Nothing here is waiting on you. No list taped inside a cabinet door, no quote you keep meaning to call back about, no weekend already promised to a project. You pull in under trees that have been shading this yard for close to 60 years, stone at the entry, new siding and new windows catching the light underneath, and the only thing left to decide is where the couch goes.
The leaves move overhead and the day you just had starts letting go of you before you reach the door. Open it and the living room lifts with the roofline. A wide picture window puts the yard right in the room. Against the staircase stands a floor to ceiling fluted wall in deep espresso wood, and you will catch yourself looking at it again on your w
ay back to the kitchen, where white cabinets, quartz counters, stainless appliances and a veined tile backsplash come up bright under the lights, and the island becomes wherever everybody stands. Here is what matters once you own it. All of that was replaced.
Kitchen, both bathrooms, floors, interior doors, lighting, siding, windows. The roof is newer, the heating system is 2 years old, and the water heater was just installed. No first project, no second project, no winter spent waiting on a contractor. Your bedroom is on the main floor with its own bathroom, a glass walk in shower that runs hot, and a backlit mirror that makes a 6 a.m.
alarm easier to forgive. Three more bedrooms upstairs cover the home office, the hobby, and whoever comes to stay. The lower level is finished, which is where the rainy afternoons go. Out back, the sliding doors off the dining area open to a patio, and a few steps further to the new deck.
Behind it the ground rises in tiered fieldstone walls, natural stone steps climb to a second level of lawn, and the shade up there is the kind no new build can hand you. You will eat out there later than you planned, more often than you expect. The address says Middletown.
The schools are Pine Bush. Circleville Elementary and Middle are roughly 4 miles off, the Galleria at Crystal Run is about 5 minutes away, and the Middletown station on the Port Jervis line sits barely a mile from the door, with Route 17 and I-84 right there for the days Manhattan, 70 miles southeast, is on the schedule.
Weekends fill themselves. Saturday morning at the market at Erie Way Park, dinner at Oak & Reed downtown, a tasting at Brimstone Hill or Bashakill Vineyards, LEGOLAND about 15 minutes away in Goshen, Storm King on a pass from Thrall Library. The Pine Bush UFO Fair comes every May, the Orange County Fair every July, and the summer headliners on the lawn at Bethel Woods are under an hour away. The hard part is already finished here. The trees just keep getting better.
