DeJoux House

Over the last few weeks we've spent a lot more time at the house during the week (which is more than can be said for our contractor who hasn't done anything at the house for five weeks -  with no explanation of his abandonment of his responsibilities!).  But, lets not dwell on that irritation.  Earlier in August, Daniel was up at the house to meet with Tony the duct guy.   A car drove up and stopped in the drive and an older gentleman came over to speak to Daniel.  It turned out it was the oldest grandson of one of the previous owners Arthur Jorgensen (as referenced in some of my previous posts ).   He was on a driving tour of the area and had made a special trip to visit the house which he called "Arlomead".   Apparently this was the name of the house between 1941 and 1960.  This was a combination of the names of the owners Arthur and Lona combined with the Danish word "mead" which means house.     The gentleman, R...

View from the porch It's not uncommon for me to hold two entirely contradictory points of view at exactly the same time.  Part of the reason I have done two posts today is to share both the frustrations and the joys of the last two weeks.   In case you don't know, in the last two weeks we have had two of the top ten floods of all time on Springtown Road.   This hasn't particularly made the news in America but it certainly won't have made the news in the other parts of the world where I know there are people who read this blog. The first was post Hurricane Irene.  The ground was already pretty wet with the wettest August ever.  Everyone expected Irene to hit Manhattan hard but in the end it wasn't too bad.  What we hadn't planned for was the bands of heavy, heavy rain that hit upstate New York.   More than 10 inches of rain fell in 24 hours.  Then, to add insult to injury, another hurricane passed New York a week later (Hurrica...

Yes, we've been a little busy.  Sorry of the lack of updates, just at the point when every one was curious about what was going on.    Well, where to start.  Let me start with an update on the progress of the house, or rather lack of progress.  We have met several replacement electricians and two of them we really liked.  By chance, one of the them was also recommended by the owners of A Tavola, the best new restaurant in New Paltz.   We've become good patrons of that establishment and the owners are really friendly and make some amazing food.   We are waiting for proposals from Electricians and need to get that started quickly.   Brian the contractor has totally given up on our property.  He has not done anything to replace the electrician (we are doing that on our own!).  Still no sign of the guy who is meant to be stripping the doors and the beams.  The floor board that we have been waiting for, for 4 m...