Fall Home Improvement 2018

Home HudsonValley SEPT. 13, 2018

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Fall Home Improvement

SIMPLICITY at Shaker Museum “For the Shakers, home improvement was a platform for human improvement”

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Simplicity at Shaker Museum country. They were ahead of their time in so many ways. They are celebrated today for their commitment to progressive values such as equal opportunity for all, regardless of gender, race or physical ability.

A two-day workshop this weekend, September 15 and 16, at which participants make a series of oval boxes of a type for which the Shakers were renowned, is sold out.

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STONE YARD

by Geddy Sveikauskas

T

he reproduction of simplicity is no easy task, whether in furniture or in spiritual life. The Shakers believed, in fact, that it was impossible. For them, attention to detail of everyday objects permeated every aspect of their lives. The careful construction of each piece of their much-admired furniture, say those who have studied the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Coming , was considered by them a form of worship and prayer.

Prayerfully combining form and function, the Shaker design aesthetic was very influential in the Industrial Age and beyond. Our world of metal 3D printing and other technological breakthroughs in design would have required adjustment in Shaker beliefs. The physical properties of modern materials have become just another production dimension. Prayerful attention may have become more useful elsewhere.

For the Shakers, home improvement was a platform for human improvement. Their refined aesthetic was not so much incorrect but historically constrained. Still, for a sect that practiced celibacy, they had a hell of a long run from their beginnings in 1747 in Manchester, England — where I was born — to the Shaker site in New Lebanon, where an event celebrating their accomplishments drew 200 people to a fundraising gala in mid-August this year. In Old Chatham the museum has estab-

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Decorating with books

By Sparrow

I

don’t have pets; I have books. My wife left for two and a half weeks this summer on a trip to Wales, and I noticed that I replaced her in our bed with a pile of books.

One of those books was a recent discovery I made while searching through the bookshelves in my own garage. (Yes, I have so many books I’ve forgotten that some of them exist.) An Exaltation of Larks or, The Venereal Game by James Lipton is essentially a list of fabulous collective nouns like “a congregation of plovers,� “a host of sparrows,� “a pitying of turtledoves,� “a crash of rhinoceroses� – largely taken from the 15th-century century Book of St. Albans. (The word “venereal,� incidentally, has the obscure meaning “related to hunting.�)

I have approximately 320 books, which I paid an aggregate of $22 for, I’d estimate. Most of them I found on the free shelves of thrift shops or on stoops in Brooklyn. I’ve kept certain books so long that I can’t get rid of them, even though I know I’ll never read them, and they don’t even interest me.

I also collect a few magazines, like a copy of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (July 2015) signed by Joyce Carol Oates, who wrote the first story, “Gun Accident: An Investigation.� Where did I get it? At the book exchange in Woodstock, across from the village green. And where did she sign it? At Bard College.

From a visual viewpoint, a bookshelf is a collage of colors. Should one arrange the books to create a pleasing visual display, or by topic? This is an ancient question, like the conundrum about translation: that it’s either faithful or beautiful, but not both.

I even have a shelf of cookbooks I never consult, but which lends an air of dignity to my kitchen.

(Because I’m writing this essay, I decided to open one: Caribbean Cooking by Dr. AndrÊ Nègre. A recipe for okra salad inspired me to add homegrown basil to a kale stew.)

My goal, and I think this should be everyone’s, is to avoid stacking books into piles whenever possible. Recently, my wife and I bought a new table on

which to set our microwave oven. The table came with a shelf, which allowed me to liberate two entire piles of books and to learn that I own Letters from the Earth

by Mark Twain.

Remember, the bookshelff at eye level will be the most prominent in your house.

Of course, which shelf this is depends on the average height of your friends.

I believe in always keeping an atlas on hand, in case an exotic guest from Yemen or Kansas happens by. (And I’m not kidding about Kansas; my America-centric Cita-o tion World Atlas devotes two pages to the entire Middlee East, and another two pagess to Kansas, with every obsessively rectangular Kansan county delineated.)

(DROP CAP) My comic-book collection is well-hidden (in a cabinet in the garage, and on the floor of my closet). Guilty lacpleasures belong in secret places. But we’re all book hypocrites, displayites display ing intellectual tomes to impress the public while storing sleazy spy thrillers under the bed. “I have been ‘decorating with books’ for years, though I never heard anyone else use this term before,� explains Barbara Ungar of Saratoga Springs. “I turn my favorite covers to face the viewer, propped in front of the volumes. It makes it a bit hard to find books sometimes, and sometimes my favorites tumble down in the night, but I still do it, especially in my office at school. From time to time I rotate the favorite covers on display, the way museums rotate their collections.� “Every living-room chair should have a side ta-

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ble with a cup of coffee (or a stemmed glass of wine) and at least three thr books waiting to be decrees Carol LaMonread,� d da of Sh Shokan.

Jen Williams Dragon, now of Saugerties, recalls: “We Sau had a library/dining room in Chichester house which our Ch was eentirely covered on all four w walls floor to ceiling in books. These tomes served books material during as reference refer dinner-party arguments or dinner as so sources for inebriated poetry readings. When we sold th the house, many of this collection of classic poetcolle ry, literature and art books were donated to the Phoenicia Library and helped rebuild their collection after the fire.� “Did you ever see my office on Wall Street [in Kingston]?� Ann Hutton of Stone S Ridge asked me. “I made a desk out of stacked books, all of w which were about writing, being a great writer, how to write, write.�� The bo books were not glued or why to write bolted, just perfectly stacked beneath a metal desktop. Later Ann disassembled the desk, returning the self-help manuals to her bookshelf. “Around 1953 my parents, who were refugees and had to leave their books — few in English — behind when they came to America, bought a house with a whole wall of bookshelves,� remembers Narek Tarjinian, of Mount Tremper. “It pained them not to have books where books should be. So they went out to a Baltimore bookseller and bought yards of books: the collected works of Longfellow, Thoreau, Emerson and the like. Later they got Reader’s Digest sets; I didn’t have the heart to tell them these were abridged versions. “But it all worked out. Two years later my twin brother and I got into Yale and got to read Longfellow, Thoreau, Emerson and the like.� “I disassemble antique books, splatter them with ink, cut, glue & hang ‘em on the wall,� Aaron Howard of New York City wrote me.

Which reminds me, you can easily wallpaper a room with the pages of a book. According to my calculations, one copy of Catcher in the Rye should cover 2.3 average-sized bedrooms – but I suggest you buy two copies of the book, so your walls will have all the pages, not just alternating ones. Be sure to furnish each room with a ladder, so your reader-guests can reach the higher pages.

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Sept. 13, 2018 Home Hudson Valley

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Milton and the roof A tale of woe, of remarkable success, and ďŹ nally of inevitable dissolution

By Rich Corozine

I

n September 1970 my first wife and I moved from 21st Street in Manhattan to a creaky old rundown farmhouse with 17 acres on a lazy old road in Circleville in Orange County, between Middletown and Pine Bush. Back-to-the-land stuff and all that.

We were renting, and inherited Milton Stubbs as our landlord.

Milton was a walking billboard of diversity: black, divorced with two kids, and a player in the Christopher Street gay scene at the time. One of the few representatives of that demographic category in Orange County, he had an attitude about the house. He was more than an absentee landlord. He hated the place. Reminded him, he told me more than once, of his failed marriage and his wife and kids back in England, where she, half-owner of the property, refused to let him sell it.

The farmhouse had a cozy charm if you weren’t looking for much to begin with. It was an old hunter’s cabin from the 1850s that had been worked on over the years by a succession of home-improvement types. Different levels in the house were created as rooms and an upstairs was added. It had wide oak floorboards throughout, a dirt-floor basement, no central heating and a leaking roof.

Friends helped me install a cheapo wood stove and a chimney pipe that went up through the ceiling of the living room and out the window of my studio (I’m a painter) and up to the cornice of the roof, some 30 feet above the ground. They also lent me a chainsaw, and by November I had cut a couple of cords of firewood. That near-death experience is a story for another time.

Did I mention the leaking roof? Well, it got worse through that first winter, with buckets placed throughout the upstairs filling with icewater almost as quickly as we put them down.

Milton was sympathetic. “Well, Richard, you wanted to live in that shithole!� I remember him saying. He visited at the beginning of spring.

Told me we had a leak, he and I, and that it had to be fixed. “You going to hire it out?� I asked him.

He looked at me as if I were insane. “Hire it out?

No, Richard, we’re going to put on a new roof. You and I.�

I wasn’t into home improvement. I never owned a home (and still don’t). My parents never did, either. No one in my family had any idea how to change a washer on a sink, let alone put on a new roof. I had the distinct feeling that Milton didn’t, either.

We forged ahead. Milton ordered the supplies.

Told me he’d be up the following week — it was early summer — to start “ripping off the old roof.�

When I asked about the result of leaving the upstairs exposed to the elements, he told me that “we� could cover the space with a tarp. It wouldn’t take more than a week to put on a new one, he said. I was worried.

He never showed up to rip off the old roof, or for anything else that summer. I couldn’t reach him by telephone. I had lots of plywood sheets, a few buckets of tar, rolls of tarpaper, roofing nails and some aluminum sheeting. I had no idea what to do with it all. I was fearful that Milton would show up one day with a couple of his friends, rip off the roof, and never return.

A local friend: Tom Korey, had some knowledge of improving a home (from a material point of view). He recommended a new roof over the old one. Told me how to do it, and helped me whenever he could.

So there I was, Mr. Home-Improv putting on a new roof. It took me the rest of the summer. Up and down the sole wooden ladder I went with plywood sheets cut to measurement, hanging by a

rope tied to the non-working crumbling chimney to get at the house edges, nailing down the new roof, tarring the nail holes, laying down tarpaper and fixing the aluminum sheeting onto the crown of the house.

My parents came up unexpectedly one day, and marveled. “Nick,� my mother told my father, “did you ever think your son would be doing this?�

He just smiled. My mother was right. It was as though they were both hallucinating.

I finished it by September. The real test came with the heavy rains that autumn. There was freezing ice in the winter and more rain the following spring.

The roof didn’t leak. I had done it!

Milton came back up in September. He told me he had been “away� and that I had done a good job

on “my� roof. Then he started to talk about replacing the front porch, which was intimately attached to the front of the house. I had to remind that the front wall to the living/dining room and our bedroom would come off too if he took off the front porch. He told me that “we� would get it done fast, and that “until then you could put up a tarp.�

It never got done, thankfully.

We lived there another few years. Milton would show up once in a while with a home-improvement suggestion. After we moved away, the house was abandoned, gradually falling into disrepair.

But the roof stayed intact for another 30 years, until the house was torn down a few years ago by a new owner who bought the property for back taxes. I never heard from Milton again.

Thankfully.

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Path to nowhere Home improvement in the age of social media

by Genia Wickwire

E

very home project we have ever done has turned out to have been an adventure. My partner Dominic and I have a similar aesthetic and a similar idea of which projects should be done and when. Starting a project usually involves some sort of confusion between us. An argument, different ways of moving forward. Words are sometimes yelled in anger, and there are even complete breakdowns in communication between us.

Then we both take a deep breath and begin working together. Suddenly things start to take shape.

Our vision comes into sight, despite our not having the right tools, a 200-year-old house without a single right angle, and no knowledge of construction.

The key for us seems to be coming together to see our project through. That is the deep knowledge we have acquired with experience.

We own our projects. They are part of a life that we have chosen for ourselves. Though we consult with the knowledgeable guy at the hardware store and converse with neighbors in our immediate environment, it is we who accept responsibility for whatever we do. That is the path we walk.

The modest project at hand was a brick walkway leading from our paved driveway to our front steps. We had acquired the bricks from Ulster Publishing’s building on Wall Street. The old chimney had been creating a leak in the office building. The chimney needed to be taken down and sealed up tightly. We lowered the bricks off the roof. Why not reuse these genuinely cool old local bricks?

They have been sitting in our alcove waiting for the perfect project to come along ever since.

I

looked up brick projects on Pinterest. I pinned picture after picture of glorious brick paths and patios. I found the brick path that I

LAUREN THOMAS

Yellow jackets swarm a rotting apple. thought both fit our space and our ideas.

Because we were so determined to start this project right, we went directly to YouTube. How does one lay down a brick pathway? By putting “brick pathway” in the search bar, we were immediately awarded with hundreds of videos answering that very question. This is how we had fixed our dryer, how we had changed bulbs in our car.

Youtube has helped us to go from useless, handyless people to folks who could figure things out.

We were confident that this guide would show us the correct and proper way of laying down our path the first time! How exciting.

We watched person after person dig into perfect dirt on perfectly flat ground. We were mystified.

They had all the tools, all the knowhow, and oh

the most beautiful diggable ground for which anyone could hope. We, however, live in the Catskills.

The border separating our property from our neighbor, the aqueduct from the Ashokan Reservoir, consists on both sides of a beautiful picturesque bluestone wall. The reason is not aesthetics.

That is what the ground they dug up consisted of.

The ground is pure bluestone and a little hardscrabble dirt. Digging would not be easy. Our house is at the bottom of a hill and no part of our land is flat.

W

e were not so easily deterred.

We went outside to get a lay of the land.

Yep, hard rocky dirt led at a downward angle toward the steps that go to our front door.

What about the drainage? This had to be considered before we began our path. We have carefully crafted and dug various drainage systems in order to prevent flooding when it rains.

When it rains hard, the water flows straight toward our house as though in buckets. Over time, we have figured out various ways to direct the water elsewhere. This had to be considered before we began our path. Dominic looked at me, “Okay, let’s pull this drainage pipe,“ he said. “It needs to be directed towards the road better, anyway.” We began pulling on the pipe.

We both started screaming. “Ahhhh!” We both felt as though needles were being plunged into our skin. He ran into the house, I ran down the driveway. We are both yelling our heads off.

Yellow jackets! Everywhere!

Dominic happens to be allergic to bees and wasps. From the outside, I could hear him screaming at our daughter, “I need my Epipen!” The door was blocked by hundreds of angry yellow jackets.

I had no way to get in. I heard him yelling again.

He had found the antidote, but it didn’t work. It was not an Epipen but instead one of those new brands that didn’t work the same.

I’ll spare you the drama that followed the screaming and the running around. The drive to the hospital and the call for the ambulance when construction blocked our way. The sitting in the emergency room at the hospital. The treatment.

Finally going home. Climbing into the side window. Waiting until the nighttime to spray the nest.

We tried to do a home project without drama.

Maybe that is not possible in a do-it-yourself project in the age of social media.

Every weekend after that has been filled up with shopping for school supplies, visiting the beach one more time before summer ended, visiting family, etc. Our path remains unfinished. My story, which was supposed to be about completing a beautiful brick pathway, is now a story that goes nowhere.

Sept. 13, 2018 Home Hudson Valley

Ulster Publishing Co.

| 7

Real estate in the Catskills Settling in on the new frontier

By Susan Barnett

T

he region is awash with eager newcomers, delirious with delight at their escape to the country. They continue to bring new life to an area that was ready for its next chapter. It will, as all change does, require careful thought and planning to prepare for a future that makes room for growth while respecting the things about the area that drew the newcomers in the first place.

Looking back on the articles on the local economy I have written for these pages over the years, it’s clear just how big the swing has been. When is the last time you heard someone sadly discussing the effect of the IBM closing in Ulster County?

That song is over.

Now it’s all about the Brooklyn-to-Kingston pipeline and a surge of young newcomers who love the dining, the drinking, the social scene and the arts. In daylight hours, they relish the fresh air and wholesome lifestyle that, shockingly, is still somewhat affordable.

Smart realtors made the most of a challenging market which seemed to have ten buyers for every available property.

Then there’s me. I finally hit that comfortable business groove where I was well-known enough to have plenty of work simply from recommendations from past clients. So I moved two hours farther out into the country.

I have a habit of ignoring the intelligent path.

But the rural life has been calling me forever. I finally couldn’t resist.

Since mid-June, home is a small town midway between Oneonta and Delhi. I’m still working as a broker and still writing books and the occasional article for my favorite publication.

It’s meant rebuilding a business. That’s a slow process. It’s creating a brave new world of Internet connections and leads from companies that make money by selling leads on other agents’ listings (or our own leads!) But it isn’t as slow a process as it could have been, even way out in the hills.

But make no mistake: real estate and life here are different. Not as different as I thought it would be, maybe, but different.

How is it different?

Traffic’s not a problem It’s not convenient. Not at all. We were lucky enough to find our dream house within a mile of a community that has not only a gas station but also a great summer stage company. But most people around here live 20 minutes from any sort of supermarket, and maybe even that far from a gas station. Restaurants? Maybe you’ll find one near-

by. But for most people it’ll take a drive.

That means being a real-estate broker means putting miles on your car. No one makes a living concentrating on only one or two towns. I represent a company that is known for luxury homes. Those homes are here, but they certainly aren’t near each other. I routinely drive an hour for an appointment. Often it’s more than that.

If you’re looking for a country property at a great price, this is the new frontier. The Route 28 corridor into the mountains has been well traveled by city weekenders, and even Andes and Bovina are now surprisingly expensive. You’ve got to keep going if you want to find the deals. Or wander up Route 17, get off at Roscoe, and drive into Walton and beyond.

That’s where the great houses at great prices are still to be found.

How good are the deals? A fixer-upper may be less than $20,000. A great house with land will be under $200,000. An estate that would bring millions in the Hudson Valley won’t even flirt with a million dollars.

It’s not crowded. The only lines are at the Walmart checkout in Oneonta. Traffic’s not a problem. Our go-to highway is I-88, and that’s still never busy. Every single road seems to have an incredible country vista. I don’t know how it happens, but it does.

That wide-open space forces you to understand what living in the country means. If you think having no neighbors is just what you always wanted, you may feel differently the first time the power goes out, you get snowed in, or a very large and very wild animal starts showing up on your property. (Yes, I know bears are nothing new to you if you’re a hardy country dweller. But how about mountain lions? I’m told that they’re not exactly as rare as we’ve been told they are.)

Another difference? New York City and its reservoirs don’t protect everyone’s water. That’s something that much of the Catskills has come to take for granted. Some beautiful areas in Delaware, Chenango and Otsego County have been threatened by fracking or gas lines or compressor stations. There’s an ongoing struggle between the very real need for jobs and the permanent loss of the rural beauty of this place. As a broker, I have to be more aware of potential environmental issues. There isn’t the almost-certain guarantee that the city DEP is keeping watch.

The job market is another huge difference.

There just aren’t a lot of jobs, and the jobs that pay well are even rarer. The big industry in this area is healthcare. Chobani Yogurt is a big employer to the west. The local SUNY schools employ a lot of locals.

I’ve met a lot more truckers than I’ve met anywhere else. But everyone seems to have two or three things going, whether they’re self-employed, farming, or working part-time at more than one job. The cost of living is relatively low, but so is income. And, like Ulster County ten years ago, the population is aging.

What’s the same? City weekenders, for one. At New Old Franklin Day in the Town of Franklin, everyone I met was either a former weekender who retired here or someone whose parents moved here from downstate. Much as I remember in the Woodstock of my childhood, there are two camps — the people who have lived here for generations, and a large, growing group of outsiders who have settled here. One woman who moved here 30 years ago from Long Island laughed when she told me she “might eventually” be considered a townie.

The rural life is challenging. Owning a home in the country brings a lot more daily chores. There’s a lot more upkeep, and a lot fewer resources when something goes wrong.

But when a truck full of construction material arrived with no one but the driver, who was not a healthy specimen, to help us unload it, our new neighbor stopped by and spent an hour helping getting it done. He waved off any efforts to thank him.

“I didn’t mind,” he said.

I made him a coffee cake and took it to his house two days later. He was delighted.

He returned the plate a week later. His wife had baked a pie in it.

That’s the way of life I was hoping to find. That’s not a hard sell at all.

“If you think having no neighbors is just what you always wanted, you may feel differently the first time the power goes out.”

Not a lot of jobs Many lifelong rural residents like houses on busy roads. They consider them a guarantee they’ll always be able to get where they need to go. Don’t like the road noise? “Shut the windows,” they tell me.

They like having some neighbors around here, even if they’re half a mile down the road. A little closer is even better.

Country newcomers fall in love with the inescapable natural beauty at every turn. But they have to be realistic about how isolated they’re willing to be. They often start considering a village house, where they can get the best of both worlds.

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Fall property management Cleaning, decorating, potting and painting adds to a home and garden

By Erin Quinn

O

nce the proverbial harvest has been reaped, the annuals have faded, the tomato vines are weedy, and the crab grass has taken over the lawn, it is time to prepare the garden for winter, and to give one last splash of love and color to the exterior of the home.

Master gardener Andy Costa owns a historic house on an apple orchard in New Paltz she has intricately landscaped with flowers, shrubs, trees, vegetable gardens, chicken coops and stone walkways. She busies herself in the fall weather clipping back bushes, in order, she says, to keep them within their size and space. “Nothing grows at the same rate,” she explains, “and some plants and shrubs can make unruly neighbors.”

Besides trimming back the more boisterous perennials and shrubs, Costa places all the plant material that has run its course into composting piles. As the leaves are raked up, Costa lays them out in piles by her chicken coop, where she and her husband “run the lawn mower over them.”

Some is used as mulch to protect plants, and the rest goes into the compost piles. “I re-use everything,” she says. “I have three compost piles going; one that’s in use, one that’s working and one that I’m adding to.”

Fellow gardener Mark Eisenhandler of New Paltz follows a similar practice. “The best mulch is really chopped-up leaves,” he says. “You lay them out and run the lawnmower over them and place them over your tender perennials or garden beds.

And the rest I compost.”

Eisenhandler, who has worked at the Mohonk Mountain greenhouse and is now horticulturist at Woodland Pond in New Paltz, advises that one can

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mix in wood chips with the chopped-up leaves for a nice aesthetic when mulching in the fall. Unless one has a flytrap memory of their garden, however, he counsels either labeling things before you mulch them or fashioning a garden map. Come springtime, it can be easy to forget what lies where beneath the leaf mulch.

For those less hands-on than Costa and Eisenhandler, there are landscapers and lawn services.

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“Fall is the time where we come in do our final seasonal pruning from the top down,” says Mark Masseo of Masseo Landscaping, Inc. of Tillson.

“Trees, shrubs, gardens. We like to trim back any shrubs and bushes to keep their shape. We clean up any and all organic material, including noxious weeds, and then we clean up the leaves as they fall.” Masseo also notes that fall is the best time to aerate and fertilize lawns.

“If you’re going to fertilize your lawn one time a year, any good professional will tell you to do it in the fall,” says Masseo. “Grass has been stressed by

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Ulster Publishing Co. summer. Either it’s been too hot or too wet or too dry, and it needs some nourishment.”

Masseo recommends giving lawns or turf a good feeding of a complete fertilizer. Because of the negative impact of phosphorus on the water supply, New York State has put a ban on it. Phosphorus had typically been part of a complete’ fertilizer.

“It’s only legal to use that to establish a new lawn,” Masseo notes. “But if you give an existing lawn some nitrates and phosphorus, it’s going to help it grow back strong and it’s going to help combat weeds.” He also says that overseeding and aerating lawns in the fall help relieve soil compaction and allows room for grass roots to spread out and grow.

Costa doesn’t plant anything that can’t survive winter and the strong winds we have here. She

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will only plant trees or shrubs that are Zone 4. “I don’t want to baby plants,� she says. “We have so much wind and exposure where we live, and I’ve lost things that I’ve invested so many years in.�

One of these included a 25-foot Korean dogwood outside her living-room window. “I planted a crabapple tree there because they’re tough as nails.�

Adds Masseo, “The only time we really wrap shrubs, bushes or trees in burlap is if we’re afraid that they will suffer from too much exposure or if the deer love to feed on them.�

Fall is also the time to bring tender plants and perennials as well as bulbs and tubers. “I have a lot of house plants that I bring outside in the summer

that need to be brought inside in the fall,� says Eisenhandler. “I also have several tender perennials that I dig up and re-pot and bring inside.�

Another fall task is the planting of spring-blossoming bulbs. Although the garden center shelves are full of bulbs, Eisenhandler cautions folks not to jump the bulbaceous gun. “Even though they’re for sale now does not mean you should plant them now,� he says. “I typically wait until around Halloween to put them in the ground.�

If bulbs are planted too early their energy can be wasted in the warm temperatures that can linger on and off throughout the fall. “If they get the energy sucked out of them by an Indian summer

then they often won’t flower in the spring,� he says.

The autumn garden All that trimming doesn’t mean neglect of the autumn garden. While gardeners, landscapers and lawn-care services are busy cutting and tidying up properties, fall is still a time where gardens can have striking colors and textures from autumnal flowers, perennial grasses and decorative vegetable plants. “I take a real minimalist approach to cleaning up my gardens in the fall,� says Eisenhandler. “I take out weedy annuals and garden plants, but I like to leave in flowers that have interesting seed heads for their texture, like coneflowers and grasses.�

Masseo personally loves ornamental grasses. “They’re deer-resistant, they’re showy, and I think they’re absolutely beautiful when that first snow falls.�

For outdoor decoration, Costa is a fan of pumpkins. “Not your typical orange pumpkin, they’re my least favorite,� she says. “There are so many wonderful varieties now and I love stacking them.

They have the bright red, almost donut-shaped princess pumpkins and white pumpkins.� Most farm markets have any number of heirloom and decorative pumpkins and gourds that can be used to carve, to stack up along doorways, and to line planters or benches. “Mums are great,� says Masseo. “But I think it ROBERT BLOOMER

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Sept. 13, 2018 Home Hudson Valley

| 11

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Home Hudson Valley

Ulster Publishing Co.

adds such a stately touch when people plant ornamental cabbage and kale or ornamental peppers and millet. They look so beautiful by entryways and in various viewsheds or in potted planters and whiskey barrels.”

Eisenhandler likes to put fall plants that might be on sale in planters to add visual interest. “I love asters, goldenrod, Jacob’s ladder, anemones, typical native fall blooming plants that can often be found on sale for three or four dollars, which is what it costs to buy annual summer flowers,” he says, “so why not invest in some fall beauty?”

Touches of color Non-living touches added to outdoor spaces can increase curb appeal for both homeowners and visitors.

One of the easiest and most rewarding fall projects can be completed in a half-day or less. The painting of one’s front door. It’s the first thing people see when they enter the home and the last thing they see before they leave. Too often, the door becomes faded or grimy from so many hands opening and closing the domicile portal.

In the Chinese art of feng shui (harmonizing energy within the home and property), the front door symbolizes the “mouth of the house,” often painted red to draw positive energy to the home as well as inviting good luck and happiness during the Chinese New Year.

Red, a sign of welcome in many cultures, was used to signify a safe house along the Underground Railroad for African slaves fleeing the South. A red door in Scotland signifies a paid mortgage.

Albert Einstein was said to have painted his front door red so that he could find his house.

Eisenhandler’s door is a bright avocado green surrounded by dark purple trim. “We’re visual,” he explains, “and I think bright colors draw the eye.

When we repainted that door that green, all of the flowers in our front garden started to pop.” People love Eisenhandler’s gardens, which are populated with unique plantings such as flowering tobacco whose bright,, moon-like blossoms that open in the night and let of a sweet lemon-like scent. His six-foot-tall castor bean plants have spiked pods and five-starred giant leaves.

If you don’t have a green thumb, plenty of easy things like repainting the door, trim or even a mailbox can give the house a clean look. “When you’re trying to sell a house or rent a home the most important thing is that it looks loved and cared for,” says Anita Cunniff, a realtor for Steffens Reality in New Paltz. “Making sure there’s a fresh coat of paint on the trim and front door or mailbox is huge! Or just making sure that you’ve cleaned your windows recently and wiped away the cobwebs and dirt from around the front door.

If you don’t have the time or desire to garden, one thing that is relatively inexpensive and helps to keep weeds at bay and the house looking neat is to spread river rocks around the foundation.”

Cunniff says just investing in “those large ceramic planters can go a long way towards making the house looked loved and attractive.” You don’t need to be a great gardener, she says. Just put two of those on either side of your entrance way with some freshly potted mums and your house looks inviting.”

A little bit of cleaning, decorating, potting and painting can take a home to the next level at the same time as it seals it with warmth as winter approaches.

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Sept. 13, 2018 Home Hudson Valley

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| 13

There was a hole in our house How we and our home got a big new smile

By Brian Hollander

F

or a couple of hours, there was a hole in our house where there used to be a window.

This was not just any window. The big bay window has adorned our 1964 split-level, in the style once known as late Levittown but now classified more broadly as Suburbus Americanus. The living-room bay window has always been a major feature in these houses.

But damn! This one, double-paned as it is with thin glass, just let the wind blow through as though someone forgot to close it. As we’d sit and shiver all winter, we could feel the dollars flowing up from the oil-fired hot-water baseboard heating.

We’d already replaced most of the windows over the years. A few were installed properly. They slid up and down with a natural fluidity, leaving the screens or storms, as the season dictated, flush enough to keep out the cold or the bugs. Others, not so much.

But the big bay, well, that one was a major problem. We knew it could cost us some shiny pennies.

After checking the usual sources, the big-box home improvement centers and the like, we settled on Hobson Window, Inc. of Red Hook.

We gave them a one-third deposit on the nearly $4000 final bill.

Over came the five-man crew. They promptly popped out the old window, checked for rot (there wasn’t any) around the frame, and prepared the hole for its new occupant.

Within two hours they had carried over to the hole a new 5-Lite 15-degree casement bow window by Ideal, with two end operating units (those are panels you open with a crank), insulated head/seatboard, energy-saver max glass system.

Seven-eighths of an inch double-insulated glass, Low-E high-performance coating, and argon fill.

The interior got new primed clambase moulding.

The exterior got new capping.

Four hours, tops, and they were gone, and our

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The old window comes out; the new one goes in. home had a new smile. And so did my wife and I. We spent the winter much warmer, while frugally using our oil supply.

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Barn dreams A big open area allows for the creation of a great living space

By Jennifer Brizzi

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ooking to create your perfect home? There are good reasons to begin with a historic barn. Whether a wreck, perfectly preserved, or moved from elsewhere and rebuilt on site, barns ignite the imagination. A house bought from someone else or even one built for you from scratch can’t easily compete.

I grew up in an 1805 brick house with an unusual bright blue barn behind it. It had temporarily housed horses while their owners shopped in the general store that was originally in our house.

When we moved there in the 1960s, the barn served as storage area for us.

The structure fueled the creative play of us kids and our friends. Lacking that pony that every girl wants, I tended imaginary horses in its stalls.

When I was a little older, I’d spend hours out there with a big pad of newsprint, drawing plans for renovating it into a home.

Later I dreamed of being an architect specializing in renovations, repurposing barns and churches and train stations into new beautiful living spaces. I even motivated myself by having pencils printed up saying “Harington Renovation Consulting.”

Math wasn’t my thing, so eventually I let my architect dreams die, although over the years I continued to draw plans for my dream house. When I finally became a homeowner, along with my ex-husband, of a tiny house in Rhinecliff, I kept drawing up plans for an addition, for renovations, and for a rental home made out of the cute Dutch Colonial barn in our back yard.

Lucky folk have made their barny dreams come true all over the Hudson Valley. Although there was much interest in barn to home conversions in the 1970s, interest in fixing up barns has grown in recent years. Kaatsbaan in Tivoli turned a grand 1890s Stanford White-designed barn into a “music barn,” a central feature of their dance center.

The Grasmere Estate in Rhinebeck includes a magnificent barn that is not only the venue for the annual Rhinebeck Science Foundation gala but also served for Chelsea Clinton’s wedding rehearsal dinner in 2010. Couples want to get married in barns these days. Renovations abound for that purpose, with barns like the one at Nostrano Vineyards in Milton and many, many others in the region at all price levels and degrees of elegance.

A long way from storage Although “barn” and “elegance” may not seem to you to belong in the same sentence but if you define elegance as evoking style and sophistication, and if those traits are in the makeup of the

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talented architect or designer to work with to create any mood at all, a long way from storage for cattle and cattle feed. The rustic exteriors painted “barn red” or that bright blue of my childhood barn or a deep gray — or practically any color at all — call to mind rolling fields and pastures, bucolic country life, peace, all attractive attributes for the sanctuary of a home. Assertive strong ceiling beams and angled or straight structural posts give body, form and character to the interiors.

Barns are often hundreds of years old and hand-crafted. They are tempered by a worn façade from daily use, the wear and tear of contact with animals and hard-working farmers. There is a venerable character that appeals to anyone who loves the warmth and depth of weathered woods.

Because a barn is built as a farm-functional space, it has big rooms and smaller lofts that are tricky to turn into commodious dwellings for humans, who like private bedrooms and bathrooms.

If you simply gut everything and build a bunch of walls, a barn runs the risk of losing its charm and just looking like a regular house. The challenge is to transform barn to house without losing those attractive barn-like elements, and yet making it functional and comfortable for people to live in.

Often in a barn renovation there is a main living space, or great room, that can includes an open kitchen and dining area. Or those may be separate low-ceilinged rooms under the loft spaces.

Faults in workmanship or maintenance due to the financial struggles of farmers or previous owners of the structure are not unusual. Unstable stone foundations can cause structural shifts, and any wooden parts of the barn — from rafters to walls — can be warped or otherwise damaged by

Sept. 13, 2018 Home Hudson Valley

Ulster Publishing Co.

| 15

water. Making the renovated barn weather-tight without compromising its barn-like character and hiding its rustic timbers is another tricky task.

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Expert help is available Although fixing these issues can add significantly to the cost of the project, there is help. A federal rehabilitation tax credit can cut taxes on expenditures for the renovation of historic buildings, including barns.

Assistance can also come in the form of expertise and experience. Hiring architects, engineers and contractors experienced in this type of work is key. Dale Lehmer of Barn Home Designs has done many projects in the area and recommends this highly.

The very experienced Lehmer sells barn frames that have been removed from their original location, reconditioned, and then shipped to the location of the purchaser’s choice. He feels that Canadian frames made of larger timbers are optimal for barn-to-home conversions. He’s unsure whether Canadian barns were traditionally built stronger to withstand lots of snow or it they just lucked out with bigger timber stands.

Lehmer recommends using hand-hewn timbers of at least ten-by-ten-inches for best strength and beauty. He prefers hemlock or other soft wood species, his favorite visually being hand-hewn white pine, he says.

Woodstock architect David Minch converted an 1876 post-and-beam barn into a home plus office space for himself and a studio for his wife, a weaver. When he bought the barn in 1999, it was so dilapidated that it was about to be condemned.

He kept the exterior appearance essentially unchanged and wanted to keep the interior from looking like “a typical house stuffed into a barn shell.� Working to preserve as much of the barn’s character as possible, he retained as much of the original wood as he could. He designed an open plan full of light and installed radiant-heat floors and plastered walls that complement the wood.

Energy efficiency was a challenge that Minch was equipped to take on. He created a thermal envelope/building shell (with skins, drainage plane, thermal air and vapor barriers) while leaving the siding, roof lines and openings intact.

The barn’s spirit surrounds us,� he says, clearly happy with the results.

Merging very old and very new Los Angeles film director Shawn Levy, who did Date Night and Night at the Museum, had a New Paltz barn that had already been turned into a house renovated by Bonetti/Kozerski Architecture of New York. The 1970s structure was crafted from centuries-old reclaimed wood. It then had been renovated in the 1990s before the fancy re-design in 2009 for Levy and his wife and four daughters. They took out ceramic tile flooring, drywall and interior stucco walls in an effort to bring out the structure’s original character before the renovations. Oak beams emerged.

They created a herringbone-pattern brick floor and a rough, richly grained ceiling made from reclaimed barn wood.

The same firm also did a gorgeous barn renovation in Columbia County.

You can have a beautiful home that began its life as a barn (or barn parts) designed to express your individuality and meet your needs. There are many was to do it. First you have to create your dream. And then, with help, you can make your dream barn come true.

Find Dale Lehmer of Barn Home Designs at www.barnhomedesigns.com, www.vintagewoods. com, www.smallbarnhomes.com or 315-286-4847, David Minch at davidminch.com, and Bonetti/ Kozerski Architecture at bonettikozerski.com

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13, 2018 16 | Sept.

Home Hudson Valley

Ulster Publishing Co.

Gutter talk This is the right time of year to deal with roof water

By Erin Quinn

F

ew things go more unnoticed on a house than its gutters, or lack thereof.

Gutters aren’t sexy, although they are making a comeback with copper-plated, historically-rendered and handcrafted gutters flooding upwardly mobile niche marketplaces.

Gutters are critical to the health and wellness of a home, and should be regularly inspected, particularly before winter hits. Homeowners are typically busy in the fall replacing their screens with storm windows and doors, with raking, blowing and bagging up fallen leaves, and with replacing their potted geraniums with autumnal mums.

These tasks are indeed essential to making sure their homes will be adequately heated and comfortable during the winter months. What they’re too often not thinking about is cleaning their gutters. It’s important to repair or replace gutters in order adequately to keep roof water away from home and foundation.

What a gutter system is supposed to do is to funnel rainwater and/or melted snow away from a home or commercial structure. But if gutters are missing, damaged, clogged or simply unsuitable for your home and regional weather conditions, the damage that roof water can cause to the home is substantial.

“It’s very important to get your gutters professionally cleaned right before winter,” said Eric Dickel, the owner of Top Notch Seamless Gutters based out of Hopewell Junction. “If you don’t then the leaves and debris can get clogged up and when the snow and ice fall you can get all kinds of damage to your home, particularly ice damming.”

Ice damming occurs when melted snow cannot leave the roof via the gutter system because the gutters are clogged. Instead, it finds its way under the shingles or eaves of the roof and into the home. Water damage to the roof can cause costly problems, among them cracks, collapse, leaks within the home, mold, rot and other unpleasant conditions. An ounce of prevention is well worth a pound of cure.

Safety is most important “If the water is not directed away from the home, it can also cause damage to the exterior of the home and the foundation,” said Dickel. Water pooling at the base of the house can get into the foundation, basements, crawl spaces and other places where homeowners do not want it. It can pool around the home and ice over in the winter, causing dangerous conditions for residents and visitors.

The first way to avoid all of this is to make sure that you either call a professional gutter company to properly clean and repair your gutters before winter or take on the task yourself. If you choose the latter route, exercise extreme caution.

“First of all, safety is the most important thing,” said Robert Martinez of Mohonk Exteriors based in New Paltz. “Oftentimes people can be uneasy with heights or they do not set up the ladder properly and it can be dangerous when they try and clean their own gutters. I would just urge caution and make sure you’re setting your ladder up correctly.”

When homeowners clean out their gutters themselves, Martinez and Dickel noted that they often overlook the importance of cleaning out their downspouts, which if they get clogged do not allow water to run freely or fully down and away from the home. “People get up there and clean all of the leaves that they see in the gutters, but they forget about the downspouts, which you can’t always see with the naked eye if they’re clogged,” said Dickel.

“When we come, we have all of the necessary tools to take apart the gutters, clean the leaders (downspouts) and to make repairs where necessary. Sometimes the gutters have pulled away from the house and they need to be refastened and tightened,” noted Martinez. “You also want to make sure that any gutter service company you call is insured. You don’t want anyone getting up on your roof who is not insured.”

house generally costs between $125 and $200 depending on the size, the state of the gutters, and whether it’s just a simple cleaning job or if repairs have to be made.

After the pollen has fallen in April or May is another critical time to get gutters cleaned. “It’s just a good idea to get on a regular gutter maintenance plan twice a year,” recommended Dickel.

A little maintenance can go a long way. According to most gutter experts, a seamless aluminum gutter system, if maintained twice a year, can last upwards of 25 years.

“Gutters are the last thing people think about when they buy a home, when they’re getting ready for winter, yet they’re very important to the well-being of the home,” said Martinez.

Dickel said he always gets dozens of phone calls after the first heavy snowfall, or when people realize that they have water coming in through their roof. “You want to get it done before,” he said. “It saves so much time and money!”

There’s also the aesthetic component of keeping gutters cleaned both inside and outside. You want a streamlined, functional appearance. Don’t become one of those homeowners with a tree growing out of one of your neglected gutters.

Get it done early

When looking for gutters, there are a myriad of options. Many professionals and homeowners counsel friends and clients away from the inexpensive do-it-yourself piecemeal gutters sold at big stores.

“You want seamless. You want heavy-gauge aluminum. And you want them large enough so that the water can run easily through them,” said Martinez. Too often people get gutter systems that are too small because they are less noticeable or cheaper. The steeper the pitch of your roof, the larger size gutter you want to get.

When Donna Gleason of Esopus and her husband were looking to purchase new gutters for a home they were renovating, she got wonderful advice from their contractor. “He encouraged us to purchase commercial-sized gutters because the water flows much easier in them and the leaves don’t clog up as much. Also, it was an older home with a very steep roof pitch, and the water really races down the house. It only cost a little bit more, but it was one of the smartest things we did.”

Some local companies specialize in customized gutters like half-round ones that come in various shapes. Sunrise On the Hudson Seamless Gutters of Hurley is a company that takes pride in making custom gutter systems and working on historic gutter systems. These can be made of aluminum, galvanized steel, copper or even wood.

Whether you want a unique look to your gutter system or you just want to make sure that the water is being rerouted away from your home, make sure that you have the right gutter system for your particular home. Keep up with repairs. Make sure the system is thoroughly cleaned of leaves, twigs and other debris before old man winter comes calling.

Until two years ago, homeowner James Madison used to clean his own gutters. No more. “I was on the roof, gloves on, scooping the leaves out of my gutters, when all of a sudden I was being swarmed by wasps!” The Highland resident hadn’t noticed the wasp nest underneath his aluminum gutters.

Unfortunately, they had noticed him. Madison was stung in several places. “Thankfully, I’m not allergic like my wife,” he noted.

But he did sprain his ankle after he fell from the roof of his raised ranch. He learned his lesson. “After being put in a boot [an orthopedic boot for his ankle] and nursing some nasty stings, I decided to hire a company to come do our gutters last year.

For $150?” he said. “It was totally worth it.”

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Sept. 13, 2018 Home Hudson Valley

Ulster Publishing Co.

| 17

Life Along The Hudson The Historic Country Estates of the Livingston Family

by Geddy Sveikauskas

T

eviotdale. Edgewater. The Bouwerie. Chiddingstone.

What do these names mean to you?

They are four of the 35 Livingston estates along the eastern shore of the Hudson River that are featured in photographer Pieter Estersohn’s new book published this month by Rizzoli, Life Along the Hudson: The Historic Country Estates of the Livingston Family.

This scenic stretch of estates offers some of the finest examples of American architecture and landscape design, conceived by such notable architects as Stanford White, Alexander Jackson Davis, and Calvert Vaux. Formerly country homes for 18th-century landed gentry and 19th-century industrialists, they include Dutch Colonial, Georgian, Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, and BeauxArts styles. Constructed on land owned by the Livingston family, many are restored to their former splendor by the original owners’ descendants and by recent moneyed buyers. This is home improvement on a grand and meticulous scale.

PHOTOS BY PIETER ESTERSOHN

Teviotdate.

Majer will discuss peeling back layers of previous renovations to discover the intentions of the original builder, early Dutch settler major Dirck Wesselse Ten Broeck.

Chiddingstone, which successfully combines Italianate and Classical elements, has recently been restored by architect Hermes Mallea and interior designer Carey Maloney, who will give a tour of the house on November 17 at 4 p.m. and discuss their approach to restoring the mansion.

Tickets for the private tours are $25, and space is limited. For more information and tickets, visit hudsonhall.org or phone 518-822-1438.

viotdale. Noted New York State preservationist Kent Barwick, a board member of The SS Columbia Project, formed to revive the tradition of Hudson River steamboat excursions, will talk about former Teviotdale resident Robert Fulton’s efforts to establish steamboats as the first commercial transport on American waterways.

On Sunday, October 14 at 2 p.m., Peter Kenny of the Classical American Homes Preservation Trust will discuss the preservation and interpretation of Edgewater at the estate.

On October 20 at 4 p.m., The Bouwerie owner Dianne O’Neal and preservation carpenter Emily

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The book will be launched with a talk and visual presentation at Hudson Hall, the fully restored theater space at 327 Warren Street in Hudson on Sunday, September 23, at 3 p.m. Architecture and interiors photographer Estersohn will be joined by art director David Byars, who designed the book and is also deputy managing editor of Vogue, to present an insider’s view of the historic houses along the Hudson River. A reception and book signing with the author will follow. The event is free, but reservations are recommended.

The book launch will be followed by a series of talks and tours of private Livingston estates.

The first will be on October 6 at 4 p.m. at Te-

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13, 2018 18 | Sept.

Home Hudson Valley

Ulster Publishing Co.

The many warmings of firewood

By Harry Matthews

N

ow that summer is over, vacations are but a memory, and kids and others are back at school, for some of us it’s time to set those old mitts to work. Whether it be clean-up from the heavy abundance of rain we’ve had, the yearly winter prep of stowing all our summer things away until next year, the harvesting the last of the summer crops, or making the time to do a project that the now-cooling days of fall give us leeway to begin. Let’s dust off those work gloves, pull on an old pair of jeans and a sweater that’s seen better days, and figure what we’re going to do next.

For me the fall is a very busy time of year. After a mildly relaxing August, September begins a yearly set of chores that I both love and occasionally feel like I might be getting too old to keep doing with such spring (all puns intended) in my step. By all this mildly obscure beating-round-the-bush, let us now take a closer look at that chore amongst chores, firewood.

Like any self-respecting Noreaster who can think of little else more comforting than heating with wood, I’ve always relished the cutting and splitting of my winter firewood. Unfortunately my poor back is in fierce disagreement with me when it comes to this touchy subject.

There’s an old saying that cutting and splitting your own firewood heats you three times; once when you cut it, a second time when you split it, and a third time when you finally burn it in the stove (not to mention all the times you might move it). What I will burn this winter was mostly cut and split last fall and has been sitting outside in big stacks awaiting its movement to the woodsheds. I’ll be hauling three or more cords of wood from the woods to the sheds by the house, where it will do its final bit of drying before the cold sets in and a fire is needed.

Now the piles I’ve just moved need to be replenished. They will require at

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least a year (depending on the type of wood you’re burning) of sitting stacked outside so the wind will have the time it needs to push the moisture out. This can really only be done properly if the logs are split and stacked, with enough space around them for the air to circulate and thus “season” the wood.

Cut it yourself or buy it cut Luckily, I’ve always loved doing this. I wait all year to be alone up in the woods with my saw and my axe, with the only sound the rustle of leaves falling in the slow wind, the chill air crisp and dry. My back declines to share this great seasonal feeling with me. In fact its resentment toward the pleasure I get from this chore may be growing. Despite all the care I try to administer to it, from long periods of stretching to over-the-counter painkillers to a fancy German back brace all done up with yards of velcro and wires and a pulley or two to cinch me and my vertebrae into place (I might be exaggerating here), it’s usually not long before I feel that first danger twinge from a protesting muscle. I slow down, trying to be more conscientious of any twisting I might be doing. But I keep at it, perhaps a bit more slowly than before. If I’m lucky I can make it through the day with little more than that twinge.

If not, I could be laid up for a day or more.

The older I get, the worse it seems to be getting.

But lo, there is a solution, maybe not the perfect answer but an option nonetheless. We live where trees outnumber people many times over. When I first moved back up here from the city, chased by demon hounds nipping at my heels, one of the few requirements I had was that I wanted to see more trees than people on any given day.

Without even trying, I have accomplished that goal every day since. But I digress.

Most people who heat with wood don’t necessarily have the time or the inclination to be out there cutting and splitting their own wood every year. They rely on someone else whose business it is to do it for them. There are any number of such people, some to supplement their income and others full time.

Please know that not all of them are as reputable as you might want or hope them to be. It’s been

Sept. 13, 2018 Home Hudson Valley

Ulster Publishing Co. a long-standing issue that not all firewood you can buy has been seasoned even to the point of being burnable. Way too many times have I heard of someone dropping hundreds of dollars on a few cords that would barely light. Most probably needed at least another year drying time before being properly seasoned even to be usable. Fortunately, there are more than enough highly reputable purveyors of high-quality, well-seasoned firewood in our area who will be more than happy to get you up and running, and warm.

If this be the route you’ll be taking, then please don’t wait too long to find the right supplier. The first place to look might be your local wood-stove dealer, such as Fireside Warmth on Route 28 heading out of Kingston. They should know any number of reliable folks who would be more than willing to deliver whatever amount of wood you might need.

Beyond this there are the arborists, tree guys (and gals) who may have so much surplus hardwood that it would be ridiculous for them not to be splitting and selling it as well.

Then again, you might see a dump truck piled high with split wood ready to be delivered parked along the roadside with a phone in the window.

That works, too.

I’ve had great luck with my neighbors at Story’s farm in Palenville, where one of the younger generation (read: back still strong) has made a great business with his firewood, due as much to the quality of his product as his friendliness and hard work. He splits his logs long, making great squared-off stacks to season at their farm.

Then when he gets an order he can cut it all to the lengths requested. Perfect.

Wood is also a renewable resource when a forest is managed properly with future generations in mind. Personally, all the wood I’ve burnt since installing my wood stove (made from recycled iron) seven years ago has been taken from fallen trees, trees cut along the roadways, and those cut under the power lines following hurricanes Irene and Sandy. This is not to say that there is no negative carbon impact at all from burning wood, but balanced with where we live, surrounded by forests as we are, the impact is minimal especially when

compared to the over-use of fossil fuels, coal and oil.

In the end. I believe there is little more comforting in this increasingly technological world, little more basic and primal to reach back over the millennia connecting us with our simpler, truer selves, than to spend a day cutting, chopping or stacking our wood, to build ourself a fire, pour ourself a nice large drink, and gently fall into a deep and sweet slumber before the warm glow of your logs crackling upon an iron hearth.

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A few things to know Cord dimensions: There are mainly two types of cords when dealing with firewood, a face cord and a full cord. A face cord has a measurement of four feet high by eight feet wide by sixteen to 18 inches deep (generally the length of a log your firebox will hold). A full cord is four feet high by four feet deep by eight feet wide. When buying your wood, it’s important to know if they’re selling you a full cord or a face cord.

Type of wood: All wood takes different amounts of time to dry just as it all gives off different BTUs when burning. I burn a lot of oak and I’ve found that it takes at least a year after being split to season properly enough to burn well. Conversely, ash can be burned almost green but is better with at least a few months split for it to burn well. (And speaking of ash, know that due to the Emerald Ash Borer killing off most of our ash trees it is illegal to transport it across county lines.)

Some firewood dealers only cut and split their wood to size when they get the order, meaning you’re going to have to be doing some seasoning yourself. It might help to invest $30 in a moisture meter from your local hardware store to be able to check the moisture content yourself. The EPA states that most wood should have a moisture content of 15 percent to 20 percent when burned, as opposed to 50 percent when green. That means that half of a log’s weight is in water! I guarantee that you do not want to find yourself on a night with the temps dipping down into the twenties stuck with a couple of cords of nicely stacked logs in your garage that will not light. Brrrrrr…

If you don’t want to find yourself in that position, don’t be afraid to ask questions of your firewood person. What kind of wood is it? How long has it been seasoned? How long has it been split?

Is the price for a face cord or a full cord? Is it extra to have it stacked and how much?

The zen of woodburning More often than not, the wood delivered to you will be a mix of hardwoods (oak, maple, cherry, ash), with no set amount of time that it all has been seasoned. It also may be difficult to know the dimensions of your firewood when it’s a pile in the back of a dumper or pick-up truck. In the immortal and ever-sage advice of our dear Douglas Adams, “Don’t panic!”

Most people are not criminal by nature and aren’t looking to rip you off. They’ll want you as a returning customer and will bring you what you’ve paid for.

Lastly, and here’s the contentious part of all I’ve written here, is the question of the impact of burning wood on the environment. This is a big issue, and I will only touch lightly on it.

Most modern wood stoves burning a well-seasoned log will produce little if any smoke.

| 19

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13, 2018 20 | Sept.

Home Hudson Valley

Ulster Publishing Co.

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