January 2007

The Mystery of the Ducts To Nowhere

(Or “Why A Duct?”, with a tip o’ the hat to the Marx Bros) This house has ancient, single-pipe steam heating. From what I’ve been able to determine from digging in these walls over the past seven years is that it’s always had steam heating. Nothing interesting there. What’s baffling is why the house also has ancient metal air ducting buried inside the walls. I discovered this shortly after I moved here when I ripped down the basement ceiling and found three vertical ducts to nowhere. Over the past hundred years, various plumbers and electricians had used them for service […]

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I’ve been tagged

Chicago 2-Flat tagged me. For those who don’t know this Houseblogs game, if you’re tagged by another house blogger you’re supposed to reveal five things about yourself that most people don’t know. Then you tag five other house bloggers. Because of something I revealed about myself on this blog, I won This Old House Magazine’s Stupid Human Trick. So I don’t have much of a problem making an idiot of myself for a little attention. The challenge is finding five other house bloggers who haven’t been tagged already. Okay, here goes. I’m an Army brat who was born and partially

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Welcome to Brooklyn Row House

This blog is about the challenges of renovating an old (1903) Brooklyn, New York row house.

My last major renovation project was the master bedroom, most of which is about finish carpentry. You’ll find other completed home improvement projects in the Projects submenu at the top of this page.

I’m not a professional builder and don’t pretend to be. I’m just an experienced amateur raised in a family of committed DIYers. I try to closely follow local and national building codes but don’t mistake anything on this site to be professional or even accurate advice! Your mileage may and definitely will vary.

This is the third iteration of BrooklynRowHouse.com, from scratch-built to Drupal and now Wordpress. I hope you enjoy your time here.