We just bought ourselves a "country house"! No, we aren't moving out of New York, we just added a second "country" home. Fortunately, John doesn't need to be in NYC very much, so he'll be in the country house almost full time and Campbell will be out on weekends and whenever else he can get away. The house is in Harmony Township, in Warren County, NJ. The area is really lovely, mostly farmland and still quite rural.
The house was built in 1895 and has wood clapboard siding and a slate roof. All of the original moldings (interior and exterior) and fireplace mantels are intact and in good shape. One half of the basement has a dirt floor and is perpetually damp, the other half has a cement floor and is damp only when it rains. Fortunately, the sump pump works… There are two post & beam barns (built in 1847) and everything sits on 4.2 acres of sloping hillside, including a large area behind the house with lawn, a wooded section further up the hill, and near the top of the hill a large open field about the size of a football field. The front of the house faces West, towards the Delaware River (which is out of sight from the house, but you can see the mountains and the Delaware Wind Gap).
The house was in pretty good shape when we bought it (or so we thought), but we've found plenty of things that needed immediate attention! The smaller of the two barns was rotting and had to be taken down, but the big barn is in pretty good shape, and we put a new door (12' x 11') and some new siding on it. The back door of the house was just a storm door and fell apart a few days after we moved in, so it's been replaced with a proper wooden door. We had the slate roof repaired, and since one of the chimneys was unused and was crumbling, we had it removed below the roofline. The other chimney was falling apart only as far down as the attic but is essential to the boiler, so it's been rebuilt. We added heat to the enclosed back porch so Campbell can use it as his studio, and one of the bedrooms has been turned into John's studio.
There's a Home Depot, Wallmart, Staples, grocery store, multiplex movie theatre, and shopping mall within an 8 minute drive, and the local vet is even closer. Could life get any better?
So where exactly is the house? About an hour and 25 minutes' drive from our garage on 15th street in NYC. Here's an overview map, showing where it is in relation to New York (the house is in Harmony Township, on the left of the map). Phillipsburg isn't shown on the map, but it's the tiny red dot to the right of Easton.
And of course, we expect all our friends to come out often to visit - we have a guest room (the two windows above the front porch) and assuming space is available, we'd be happy to see you!