Welcome to the official site of the Staruk's Chester, MA getaway

See how an overgrown foundation can turn into a home

Located in the secluded town of Chester Massachusetts, this property contains 187 acres of wilderness. In fall of 2001 Mark came across an ad for this property in the Country Journal. Then on his next "trip to nowhere" he decided to take a look. We walked the property and fell in love with it. It has everything you could ever want, Many trails throughout the property, The Westfield river, A build able foundation, A small frog pond and A cabin with stream in the backyard to stay in while the house is built. Then our dreams were shattered when our bid was denied in January 2001. We then moved on and had almost forgotten about the property when more than a year later in May of 2002. We decided to call and see if the property was sold. We were informed that it hadn't and immediately put in another bid. This time it was accepted and in June of 2002 we closed on the property.

Now see through the following pictures how we are turning these forest lands into our home away from home.

Our cabin that Sits on the bottom corner of the property.
Inside the cabin Fall 2001

Behind the Cabin
Two of the property boundaries
The Westfield River and the railroad tracks

The overgrown Stone Foundation
Purchased June 2002
After some clearing Summer 2002
Clearing out the inside of the foundation
After many wheelbarrow loads of brush and debris
Summer 2003 was spent clearing around the foundation and doing some site work
Inside the cabin before and after. The bathroom has also been re-done but there isn't many pictures of the cabin

The first framing - Veterans Day Weekend. This was the last progress made for 2002 due to winter
Sophie & Orig. Owner (1964?)
Sophie now
 In June 2003 we were able to have a crew every day for two weeks and made a lot of progress
This Fall has been focused on making the house weather tight. We are using some new products such as PVC Trim,
Plastic Slate and Pre-Stained shingles.

lso this fall we did some concrete work to prepare for the excavation of the cellar hole below the kitchen. The inside stone work for these walls had collapsed In order to strengthen them a wall had to be built on the inside and filled with concrete. This was done on the rainy Columbus Day weekend.

If any other work is done I will put those pictures in otherwise see you next spring

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