Category: home improvement

Brooklyn Row House migrated

July 7, 2019

Not the house, the site.  Brooklynrowhouse.com has been running on the Drupal content management system since 2006. But that version(v6)  was really old and was essentially pre-mobile. Google Analytics was giving me grief about the mobile issues.  What really closed the deal for WordPress is that the upgrade path for Drupal has always been painfully steep. In the interim I’ve picked up WordPress consulting jobs so it made sense to ditch Drupal and just push everything to WordPress. I actually have a lot of relevant house/DIY-centric content to write about.  For instance, there’s my new ISY994i home automation controller and

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Beware door-to-door scammers

August 27, 2018

This is a story from 2015 that I posted on another house blog site but neglected to post on my own. Maybe I wanted to keep contentious articles off Brooklyn Row House at the time. Whatever, it involves a large home improvement products company, Andersen. This isn’t a knock on the Andersen product — well, it sort of is — but a complaint about their local franchisee, Renewal by Andersen, a contracting offshoot. This one had a 631 area code (Long Island) but were working south Brooklyn at the time. Disclaimers up front: the dishonesty I dealt with may be

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Extreme Renovations

December 15, 2012

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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From the Brooklyn Row House mail sack

March 15, 2012

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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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.