2013

Forward to the Past

Leave a Comment / electrical, master bedroom, multimedia / By /

My very first DIY project at Brooklyn Row House was wiring the place for CAT5 ethernet. I decided to do this even before I had an inkling of what I intended to do with the place, or even where my office, bedroom and computers would eventually be located. In retrospect, if I’d guessed back then I would have been dead wrong. Streaming media was still pretty much of a pipe dream in 1999 but I knew it was coming Real Soon and I wanted to be ready for it. I needed a wire soffit between the three floors for cables […]

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What will $11 mil get me in Brooklyn?

Leave a Comment / bay ridge, old houses, real estate / By /

It’s a question that probably doesn’t get asked very often, but here’s an answer ready for it: the locally revered landmark “Gingerbread House” at 8820 Narrows Avenue in Bay Ridge, about a mile south of Brooklyn Row House. Not for nothing but this is a bargain compared to the unanswered 2009 asking price of $12 million. Nevertheless, it’s quite a bit more than the “under $1 milliion” that the current owners paid for it in 1985, which should give an indication of property valuations in this neck of Brooklyn over the past 20 years. https://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/real-estate/piece-brooklyn-storybook-bay-ridge-home-article-1.1333611 The house was built in

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Guess what I found hibernating under my kitchen extension?

Leave a Comment / brooklyn, neighborhood, wildlife / By /

I’ve posted a few articles about Brooklyn wildlife here over the years. Now I apparently have one of them as a roomate. Last week I broke a tile on my bathroom vanity and decided that today was a good day to fix it. I keep my spare tiles in a barely heated shed under my kitchen extension. As soon as I opened the door to the shed and the gamey smell hit my nose I knew that something wild was living in there. I assumed it was a feral cat or two until I saw a bunch of straw nesting

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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.