DeJoux House

Yesterday it rained so hard that we couldn't really do anything at the house. Today more than made up for it. The weather was spectacular. Tommy Lee, Laurie, Spencer and Hailey were our first guests and we sat on the lawn and carved pumpkins for halloween. We opened all the windows and doors and let some air into the place. The musty old house smell started to wear off (or we are just getting used to it now)>. We opened up the basement too and found some wonderful blue stone steps, a blue stone patio and a cool old door into the basement. We machete'd our way around the whole perimeter of the property. It took us about 4 hours but the view of the Wallkill river was worth it. It was calm, quite and beautiful. I can't wait until we have a little boat dock there. To the right side of the pond is a huge weeping willow tree that must be hundreds off years old. Daniel and I were wondering if we could to build a stone bridge in front of this with culvert s for the...

We now own The DeJoux House on Springtown Road. The previous owner, Dr June Finer, was amazing. She left the house wonderfully clean and left a lot of historic documentation including a map of New Paltz from 1790 which shows the house as one of only 35 houses in New Paltz . There was also a magazine article about how the previous owners put the new roof over the old shingle roof in order to protect the hand hewn beams and original roof . We also found one of the original wooden gutters at the back of the garden. I also met the neighbor Richard (the Duck man who I met when we first looked at the house). He told us the house had a lot of history and that the road in front of the house was originally called the "Albany Post Road" which was the main road through the area to Albany. Apparently George Washington went daily along the road in front of the house when traveling from his headquarters in Newburgh to visit his armies. Who knows, he could have stopped in for...

Daniel and I have just returned from the Cotswolds. We've decided that DeJoux house needs a significant number of dry stone walls. In fact, we've decided that we are willing to fore go birthday and Christmas gifts from friends and family in favor of a contribution to the DeJoux Stone Wall Fund. Please use the donate widget on this site to contribute to this fund. Thank you.

Yesterday, October 10th 2009, we got permission to close from the bank. The closing date has been set for Friday, October 23rd. We were only waiting for the survey from the surveyors office which arrived Thursday morning. The survey confirmed that the property is 9.46 acres and that we have 410 ft of river frontage along the Wallkill River. The pond is 380 ft. long and at it's widest part 144 ft. wide. In total the pond is three quarters of an acre (over 3600 square yards). Plenty of room for boating and swimming. The island in the middle of the pond is nearly 3000 square feet.

Daniel has found some wonderful reference materials for keeping the history and character yet not making it a museum. I love the big kitchen table plan for the kitchen inspired by Lutyens and some "behind the scenes" pictures of victorian kitchens. He also showed me some country houses from Axel Vervoordt that I really love. http://bit.ly/uX1eW Simple, authentic yet modern. We discussed putting a full length plate glass window in the old hay loft window on the end of the house. Wow. I can't wait.

We received notice today that the buried oil tank in the garden at DeJoux House has been successfully removed. There was no leakage or environmental issues and we have certification to that effect. One more obstacle down on the race to closing. We have the survey completed, the search (other than some of the documents from the town hall) and all that is left is HSBC to complete the appraisal.