2007

Bay window trim (almost) done.

Leave a Comment / cabinet making, carpentry, finish carpentry, hvac, master bedroom / By /

Sheesh. Another “almost” cop out. The issue here isn’t woodworking but thermodynamics. The steam radiator that Richie from Sessa Plumbing installed is something called an “element”. An element works on the convection principle: as hot air rises off the element, it expands and exits through a grill at the top. This creates a low pressure area underneath which pulls in cold air from the floor through a grill at the bottom. An element radiator usually comes in a butt-ugly metal cabinet. It’s what that missing panel under the middle window needs to replicate. I’m gonna give you a private snapshot […]

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It depends on what “almost” means…

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I’ve been looking forward to this day for months. Almost all the trim, the doors, cabinets, etc are done! What’s “almost”? By “almost” I mean that the center of operations moves downstairs to my shop. The remainder of the trim work — the cabinet doors and drawers, the panels under the bay window, the stained glass window, the overhead closet doors and even the curved baseboard moulding for the closet corner have to be fabricated. I need my stationary power tools for this stuff. “Almost” also means that I need to make a decision about whether or not to incorporate

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The Somerset (NJ) Woodworking Show – any NYC area bloggers going?

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Feb 16-18, 2007 Garden State Exhibit Center 50 Atrium Drive Somerset, NJ (exit 19, Route 287) Sponsored by Wood Magazine This will be like my 8th or 9th visit to this show. It’s like a crack house for woodworking junkies. Every conceivable tool, useful or not, is on display and usually being demonstrated. At least half of my present shop was purchased at one of these shows, including my Delta X Unisaw and Dewalt SCMS. I also load up on all my sandpaper, nitrile gloves and other consumables for the year. The prices are that good. If there’s an answer

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The Mystery of the Vanishing Paint Brushes

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I thought I was suffering from early dementia. Over the several months of this bedroom renovation I’ve lost a bunch of paint brushes. I’d clean them and stick them… hell, I don’t know where. I just couldn’t find them again. At least four reasonably new paint brushes were missing. What was even stranger is that several paint brushes that I thought I’d stored in my basement shop two flights down were also missing. Just the good ones with the soft bristles. I found them today, laying on the floor at the rear of my new closet. I know I didn’t

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How to blow $300 in three seconds

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Six years ago, I was building the bar for our new restaurant in Brooklyn Heights. The bar was four plywood cabinet carcasses with a laminated mahogany top. A friend of mine and I stood freezing in the unheated storefront staring at the chop saw, the bar, and a sixteen foot piece of 8″ rabbeted mahogany cap moulding we were going to use to trim the edge. The object of our fixation was a ninety degree corner. It’s a simple cut except when the moulding costs $18/lf and it’s the last last piece that Dykes has. We only had one chance

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The Mystery of the Ducts To Nowhere

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(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

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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.