Upstate Vintage Living

Our River Home – 5 Years Later

Despite a speedy 6-month renovation, we have spent the past 4 1/2 years working to bring joy to every corner of our home and renovating along the way.

In order to adhere to our motto, we have constantly been making improvements and adding new antiques and collectibles that bring us joy. On the five-year anniversary of finishing a majority of the renovations, we thought it was time to share our home. It took a lot of love and hard work, but it was well worth it. A lot of furniture and decorations have come and gone, yet the memories made here will last a lifetime!

Entryway

Living Room

Library/ Media Room

Kitchen/ Eat-in Dining Room

Mud Room/ Den

Downstairs Bathroom

Upstairs Guest Bathroom

Guest Bedroom

Elisabeth’s Bedroom

Home Office

Master Suite – Bedroom

Master Suite – Bathroom

Sunday Morning Garlic Scape Pesto

As usual, the Sunday morning ritual in our household is to work in the kitchen for the first few hours. Today, Emily began by getting together the baby-back ribs and pasta salad for dinner and then worked with Elisabeth to make one of our favorite sauces that we freeze to use year round: Garlic Scape Pesto.

This is a very simply recipe and can be made entirely with fresh ingredients! Yesterday, while at the Troy Farmers Market we bought three bunches of garlic scapes and picked a colander full of fresh basil from our garden. Together we made containers of pesto to freeze to use throughout the year. Following the pictures is a simply and easy to follow recipe. Hope you enjoy!

Garlic Scape Pesto

Easy, 10 minute sauce for pasta dishes, marinades, or drizzles!

Ingredients:

3 Bunches of Garlic Scapes (Find them at your local Farmer’s Market)

2 Cups of Fresh Basil

1 Cup of Olive Oil (Or more depending on how thick you want the pesto)

A Few Tablespoons of Shaved Parmesan Cheese

Instructions:

Wash the garlic scapes and basil.
Add the garlic scapes, basil, olive oil, and Parmesan cheese to a large food processor.
Blend the ingredients until thoroughly blended and transfer to storage containers. (We opt to use freezer containers and freezer paper so we can stockpile the pesto for winter months).

Our First Christmas in New York

Crazy to think that almost a year ago we put an initial offer on the house and have been living in New York for seven months! Elisabeth has finished her first semester of college at the University at Albany and we have been settling in quite nicely. This Christmas we are excited to be celebrating the new house and the hard work and manual labor that has made this house a home!

At this point, all the big projects have been completed – from the patio, tool shed, new roof, to the decoration of each nook-and-cranny. All the boxes have been unpacked and all that is left to do is enjoy our new home! The house is decked out for Christmas and we look forward to what the new year will bring.

Our House is Becoming a Home

June 2015

Our house is turning into a home! At this point, besides putting up woodwork and painting some walls, all that is left is small projects. Due to our inability to find good and affordable workers in New York, we hired construction workers from Vermont to come down to do the roof and build the tool shed. Due to our expansive views of the river, we decided to have a stone patio installed on the side of the house. We hired local landscape contractors, Vasto & Son, to do the patio which houses the grill and a fire-pit made by Rick. The patio came out fantastic and serves as our favorite spot for summertime cookouts and fall s’mores. Since we got such a good price on the house, we decided to install a six-person therapeutic hot tub that nicely fits on our newly built patio. Nothing beats sitting in the hot tub looking at the passing barges. We had an above-ground swimming pool put in shortly after. We decided on an above-ground pool, as an in-ground would have been extremely expensive due to the backyard being all shale making digging costly. Our home, like all of the houses in the hamlet, is on a well and like many of them has water issues. Therefore we have to be careful when showering, doing dishes, doing laundry, and filling the pool/ hot tub. Once both the pool and hot tub were installed, we hired a water tanker to fill both. It is hard to believe with living on the Hudson River we have a water issue!

Besides the outside of the house, the pantry and coat closets in the den have been roughed in, now all that needs to be installed is the doors. Instead of putting new drywall up for the ceilings in the den and library, we decided to install corrugated steel roofing. This addition was cost-effective and brought an industrial twist to the decor of the given rooms. Most of the boxes are unpacked and for the most part, all the rooms are livable (at least for now).

Packing Up

May 2015

It has been a little over a month since we have been living full-time in New York. Our house in Vermont sold, so we have been busy packing up one house and unpacking at another. With our house sold in Vermont, we hired a moving company to bring the bulk of our furniture – which took 3 loads. We had a terrible experience with the moving company, seeing as the initial quote they gave was 3 times less than what they actually charged. When we questioned them about the change in price, they threaten to dump our stuff in a field in the middle of Vermont. On the day of delivery, the movers quickly unpacked the moving vehicle and in the process ruined or broke various pieces. The movers put a finger through a very expensive Hudson River painting that was given to us and also dropped a large antique dollhouse breaking pieces of the roof. We were beyond happy to see them back down the driveway.

Getting Ready for Our Spring Move-in

April 11-13th

We were trying to decide whether or not April 19th would be our final day in Vermont, we decided yes. That meant that we would work non-stop and if we were not working, we would be sleeping! Rick transferred with the Plumbers Union to a job in Malta, NY in March. Therefore, he was able to work on the house after work and on weekends in the weeks that followed. We were left in Vermont to pack in the freezing temperatures, coming down every weekend to join him.

During the week of April 11th, we arrived on Thursday to find my bathroom roughed in, plywood on the kitchen counters, and more sheetrock up. During our prior trip, we hired painters to paint four of the interior rooms. Upon arrival, we found that the painters never showed up to paint, which was a problem as the moving trucks were coming in less than a week. Due to this, we took on the task of painting and cleaning the entire weekend. Emily painted four rooms and started to unpack some boxes. Painting in the dark with temporary lighting made for an interesting paint job. Elisabeth spent the majority of the weekend mopping/shining the floors and washing the walls and woodwork. Rick worked on odd jobs (got the closets roughed in) and finished Elisabeth’s bathroom for the most part. We slept in the house for the first time on Sunday on two blowup mattresses in what would end up being Elisabeth’s bedroom. We worked every night until midnight with makeshift lighting and headlamps. It may not seem like a lot, but we got so much done this weekend.

Weekend Overhaul

April 4th–6th

Everybody has been on overhaul as we are nearer to our move-in date. Rick has remained at the house to work on the plumbing, sheetrock, and pretty much anything else. We arrived on Friday to find the kitchen cabinets up and appliances in. Most of the outer walls were sheetrocked and Rick had started the plumbing. The electrical was finished (at least we thought so). We ran into major problems with the electricians we hired due to their quality of work and inability to do the job we hired them for. We learned in this project who not to hire! We really missed the fantastic contractors we used in the Northeast Kingdom, they could teach these contractors a few things about quality work.

That weekend the trees were taken down in the backyard. We hired excavators that were recommended to level the yard and cut the trees, and we were billed 3 times higher than the original quote. Once the excavators dug out the cement patio at the back of the house, water damage was discovered which was expected.

Time to Rebuild

February & March 2015

Amidst a very cold and snowy winter, we began our weekend trips with U Hauls packed with furniture from Vermont. We began putting blue board, insulation, and sheetrock up.

Rick was in New York and became sick for the first time in years. We had him go to the local walk-in clinic, where he was told he had bronchitis. With him sick in bed, we made our way down that weekend. We went to Home Depot and Lowes to price out numerous items. Rick met us at the house on Saturday and we began putting up insulation. With the help of family and friends, we were able to insulate much of the downstairs.

For the kitchen, instead of paying the astronomical prices of buying new, we decided to buy a never-used set of kitchen cabinets from Wright’s Auction House in Derby, VT. One of Elisabeth’s former teachers and close family friends painted the wooden kitchen cabinets in Vermont. We then lugged our kitchen cabinets in the first U-Haul load.

We needed to make the house livable, so we could at least sleep and use the bathroom there. Therefore, the goal was to get one of the bedrooms and bathrooms operating. We were excited at the prospects of getting rid of the makeshift toilet in the garage and becoming slightly more civilized! When the time came, Elisabeth’s bedroom and the upstairs bathroom were ready to move into.

Demolition Weekend

January 2015

The first few days of the renovation consisted of the second-best part of buying fixer-uppers – DEMOLITION! In moving to New York, we were lucky to have been surrounded by family and friends who helped throughout the renovation. For the first stages of renovation, we stayed with family who lived in the area.

Our new house is where we celebrated Rick’s 50th birthday with no heat, electricity, or water. This has been one of the coldest winters in recent years here in New York. Yet, despite this, we made the most of the weather and enjoyed every second of his birthday. The first few weeks were filled with a lot of father-daughter bonding, consisting of demolition. Emily was thankful to be in New York, as the Northeast Kingdom was having thirty below temperatures at the time.

Here starts our journey to making this Hudson River house our home!

Previewing Our Fixer-Upper and Imagining the Possibilities

JANUARY 10, 2015

In October of 2014, we put an offer on a major fixer-upper in New York, receiving the deed and keys in early January of 2015. The house is an 1839 farmhouse that was converted into a three-family apartment. We paid $28,000 for the house, so you can imagine the work that needed to be done. Below starts our journey of buying our fixer-upper and rehabbing the house into a home!

Before

Since the house was converted to a three-family a couple decades before we bought it, the layout and purposes of the rooms changed. Below, are the pictures from our first walk-through of the house with what the rooms became.

Outside of the House