About Overlook Cottage
Overlook Cottage is a small home on 2/3 acres of land located in the beautiful Hudson Valley of New York State. Though we don’t overlook a beautiful view, we are blessed with vistas of the Hudson River, the Appalachian Mountains, the Catskill Mountains, and many beautiful lakes within just minutes of our home. We purchased land with a south facing backyard, flagpole, and detached garage in the early 1990’s. The house came with it.
The house we purchased was a one-story Cape Cod with attic space. It was already over 40 years old and needed a new roof, a new furnace, a new kitchen, etc. It is very hard to find that affordable “dream” home, so over the years, we renovated it. Now our cottage is a modest two-story home with a front porch, new roof, we are on our second furnace, and looking forward to the second round of updating our kitchen. We have learned to embrace renovation, upgrades, and capital improvements over the 30 years of home ownership. “Enjoy the journey” they say. However, we have gotten overwhelmed a time or two with too much to do, too many projects going on at the same time, and then the normal business of work, life, and family.
We have not only planned renovations, additions, and improvements, we have done them all ourselves. Through our adventures and misadventures, we have learned quite a bit about home ownership, project management, budgeting, and scheduling, all the while maintaining what we have already changed. We have done most of this with the help of how-to manuals (remember we bought the house before the “internet” even existed), and now YouTube videos, and blogs. Through this chaos, we have learned how to stay better organized with home matters by developing our own Palace Portfolio.
Keeping track of all parts of your home and property in one place will benefit you as a house manager. There is an abundance of information that needs to be readily available for the homeowner such as the manufacturer of your furnace, the model and serial number, who installed it and when, the warranty, and most important the original receipt. Now multiply that by air conditioners, appliances, water heaters, roofs, smoke and CO2 detectors, just to name a few household fixtures. That is only the beginning of the long list of items and services that need to be tracked and recorded. With all this information in your Palace Portfolio, it will be a great feature to include when selling your home by giving the new owner an educated background on the house, its maintenance, and its amenities.
The Palace Portfolio has helped us better control everything going on around here and we believe it will benefit you too. We hope our experiences, whether we failed or succeeded, will help you. Enjoy our blogs about many different facets of home matters. If you have questions pertaining to the Palace Portfolio please contact us at OverlookCottage.BMS@gmail.com. We cherish the fact you came to visit and we look forward to seeing you often.