions determined to be mold,” water potability, heating systems, structural issues and septic systems.

Programs administered through RUPCO offices almost always have income eligibility requirements, with successful applicants demonstrating that they earn only a particular percentage of the median income in the county. The specifics vary by program, which is why only minimal information is gathered for the waiting list. As programs come online, staff members review the list to identify those who fit broad criteria such as geography, and invite those individuals to complete the relevant application.

One program currently being administered targets veterans who need accessibility improvements to their homes. The income cutoff is higher than most RUPCO programs, at 50% of median, but the veteran must be able to prove that the disability is tied to active duty, which is a process in itself. Eligible veterans could receive help for improvements such as bathroom remodeling, handrail and ramp installation, and even installation of a wheelchair lift.

“Accessibility is a big issue,” Altomare said.

“There’s not enough money to go around.”

Since many of the people in need of such assistance are senior citizens, and Altomare and her coworkers feel strongly that everyone who calls their offices should receive some kind of answer.

They frequently refer people to other agencies, including the Ulster County Office for the Aging.

That office’s interim director Kim Butwell, did not return a call requesting more information.

Ulster County officials are required to secure permission from county executive Michael Hein before speaking to reporters. A call placed to that office was referred to Suzanne Holt, director of the economic development office. Holt did not return a call requesting information on grants available for home improvement.

N

ot every program for home improvement is a grant, and not every program is income-dependent. Inquiries to the RUPCO offices about energy efficiency are frequently referred to the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (Nyserda). One popular NYSERDA program provides free energy audits, through which expensive energy-wasters such as drafts and older, less efficient appliances can be identified. That state agency also has a variety of programs to pay for or to provide low-cost financing of upgrades such as insulation, new heating systems or other improvements.

Private sources of funding for specific projects occasionally become available for homeowners in the Hudson Valley. One such program is now being offered in the Hudson Valley through Dandelion, a geothermal energy company created in the laboratories of Google and subsequently spun off. Katie Ullman, vice president of marketing, confirmed the specifics about the financing available for these systems: “Dandelion currently offers one financing product with a 4.99% interest rate, so it comes out to a little over $150 per month for 20 years on a $23,000 geothermal system,” which is the average installation cost expected in this region.

Geothermal systems use the temperature of the earth itself, which is relatively stable, as an exchange which can heat or cool the home.

That system would be installed underneath the yard, and according to company representative Kathy Hannun, can be integrated into an existing forced-air heating system to replace the need for oil or propane.

Within a year, Hannun said, Dandelion will also be able to integrate with systems that use radiators and radiant flooring. On August 21, company brass announced a partnership with Hudson Solar to deliver both solar and geothermal energy to homeowners. Hudson Solar provides community solar arrays, which makes it possible to receive the benefits of solar energy even if there’s no room for panels on the home.

For more information on geothermal, visit dandelionenergy.com. Hudson Solar’s web site is hudsonsolar.com. Solar arrays can be financed through the Green Jobs, Green New York program, which is administered by RUPCO.

Sept. 14, 2017 Home Hudson Valley

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Harvest’s crest The end of the season approaches

I’m thinking of soil amendments now. Spring catches us by surprise most years, and we end up putting seeds into the ground before properly testing and fertilizing the soil.

By Ann Hutton Maybe a visit to the Cornell Cooperative Extension office is in order t’s that time of year when to have samples of our as-yet-ungardens crest, when every plant frozen dirt tested. We’ll know exhas done its best to produce a actly what’s needed: More nitrogen fruit and every leafy veggie has or less? Ph-balancing lime or sulreached its peak in succulence phur? We can make these adjustand nutritional value. The harments either now or as soon as the vest of ripening tomatoes, peppers, ground thaws. squashes, cucumbers and beans may go on for another month or so, It’s premature to be thinking of a depending on varieties and the vafrozen earth while the trees are still garies of overnight frost. You might deep green and the grass is soft and even find yourself plucking meslush. The kale and Swiss chard are clun and arugula out of your garhearty enough to withstand chilly den for Thanksgiving dinner! nights, and the lettuce and spinach But the big push is over. From seeds we planted a week ago have now on, it’s a downhill slide into sprouted, happy to grow in cooler autumn and winter. No more daiweather. If nature brings a warmish ly watering or watching the sky for September, we’ll leave these veggies, rain. No more worrying about bugs plus the carrots and beets, in their PHOTOS BY ANN HUTTON and bunnies taking their share. beds until the last minute — which Knocking down invasive species to prepare for a bee and butterfly meadow.

It’s a relief. Now satisfaction could be in November or December. comes from picking the last harNote to self: Don’t over-winter of kitchen scraps in the bin. The unsmelly comicot vert and dragging the spent bean bushes to root vegetables in the garden beds. They attract post we gleaned is rich and friable, as it should be. a biomass pile next to the compost. Or snipping voles and other cute critters, who will help themThose crushed egg shells and avocado skins that the final green bits off the basil plants for one final selves from underground and leave tunnels where haven’t completely decomposed, however, will batch of pesto. the carrots and beets used to be.

Two weeks ago my husband helped shovel the have to finish off under the soil. cooked compost out of the bin and spread it onto Note to self: Remember to peel the plastic lae’ve learned through experience to the empty bed where we’ll plant garlic in Octobels off avocados before tossing the skins into the clean out all the beds (except for the garber. Our property smelled ripe like a real farm compost bucket. They never rot, and they make an lic) at the end of the season. It’s so much for a few days after we started another layering empty garden bed look a bit trashy. more fun to get the whole cycle going again in the spring when the earth is cleared and ready! We pull down all the dead vines and yank out gnarly leftovers with celebratory abandon. A nice blanket of straw or grass clippings tucks it all in and protects the soil surface from crusting and buckling.

This year I learned not to mulch vegetable beds with uncomposted leaves. They are “organic” and do prevent most weeds from sprouting and growing, but even if you run them through a leaf chipper before spreading on the bare dirt they will not add nutrients to the soil any time soon. In fact, like wood-chip mulch, uncomposted leaf mulch can leach nutrients from the soil as it cooks — which may account for the less-than-stellar results of some of our crops this year. The peppers and cukes were slow to take off, and some of our heirloom tomatoes seemed a bit puny. Live and learn.

I recently heard a radio-show garden expert say that trees and shrubs can be transplanted now.

A trip to the local nurseries to shop for on-sale shrubs and perennials makes for a fun field trip in early autumn. Dividing and sharing perennials — help, our chive patch is way out of control!

— makes sense and cultivates community, too.

A friend who manages the garden out at Menla Mountain Retreat in Panther Valley gave me some hazelnut sprouts that need to go into the ground soon. This balmy summer has provided good conditions for these to take root.

Our final task this year is to prep a giant rectangle in the lawn to sow a few pounds of native grass and wildflower seeds for a bee-and-butterfly The pesto patch (four different varieties) and ripening tomatoes. meadow. We tried to create a more natural habitat for pollinators on our three acres by not mowing for a couple of years. Lots of grasses and wildflowCCEUC master gardener plant sale ers grew, but so did invasive roses and mugwort and other undesirable species that choke out less ornell Cooperative Extension is a great resource of horticultural and environmental greedy native plants. We hired a landscaper to information for home and professional gardeners in our region. Classes and technical assistance bring in his brush hog to knock it all down so we sre offered through the master gardener program. The Horticulture Hotline can be reached at 340can try another tactic.

3478 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9 a.m. to noon. During winter hours November It was yet another lesson learned through through March it is available on Fridays only. Services for soil testing are available at reasonable fees. time-consuming (and sometimes expensive) trial CCE’s extensive master gardener program trains volunteers to assist local gardeners in all things hortiand error — which is how it goes in a garden. This cultural — landscapes, vegetables, fruits, herbs, houseplants, beneficial and harmful insects, plant diseases, season’s catastrophes prompt next year’s inspiraintegrated pest management (IPM), wildlife management, soils, birds, composting, water conservation and tion. And fortunately for me, the urge to play in much more. the dirt and watch things grow is stronger than my The annual master gardener plant sale takes place this Saturday, September 16, from 10 a.m. to noon at the temporary feelings of failure. I’ll soon be finished fabled xeriscape garden at SUNY Ulster (491 Cottekill Road in Stone Ridge). The sale is not only a fundraiser canning and freezing the bounty we did glean, so for the program, but also a fabulous opportunity to learn more about CCE and its offerings.

I can sit on the back porch with a good gardening For more information contact master gardener coordinator Dona Crawford, at 340-3990 ext. 335 or email book and watch the earth change once again. dm282@cornell.edu and visit http://ulster.cce.cornell.edu/.

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