Dream Home, The Sequel

Ultimate Postmodern in New Paltz

by Jennifer Farley and photographs by Deborah Degraffenreid, August 26, 2011

Raised in Red Hook but a Williamsburg pioneer since 1981—when punk rockers ruled the neighborhood—artist Paula Kucera never imagined she’d be raising 19 sheep along with two Waldorf-educated children, and long-married to David Kucera, who owns a specialty concrete business in Gardiner.

But what’s truly ironic is that the family’s second attempt at building a “dream house”— this time, a zero-net-energy dwelling constructed around the skeleton of a repurposed 1850’s barn frame—effortlessly casts their activities and belongings in a way that’s actually more organically architectural than the wholly contemporary first one.
The Kuceras’ debut dream home, a picturesque cube they designed, built, and ultimately sold to Hudson Valley weekenders, fortunately proved a great investment. Its timely sale also helped fund the simpler, back-to-the-land way the funky family of four lives today.

In 1996, the newlyweds, who met in a Brooklyn bar, stretched financially to purchase a 72-acre farm bordering Albany Post Road in New Paltz that featured a stately white barn, grain silo and other vintage outbuildings. Soon they began designing, and actually building themselves, an extremely modern showplace at an elevated point on the property.