Beacon

I'm riding the train south from Beacon to Grand Central Station. It's 6am. To the west is the river, mist-clothed. We pass Bannerman's Castle, an already junked 19th century knockoff of a medieval palace, rotting on an island. We pass a tugboat towing a barge laden with crushed cars, piled in stacks of 20. We pass bridges, boathouses, vacant factory buildings. The ticket man stops, punches my ticket, talks with the women behind me about someone's knee surgery.

It's my first commute down the Hudson River. We've just bought a house, and yes, we're moving in just two weeks.

You can see the photos of our house here, including pre- and post-demo. Even as I write contractors are there, spackling walls and sanding floors.

We closed Thursday 1/11 and began demoing Saturday. We started with the carpet then moved to the drop ceilings. They came out in about an hour. We left a layer of carpet padding down to protect the floors, which turn out to be fir, a softer wood but not so soft as pine, which is what we have upstairs. Should be lovely when finished. After the ceilings we pried off the fake wood paneling, likely installed in the late '70s, early '80s. That was a bitch. Inside the window frames were old cast iron window counter weights that had been clipped off and left in the wall when the windows were replaced some years ago. We have a box of 30 or so of those on the porch now. Odd that all this detritus now belongs to us. The messiest piece of the job was taking out the plaster wall that separated the living room from the dining room, thus creating a single large living area. We had to be a bit careful, since we knew there was a chimney in that wall, which we intended to leave standing. Most of the palster fell away when tested with a pry bar. Some had to be hammered. Small chunks remain which we'll chisel off later.

The main room now looks completely wrecked. I'm thrilled.

We met with contractors all that weekend: Hector for the walls and widening a door; Rocky for the picket fence; Kevin for the floors.

Also that day, the neighbors across the street had a first-day-of-summer porch BBQ and we went over for beers. Met a bunch of interesting people, three of them ex-brooklynites. Put my mind at ease about the kinds of people we might end up hanging out with. There are cool people in this town. One named Erin runs a design store and is about to open a beer and wine lounge next door to it. Another named Sean is a third generation glass artist and works in his father's giant glass studio in town. The neighbors, Jason and Carly, are very handy, have three cats and a dog, and I expect will end up being friends. They cooked venison on the porch, which sadly wasn't shot locally but was brought down from Maine by one of the people there, whose father hunts.

So it's real, we've done it! Now please, please everyone come visit. xo, z