2012

Extreme Renovations

If you’re one of those homeowners who looks disapprovingly at renovations which destroy the period character of the building, you’re gonna need a defebrilator after reading this story. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/9724800/18th-century-French-chateau-bulldozed-by-mistake.html 18th-century French chateau razed ‘by mistake’ by builders while owner was away PARIS — Residents of a sleepy French village in Bordeaux have been left dumbfounded after discovering their local 18th-century chateau was completely bulldozed “by mistake.” The mayor’s office in Yvrac said Wednesday that workers who were hired to renovate the grand 13,000-square-meter (140,000-square-foot) manor and raze a small building on the same estate in southwest France mixed them up. […]

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Hacker’s Guide to Wireless Audio

Okay, it’s not really a guide because it’s peculiar to my hardware and I don’t completely comprehend why it’s working and I took a lot of wrong turns to get here. But it works! Here’s some background: I work from home and I like to have music playing in the background downstairs, not in my office. For some reason, it takes the edge off the cabin fever having music playing in another room rather than blasting in my face. At first I did this by tuning in an FM radio station on my receiver in the living room. Later, I

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From the Brooklyn Row House mail sack

I received an email today from a producer of a new home show looking for volunteers with a troublesome room in their house that they want renovated… for free! A prerequisite is that you must own your place and be within 35 miles of NYC. You can read the rest in the boilerplate below: Do you (or someone you know) have a bland or boring room? Does it not reflect your personality or style? Does it fill you with shame? We’re looking for unique and interesting homeowners, who have a boring room they’d like to see transformed. Right now a

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Bay Ridge to get our own Jersey Shore reality show. Lucky us.

If you ask anyone on the streets of Bay Ridge about Oxygen Network’s upcoming Brooklyn 11223 reality show you’ll get a blank stare. Nobody’s heard of it. While it’s been filming around Bay Ridge since last September, there have been a lot of Hollywood crews around here lately, from the TV shows Pan Am, Blue Bloods and Law & Order SVU to feature films like What Happens in Vegas, White Irish Drinkers and Cop Out. It was easy for it to get lost in the crowd of bigger budget productions. But when you tell those folks what the show is

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My 15ms Of Fame

At the end of August last year, there were reports of the Google Street Views car being seen around the neighborhood. For the half dozen or so people on the planet who don’t know what Street View is, it’s a terrific value-added feature that the Google Maps folks created by photographing many if not most of the primary and secondary streets around the world. Using Street View you can not only see a satellite view of your location but actual cached photos. It’s also rather hard to miss the Google car as it’s about as subtle as a Oscar Meyer

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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.