Category: multimedia

Forward to the Past

October 13, 2013

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

Loading

Read More »

Hacker’s Guide to Wireless Audio

April 12, 2012

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

Loading

Read More »

Netflix + Roku = HBO Killer?

August 12, 2010

I’ve been very happy with DirecTV’s service here but the monthly bill is like a car loan. Or at least mine is thanks to my soup-to-nuts Platinum HD DVR package. Over the past year I’ve been on a mission to trim the monthly nut. Quitting tobacco products in May 2009 was a great start. So was dumping my $119/month aDSL service with Speakeasy.net in December, moving this server to Panix.com and installing Roadrunner at home. Okay, I didn’t really save anything with that but I got a lot more bang for the buck. Next on the plate was my crippling

Loading

Read More »
Scroll to Top

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.