Category: neighborhood

For Those Living Without A Trust Fund

December 14, 2019

Brooklyn has become the scorching hot real estate market that Manhattan was in the 1970s: a middle class ghetto surrounded by wealth, eye-popping net worths and double-digit property appreciation. Or at least that’s the case for what is referred to as “downtown Brooklyn”, a collection of tony neighborhoods like Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens and DUMBO. Thanks to what’s left of rent control and stabilization, while there are still legacy denizens living in those neighborhoods, one can’t even think about being their neighbors today without a generous Wall Street executive salary.  The average 2019 monthly rent paid

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Guess what I found hibernating under my kitchen extension?

February 3, 2013

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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My 15ms Of Fame

February 25, 2012

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.