Think Small

KUDOS TO ISLIP, LONG ISLAND. The Suffolk County town has adopted a 918-square-foot, 2BR, 1 bath Craftsman-style cottage, shown above in a rendering from The New York Times – similar to those built for some flood victims in New Orleans — as the model for new homes to be built and sold to families making less than $40,000.

As the Times reported last Sunday, the enlightened members of the town’s Community Development Agency enthusiastically embraced the diminutive “Katrina” for a number of very good reasons:

• they’ll cost only $100,000 to build, using volunteer labor supplied by Habitat for Humanity
• they’ll be cheaper to live in than the 1,200-square-foot, 3 BR ranches previously built by non-profits as affordable housing
• it will be less expensive to own than to rent for the people lucky enough to buy the houses (applicants will be chosen by lottery)
• their size will suit the needs of the many single-parent families and single individuals who require affordable housing
• their architecture is in context with the neighborhood, which dates mostly from 1890 to 1920
• they’ll fit onto 50′x100′ lots and still have decent-sized yards
• they have front porches like in the old days, solar panels, and energy-efficient appliances (but no basements or air conditioning)

I think this is just so brilliant. The original Levittown houses were only 750 square feet plus an attic, which many families converted to a dormitory bedroom. (I remember visiting friends whose parents had done just that, and I was jealous. It was cozy as can be, with those exotic slanted ceilings. And that family had four children.)

The Times quotes the chairman of the Islip Community Development Agency, Christopher Bodkin, saying he raised two sons, now grown, in a 1784 cottage in Sayville measuring 625 square feet, and it was “perfectly adequate.” That sounds a bit tight even to me, who thinks “cozy” is the highest accolade you can give a house. But when it become the norm for suburban houses to measure 5,000 square feet, in the expansive ’80s, that was going in a misguided, wasteful, greedy direction. McMansions, ugh.

My personal theory is that 400 square feet per person is all you really need, with the important caveat that you also have some outside space. My present house is 800 square feet, and I’m swimming in it. I have two rooms I don’t go into (the 2nd bedroom and the porch, unused in the winter). The house would be ideal for 2 or 3 people.

I’m a big fan of small. Especially small and cute. Look how much the Katrina resembles an older Greenport house, above, I blogged about some weeks ago.

It’s a design with real charm, methinks. The only thing I don’t like about the Katrina is the vinyl siding.

Famous Raccoons of the East End

Illustration, above, by Ryan Berkley. Go here to see all his delightful animal portraits.

MY ALL-TIME TOP BLOG POST is not about old houses, or gardens, or any of the things I usually write about. It’s a one-off about a raccoon that broke (or fell) into my house one night last summer when I was foolish enough to leave a skylight open. Every day, at least 100 people find my blog by searching on the word “raccoon.”

A friend of mine, knowing this, came up with a brilliant idea to drive traffic to my blog: write more about raccoons. Now I doubt many of those unsuspecting raccoon researchers stick around to become regular readers of casaCARA, if raccoons is what they’re interested in. But I decided it couldn’t hurt my numbers.

It turns out my raccoon is not the only famous raccoon on the East End of Long Island. There was Buster, who lived with the eccentric Beale sisters of Grey Gardens fame, and was fed every day. Buster, in fact, is the nom de blog of a fellow who runs a site about Grey Gardens.

Then there’s the raccoon monster of Montauk, a poor creature that washed up on the beach in the summer of ’08 and engendered much speculation as to what it was, until it was determined that it was, in fact, a drowned raccoon.

But getting back to my raccoon, I think he may still be living nearby. One thing about freshly fallen snow, you get to see who your visitors are. The other day, there were some raccoon-sized tracks leading under the front deck.

 

BOTTOM FISHING: New Year’s Price Cuts

Montauk hilltop house, 512K

IT’S A NEW YEAR, and there are some new real estate prices to go with it. Lower ones.

According to Michael Daly’s Hamptons real estate blog, there are more foreclosures, 30% price drops in some cases, and lots of activity at the lower end of the market.

East Hampton cottage near Three Mile Harbor, 530K

So hie on over to streeteasy.com, where you can search for price changes within the last 2 days, and see what those motivated sellers have to offer.

I did. Here’s what I liked among recently reduced properties (remember, these are still asking prices). Click on links below for more pics and info.

Montauk 2BR on 1/3 acre, view of Fort Pond and small ocean view, top, 512K

Nothing cottage on 3/4 acre in East Hampton, above, adjacent to nature preserve and Three Mile Harbor, below, 530K

Three Mile Harbor, East Hampton

Still crazy expensive compared to, say, the Hudson Valley, where you can get a renovated Greek Revival on 10 acres for half a mil. It’s all relative, I guess. Around here, 500K is cheap. Sick.

Oh, Deer

THERE’S BEEN A SHIFT IN MY THINKING on deer, as on so many things lately.

Just the other day, I was yelling and rattling screens at them, worried they would devour my newly planted white pine, holly, and arborvitae, and whipping up big batches of peppery homemade deer repellent.

But yesterday, I saw three or four of them walking, gracefully as always, but more slowly it seemed, through the snow of my backyard. They tend to show up in the late afternoon. I imagined they looked thinner. They didn’t seem desperate (how would I know?), but I know there isn’t much for them to eat around here. And it’s been so cold.

I briefly thought of feeding them my table scraps, the bucket full that’s meant for the compost heap. But I read up a little, on a State of Michigan website, and realized that’s probably not a good idea. Deer aren’t pigs. They’re particular, and eat different kinds of foods according to the season. I don’t think they could do anything with my orange peels and coffee grinds anyway.

But I feel sorry for them, and I don’t want them to starve. One thing they do eat is dried oak leaves, and I’ve got plenty of those on the ground. I could expose more of them with a rake or shovel. And I’ve decided to relax about the shrubs. I can’t maintain a constant vigil. And they probably won’t kill them, just defoliate them a bit. Come spring, they’ll find more to eat in the woods.

But there’s still a lot of winter ahead.

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“Gotta get through January, gotta get through February…” – Van Morrison, Fire in the Belly

Use What You’ve Got

EAST HAMPTON AFTER

LAST FRIDAY I HAD LUNCH with Allegra Dioguardi, a longtime professional home stager (though she prefers the term ‘interior merchandising’) who calls her business Styled and Sold. We found we had much in common. We agreed that feng shui is essentially good design principles, that color is key, and cleanliness is next to godliness, especially when you’re trying to sell a house.

We both studied interior design at Parsons in New York; Allegra went on to design model homes on Long Island and spent 22 years in Maryland, building a home staging business and working with realtors and homeowners to ready properties for sale. Now she’s back on the Island, living in Sag Harbor. She has developed a training program for aspiring home stagers, wrote an e-book on the subject, and blogs at this industry site.

Both of us know — she from long experience, me from anecdotal evidence and common sense — how a professional’s fresh eye can speed up a sale and bring a better price (Allegra sold her own house in Maryland to the first person who showed up), especially in a market that’s fairly flooded with properties.

EAST HAMPTON BEFORE

Recently she added two-hour consultations with homeowners to her roster of services (her fee is $300). In the living room of the East Hampton house pictured at the top of this post (left, the miserable ‘before’), Allegra rearranged furniture for better function and flow, suggested painting the dark brick white, re-hung a ‘mish-mash’ of art to create stronger focal points, and generally de-cluttered. Not one thing was purchased anew, except a potted plant or two.

Allegra’s m.o. is to walk through the house with the client and have them take notes. All the while, she’s moving furniture, taking art off the walls and repositioning it, and making a pile of stuff to go into storage. In the case of the East Hampton house, the client called her handyman during the consultation to come over and help. “That was a first!”Allegra says. She then photographs the house and sends the client a list of additional suggestions.

There have been many times I’ve craved someone to come in and do just that, even when I’m not selling.

WESTHAMPTON BEFORE

When Allegra works with realtors, she’s frequently dealing with a property that has been emptied out.

Here’s how she staged a Westhampton living room, right and below, in a house intended for summer rental, from scratch.

WESTHAMPTON AFTER

Below, see how Allegra freshened up a kitchen to prepare a house for market, with new appliances, granite countertops recycled from another job, affordable cork flooring, and lots of white paint on the existing cabinets.

KITCHEN BEFORE

KITCHEN AFTER