January 2008 Archives

Exciting news. Our offer was accepted by the sellers and we have signed the contract and put it in the mail to the lawyers. Which means we are getting very close to closing. We need to attend a meeting at the Black Forest Colony with the home owner's board on February 17th before we are allowed to close on the land. Six acres of wooded wonderland!

Along with putting in a septic system, we will also need to have a well on the property. This is another area in which we will need to do some research since we know next to nothing about wells. We found the a site called wellowner.org which is a consumer information site that should hopefully help get us up to speed. There is certified local contractor finder on the site which could be useful.

We think one way we can get the most out of our little house will be to have a full basement. We can store all the stuff that doesn't fit in our apartment in the city, outdoor furniture during the winter and possibly an even put in an extra bedroom. And what better way to go than a prefab foundation? We are investigating Superior Walls as an option for the foundation. Zach's mom used this type of foundation for her place in Colorado. She said it was fantastic. No guesses yet as to how much it will cost to dig a basement, or to buy the prefab foundation. We will update when we find out more. We are pretty sure that we will have to access the basement from the outside since there is no place for stairs inside the weeHouse. But we will be researching that possibility as well.

And why prefab? There are many reasons why this type of building is possibly the only way we can make our dream of a little place in the woods a reality. We both work more than full time, live in Manhattan and don't have time to oversee the construction of a site built house. Having the house delivered already built will make the fact that we can't be at the construction site everyday during the process much easier. Prefab houses are built in a factory so there is less waste than a site built house; extra materials can be used for other projects. And they are manufactured in a climate controlled environment so you don't have to worry about weather delaying construction. WeeHouses are pre-designed so you don't have to pay an architect to design the house. Modern houses like the ones we are interested in would be expensive to have designed from scratch. And we are told the cost is 20% cheaper than a site built home, around $125-200 sq/ft. We also dig that the weeHouses come standard with bamboo flooring and Ikea cabinets, practical options we would have picked ourselves.

It may be early to be decorating the walls of our imaginary Villa Straylight, but we found the perfect piece of art; this bear from Jill Greenberg's Ursine series. We've been huge fans of her work for a while now, the hilarious and surprising monkey portraits and the controversial crying children. But the idea of taking the bear out to the woods seems perfect.

The lot on which we will be building is not on a sewer system so we will need to build a septic system. This is very common in rural areas where the houses are spread out and far away from the city center or in areas where the landscape is too extreme for conventional sewers. We are now in the process of educating ourselves on how septic sytems work. We are pretty sure we will have to do another perc test before we can get a permit to build on our land. The last one was done about two years ago, we think, and the test only lasts for two years. We still have a lot to learn about how it all this stuff goes down. The real estate agent also mentioned that according to the perc test, we will most likely have to build a "mound" type of septic system. Again we still have more research to do, experts to consult and tests to preform on the land before we will know for sure.

This site about how to build a septic system is exhaustive and very easy to understand: How to Build a Septic System

UPDATE:

So the hopes and dreams for this car were dashed on the rocks of a bad Craig's List purchase (probably a stolen vehicle anyway). The volvo died, after one mechanic put a few hundred dollars worth of fictional work into it and another literally said, "pick it up before it gets a ticket." The next shop wouldn't even fix it, they said ditch it.  Ok we got our money's worth, but the worst part was, after donating it to Habitat For Humanity, a charity, they racked up $250 worth of parking tickets.  We tried for months to get them cleared to no avail. Proving yet again that no good deed goes unpunished.  Shame on you NY City and shame on you Habitat For Humanity.

We're now rolling in my late-grandmother's 2003 Ford Explorer.  Thank you Elizabeth.  We've dubbed it the QE3 - the next name in succession after one of her favorite nautical vessels.
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Original Post:

In order to get to the Villa Straylight, we needed a car. We found one on Craig's list that sounded too good to be true. And even though it's a little early in the game to get a car, we couldn't pass it up. Our 1994 Volvo 850 Wagon is the perfect old car to use in the country. Although there are lots of miles on this one, everyone says Volvos last forever so we are crossing our fingers that this one will last a bit longer.

Our original plan was to park our car at the Port Jervis train station and drive the 20 minutes to the Black Forest Colony. At only $192/year this seemed like the way to go. But we just found out that the station's yearly permit parking is only for 16 hours, not 24, which is putting a bit of a hitch in the plan. I am pretty sure we will be able to figure a way around it though. Having a car in the city is way too expensive and driving out on weekends would be too stressful anyway.

We stumbled upon what looks to be a brief history of the Black Forest Colony online. It might be a rough draft since there was a little note at the end that said "Check for historical accuracy?"

To get the daily station-to-station train schedule, visit the New Jersey Transit website and choose Penn Station to Port Jervis. There is one transfer at Seacacus (one stop from Penn Station). The Port Jervis station is the end of the line. Trip will be about 2hrs 15min to 2hrs 45min.

We have decided to focus mostly on the weeHouse for the Villa Straylight. The model we are looking at is the "large" model below.

14' x58'=812sqft.
2 bedroom, 1 bath
Pricing for the North East Region: $139K - $145K

All things considered, a prefab home will be the way to go for our Villa Straylight. We love the weeHouse the best, it satisfies all of our requirements. But we are still exploring all the options out there just  in case the weeHouse doesn't work out for some reason. Fabprefab seems to be the place to go for extensive information on prefabs from all over the world.

We took a trip to look at all the different lots for sale at the Black Forest Colony.

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The name "Villa Straylight" comes from a fictional house in William Gibson's book Neuromancer. It is the home of the Tessier-Ashpool family who appear in the Sprawl trilogy novels. The family owns Freeside, a space station shaped like a spindle constructed in high orbit. The family resides in the Villa Straylight, which occupies one end of the spindle.

[via Wikipedia]