Not an ex-blog!

Yep, the blog is still here, along with me. I have several comments that folks have left - my apologies for not posting them - but I have not followed up on, mostly regarding Kasteel Noz. I have seen the website Mr. Noz has up, and when I get some spare time I'll definitely be contacting him to see what he'd like to share about his castle. Thanks to everyone for leaving the comments! On my end, that aforementioned transfer to NY has consumed most all of my spare time, I essentially only get 3 days at home - the rest are on the road where I can't spare much time to be looking for castle-related goodies on the interwebs and the 3 days off I have are spent playing catchup at home.

I know; excuses, excuses...

On the bright side, we have located a property in NY towards the mountainous side of Hudson River Valley that would suit our needs just dandily to build on. The acreage is right, it has a small running stream and is slightly sloping. Can you say millpond? I figure a little water wheel on a millhouse might generate enough electricity for a few lights, if nothing else it should be pretty to see and listen to. At any rate, we've started the ball rolling on the official process, so we'll see how it goes. Pretty exciting actually, a serious step towards a castle!

Comansion Castle burns?

I was visiting Dupontcastle.com to see how progress was going on their castle and decided to have a look at some of the castles on the site. When I came across Dupont Castle's Kasteel Noz entry, someone had emailed that they thought it had burned along with providing a link to a news video. After watching the video of the fire, it appears that it was Comansion Castle, another California castle. If you watch the video, around 0:38 you'll see the door that matches the one in the DupontCastle.com Comansion Castle post. Hopefully, Comansion will be rebuilt.

As a side note, I've had some folks point to the DupontCastle.com website as a source of castle information. While I certainly appreciate any information whatsoever given by readers, personally I don't want to "leech" off of Mr. Dupont's site. Any castle information posted here I dig up myself by wasting hours on the web searching. This time I've made an exception, I figure an owner-built castle burning was important enough to share via link to DupontCastle.com; but basically, unless the castle owner/builders have a website or someone independently writes or posts about it, I won't write about it here.

Edit: The video has been moved to the Comansion Castle entry on the site.

Interview with Peter Wing of Wings Castle

I was perusing the web again looking for more castles and double checking some of the older castle sites to make sure that they were still there when I happened across something neat.

Rachel Connolly did an excellent short interview with Peter Wing of Wing's Castle at Squgglebooth.com. Here's a direct link to the video, and a link to the squigglebooth site. There are some nice shots of the castle that aren't available online, as well as the reason why the castle exists, which is: "Why not?"

Hope you enjoy the video, I certainly did.

Also, Castle Rogues Manor has a shiny new website; and Darkling Castle (even though it has ceased to appear much like a castle) has some neat construction pictures, and finally the Home Castle Building site has disappeared.

Yet another castle design

Here's another sketchup model, this time a split level. The basement is open to a courtyard and the gatehouse. The "hall" is half below grade to remove some of the imposing height it might have, as well as give that side of the castle a more "homey" feel and provide earth-sheltering. I couldn't add much more detail, otherwise it would've gone over the 10MB 3dwarehouse limit. The gatehouse is the same that I've used in the past, and is slightly modified and smaller. I haven't yet put a garage on the building yet. Oh yeah, the little "+" all over the place are from sketchyFFD; it's a script that allows smooth deformation of surfaces - the ground in this case. Comments, as always, are welcome.

Land ho!

Despite the lack of posting on this site, things are still progressing behind the scenes, albeit slowly. We have settled on looking for a parcel of land in one of the aforementioned areas of New York, well away from New York City. Quite rural, actually. Just what we're looking for. We've contacted a realtor and are making a list of properties that we'd like to have a look at, we'll probably head out that way during the middle of this month or early next month. We've already taken one trip out just to see what it was like and if we'd even consider living there; it's a beautiful area with farmland and small towns, rolling landscape and not too distant mountains.

So at any rate, the idea is to see if we can get 10-20 acres. To be honest, we can't really afford it; (can one ever?) but even so, with the real estate market in the dumps and the interest rates so low, opting not to purchase at this point would be foolish as the land would be completely unaffordable later. I say unaffordable, but land is quite reasonable in the area we are looking, it's just another expense that we don't need. I'd like to think we could plop our big stone house on the land, but it may turn into an investment parcel due to the need to sell our current place first.

Leaded glass

No, this isn't the unobtrusive link I was mentioning in the previous post :) . This is simply a "you can do it too" post if you want to do your own leaded glass windows for your castle, or just to add that little bit 'o medieval to your house. I'm certainly no Louis Comfort Tiffany or Whitefriars artist, so If I can do it, the rest of you would-be castle builders can too.

For a total outlay of a couple hundred dollars, I wound up with enough glass and tooling to build this (and several other) windows. It's a little expensive up front for things like a glass grinder, cutting grid, scoring tools and the like, and especially the glass considering I broke my fair share before a got wise and took a lesson. My advice to you if you want to make leaded glass windows: Take A Lesson Or Two! It'll save you money in the long run.

I started off with a half-dozen piece pane at the lesson, and this is the first thing I've designed and built myself. I have several more pieces to make, and most are in the Arts & Crafts or Nouveau style. I also have some nice Medieval flavored pieces to make that will come up for sale here, or possibly on Ebay.

If you're on a budget I'd recommend craigslist.org for finding glass and tools, I've bought out 2 other folks selling home hobby studios. I wound up with a lot of glass that would've cost quite a bit for less than retail and I didn't have to pay shipping had I ordered it online.

Mihaly Castle & Studio

Robert Mihaly Studio

An owner-built castle and studio in Rougemont, NC. This castle has been under construction by the owner, Robert Mihaly, for the better part of a decade. The castle is a multi-purpose facility for the owner; it is not only a residence, but a studio, forge and a canvas for his art.

A very fanciful castle!

NY, USA

Well, things have changed around here in real life land. My company has closed the branch I in the city I work in completely (one major distraction and PITA), and I have been involuntarily displaced to another location: New York. For the time being, it looks like a commute will be in order, and that will be difficult only being home a few days a week as opposed to my current schedule which allowed me to be home every night in addition to the days off if I chose.

What's my grousing got to do with castles, you ask? Yet another blog disintegrating into whinging and complaining? No. As a matter of fact, this shove out of my comfy-chair lifestyle location is a kick in the pants to get going with building a dream. We will likely move to NY by the end of 2009 and hopefully sell our home at our current location in Massachusetts as well. The plan is that we'll temporarily rent for a little bit in a NY area that we'd consider settling in, get to know the area and see if it's where we want to be for the long haul, and get our finances squared away. We can also finally search for land to build on! The purchase probably won't happen for a couple of years, but compared to waffling over what to build, where to build and when, this is the light at the end of the tunnel. We are looking at the West side of the Hudson due to cheaper land with lower taxes, and we'll take a drive there at the beginning of next month to see the area and how the drive to the metropolitan area will be. I've even come up with a not-so-serious "working title" for the castle: Yanyca Castle (Yet another New York Castle), because there's so many castles in NY already... Trust me, it's not permanent. It'd be nice to build in one of the rural towns more upstate, like Wurtemburg. Wurtemburg Castle. Savillon Castle. Yeah...those names have a nice old-world ring to them.

I'm also getting a little farther along in stained glass (I'm not paying anyone to make my castle windows pretty for me!) and have been working on several designs, one of which is currently on the table being assembled (another distraction). These will be sold to make money with the intent of using it to bolster the finances for a better down payment on property. A non-obtrusive, non-offensive link will appear sometime featuring the pieces as they come up for sale.

Blog hits go the way of the market, Polls

I have Google Analytics on this site, just to satisfy my curiosity and to assure myself that more than the few folks that post comments are bothering to view the site. The hits have tanked in the last 5 days, literally dropped to almost half, and stayed down. Don't know why; it could be the economy has put a damper on viewer's castle dreams or maybe Google has simply adjusted how hits are counted. Hope it's just the latter.

On another note, I was looking at the poll results so far. The results so far seem to indicate that would-be builders are interested in 5,000 sq. ft. plus castles that cost over $300K, would be built with a contractor's services and are made of natural materials. I get the first three just fine; but there seems to be a bit of a disconnect between the first three and the final most selected item, the natural materials. To build an expansive, large building from natural stone using a contractor's services will cost more than $300K, a LOT more. Perhaps respondents are not replying to all 3 polls and the ratio is off. At any rate, there are a lot of big, expensive, stone castles wanting to be built out there.

Another castle building site

Here's a site that looks pretty new and clams that it's purpose is to take you through the steps of building a castle from planning to moving in. Not much there yet, but we'll have to see what happens. The owner is positioning himself in a pretty narrow market (I speak from experience!); but who knows, in this small community any additional information and support has to be a good thing, right?

Here it is: Home Castle Building

Good luck!