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January 24, 2006

House of the Day: Mint But Missing Something

house
This new listing in Fort Greene from Brooklyn Properties has been nagging at us since we saw it online yesterday. Given how much carping we do about the importance of historic details, you'd think we'd be digging this place. But we're not. Is it the light fixtures? They're a bummer but can easily be changed. The landscaping? We could do without the amoeba-shaped design but that's not it either. What's really bugging us, we realize, are the floors. The combination of what appear to be new floors and what appears to be a very glossy finish clashes, in our opinion, with the true character of the house. We love our creaky old floors that we pieced back together with salvaged wood--they have an effect upon the feel of the house that can't be gotten with new wood. We've spoken to a handful of brownstone owners over the past year who tell us the biggest regret of their renovation was using new flooring. Anyway, all these things are fixable--even the floors--and the details (moldings, plasterwork, fireplaces, etc.) are in great shape so it's really not that big a big deal, but it just feels like the house lost something in the process of getting its "mint" renovation. And for $1.85 million in Fort Greene, character is one thing we'd be unwilling to do without.
Mint 2-Family [Brooklyn Properties]

Comments

i see your point for sure but you have to wonder what they were up against- just how bad might they have been? on our upper floors we have the wide plank subfloors which were sanded and stained in a matte but in some places they have huge gaps and also are extremely wobbily (sp?) it wouldn't occur to me to replace them but sometimes i worry they are too sketchy if we were to resell someday- also what the overall opionion on a light stain vs. a darker stain on any wood floors?

Posted by: luxeterna70 at January 24, 2006 12:01 PM

The other non-period element that clashes with the woodwork in this photo is the 1920s style moldings on the walls.

Posted by: broadway at January 24, 2006 12:01 PM

Reno looks cheesy: somehow combination of paint colors, floors and cherry kitchens cabinets does not work for me, but it is all fixable.
No outside picture, anybody knows location?

Posted by: malymis at January 24, 2006 12:02 PM

This listing is NOT new. It was with Brenton Realty then Douglass Elliman. Now with someone else. It is OVERPRICED!!! The market is different, let's face it.

Posted by: Anonymous at January 24, 2006 12:45 PM

And two out of three of those McMansion-styley bathrooms are fugly. Especially the beige one. Gross.

Posted by: judes at January 24, 2006 12:54 PM

isn't this the house that corcoran had 1 year or so ago that is on adephi right behind the tower on greene and therefore the cement wall in the backyard. if my recollection is correct. this was a dump with details that sat on the market for 1.1 for nine months. If its the same house...its a very nice renovation but you're backyard is totally shut off by a huge cement wall of the building behind and much of the light doesn't get to the back of the house. Who knows maybe its one of the one's next door.

Posted by: Anonymous at January 24, 2006 1:01 PM

If Douglass Elliman couldn't sell how does Brooklyn Properties think they can sell it the same with the Florentine Condos BP has. What a joke this firm is!

Posted by: Eli at January 24, 2006 1:18 PM

this brownstone is number 723400 on elliman's website. it has already had a few price reductions and I read once before that someone went to an open house and the "new" roof was leaking. I wonder why it has been on the market for so long (of course besides the $1.85MM price tag)!

Posted by: dan at January 24, 2006 1:38 PM

luxeterna,

good point, but there's also the option of doing "new" floors with reclaimed wood, which would not be "original" but would not create the dissonance you see here. It would be much more expensive, I'm sure, but when you're selling yr place for $1.85M...

Posted by: linusvanpelt at January 24, 2006 1:51 PM

Dan's right - it's 202 Clermont. Mighty expensive for an 18' house on a busy street up by Myrtle, with a Home Depot reno, lame flooring, and a big wall in the red-wood-chip (what's up with that, anyway??) garden.

Posted by: Mr. Minerva at January 24, 2006 1:56 PM

Yeh, getting floors right can be tricky. When we renovated the old pine sub-floors on the parlor floor of our house were very beat up and we were concerned they wouldn't look like much after sanding/refinishing. We also wanted some extra sound proofing between us and our tenant below. We went with 4 inch wide recycled douglas fir tongue-and-groove, finished with satin poly. It looks great and the color has deepened since we laid it. Regrets? I kinda wish we'd tried oiling the floor instead of using poly for a more natural look. Or maybe selecting planking instead of t&g for a more informal look. Also, it's a tiny bit soft -- especially compared to the more expensive recycled heart pine we used in our guest bathroom, which I adore without reservation. We used Pioneer Millworks (www.pioneermillworks.com) in upstate NY and they couldn't have been nicer to deal with. The floor guys who did the installation were very impressed by the quality of the flooring. I've seen other new floors I liked including a neighbor who used birds eye maple and a very high end reno using European white oak (oil finish/no poly) which is the fashionable choice, I'm told, in London these days. In the end we did refinish the pine sub-floors in two rooms. To our surprise they came out beautifully and have lots of character. Some of the success I attribute to good repairs (especially filling major cracks) and good use of stain to achieve a nice even final color.

Posted by: Anon at January 24, 2006 2:17 PM

The floors, and moldings, and lights and bathrooms.. none of it good.

BUT you absolutely can get new floors that are gorgeous. Not at lumber liquidators and probably not from the guy your neighbor recommended, but for the top firms. It will cost you a load, but it's worth it.

Posted by: Anonymous at January 24, 2006 2:17 PM

I also thought i saw this house in the past from the kitchen pic- it does seem that it is overthetop mint- too manicured and too much in the home depot vain- i feel like i couldn't walk around freely without stepping over a line i.e. the landscaping... looking back at the pics, funnily enough, the floors now bother me least! great example of someone trying to step into a "historic" feel and missing the whole point. so what would people pay for this place? i mean it does have many qualities amongst the paint, tiles and crazy wall moldings.

Posted by: luxeterna70 at January 24, 2006 2:31 PM

Saw this place in person a few weeks ago (just for kicks). The photos make the renovation look a little cheaper than they appear in person, but it's definitely of the liberally-mixing-new-with-old-school of renovation. If I remember correctly, some of those upstairs bedrooms were teeny-tiny (like single bed size).

Posted by: abrooklynlife at January 24, 2006 2:50 PM

lord, you all are picky. the price tag on the house is too high, but i liked the house.

Posted by: judson at January 24, 2006 3:39 PM

Of course, the pine subflooring we all love today was, in fact, the SUB-flooring, and you can be sure the original builders and owners of these homes would be horrified to know that people nowadays are using that as the actual floor. That second bathroom is horrible, though, as is the landscaping.

Posted by: Park Sloper at January 24, 2006 4:22 PM

Curtains, rugs and furniture is whats missing from this place. It's nothing a little home furnishing couldn't take care. I'm not necessarily fond of all the neutrals. But makes it very easy to coordinate furnishings.

The parlor floors should have been parquet or square blocks, not planks and they should be Red Oak, not Oak. But thats a minor detail.

Mint condition refers to the overall state of the building. Whats the condition of the plaster walls, ceiling and moldings? Are the details intact? Are the restored? Whats the condition of the exterior? Are the mechanicals updated? Etc

I think many of you are making too big a deal about color schemes, which is a minor issue($10K).

Compared to other properties CURRENTLY on the market in FG, this property seems to offer the most for the price.

Posted by: Anonymous at January 24, 2006 4:25 PM

the house is perfectly nice, I saw it when it first came on the market and I think the garden is sweet... the shrubs just need to grow in. The small bedrooms are simply the short part of the L in all brownstones- if you don't need an office, knock out the wall. This only issue is the price. Since I am now in the process of bidding a full scale renovation, I will tell all of you buyers that it is absolutely worth it to get something that is "done"... not only does it take time but ALOT of money to renovate but tons of aggravation. Bids are double what similar jobs were going for just a few years ago. That certainly needs to be factored into the price. The real questioins should be 1)has all the plumbing been replaced? 2)are the windows new? 3)Is the electric new? The property is approx 3k sf.... go from there on the price.

Posted by: anon at January 24, 2006 5:06 PM

I think it sounds a little pricey for 18 feet wide, but whatever the market will bear. Bathrooms are pretty ugly. As for the floors, while replacement original wood would have been nice (if the old wood was too far gone), as far as houses go, it's not too bad. I do not think the floors look too shiny either, at least not in the pictures. Floors often look shinier in pictures anyway with the flash etc.

I'm not a fan of the paint job, but a another poster stated, that could be easily addressed. The back yard is newly planted and could use a green thumb. I guess you'd expect better "taste" for the price, but overall I do not think it is anywhere near the worst I've seen for this price point in a good brownstone brooklyn neighborhood.

Posted by: Anonymous at January 24, 2006 5:10 PM

This is definitely the house corcoran had on the market last year which faces the back of the green house condos. Forget the floors. The place is narrow, facing a brick wall and a tall building which ruins the character of the area and blocks light, and was previously on the market for 1.1 million. What hubris!

Posted by: Anonymous at January 24, 2006 6:17 PM

and people wonder if staging works... um, YES

Posted by: Anonymous at January 24, 2006 6:19 PM

Sorry if it's off topic but I have a related floor question for those in the know.

I hear that these pine floors are subfloors and in our home it would definitely appear that they are in the place where a sub floor would be, i.e. right on top of the joists. However, what has puzzled me is that there is very little room above the pine to put a floor on top of it based on the door clearances. We even have a pocket door with a rail on the floor and it is attached directly to the pine. If I were to lay a floor on top of the pine it would have to be no more than 1/4" thick or else I would have to trim the doors and make other modifications.

So what I'm wondering is if there ever was anything on top of this "subfloor" or if it was just "the" floor? Alternatively, did they use a floor that went on top that was very thin, unlike our standard 3/4" thickness in use today?

Posted by: Ben at January 24, 2006 7:15 PM

The parquet or wood strip flooring on top of the subflooring is very thin. In my place, I found a layer of thin muslin like fabric, then paper, then the thin parquet floor on top of the subfloor. I suppose the fabric and paper reduced squeaking. The thickness of the parquet is no more than 1/4", possibly 3/16". You'll be able to tell if you had another layer by the multiple, and relatively regular tiny nail holes in the sub-flooring.

Posted by: Anonymous at January 24, 2006 7:25 PM

the wide planks were the floors, not the subfloors...the "hardwood" floors that you normally see now date from the turn of the 20th century. check out lockwood's book for more info.

Posted by: sba at January 24, 2006 7:32 PM

corcoran did not have this listing last year! this house is between myrtle and willoughby, corcoran's house was between greene and lafayette on the corner.

Posted by: Anonymous at January 24, 2006 7:54 PM

The "subfloors" were covered in wall to wall carpeting, not another layer of wood

Posted by: Brownstoner at January 24, 2006 8:58 PM

So where is this house? Is it on Clermont between Myrtle and Willoughby or backing the Greene House?

Posted by: babs at January 24, 2006 9:02 PM

Brownstoner, I think your feeling about the floors is right on. Old floors are a huge part of the character of old houses. But as state above, they only live so long. Of course, they could be replaced with salvaged flooring, if you want to pay for it. I also agree with the comment above about the designer bathrooms. They'd be great...somewhere else.

Mostly I feel that to characterize the house as 'mint' is an egregious misrepresentation. To coin collectors, mint means only one thing: factory fresh and immaculately untouched from birth. As if no one had set foot in the house for a hundred years but to take the dust covers off the furniture. This house is no more 'mint' than an old coin that has been polished by an ignorant 'collector' in a feeble attempt to fool a would be buyer. Am I fussy about semantics? Yes I am. But the misuse of the language bothers me sometimes. Good rant.

By the way, If I were living in this house and making ends meet, I just might have no complaints.

Posted by: Hal at January 24, 2006 9:04 PM

The house looks like it is trying too hard. I think it's a new house trying to impersonate an old house. The overall effect lacks class.

Posted by: pinky at January 24, 2006 10:30 PM

Where did you all get your degrees in architectual history? I'd like to see some photos of your historically correct and extremely perfect homes. Come on....post 'em!

Posted by: anon at January 25, 2006 7:35 AM

Many times the pine planking begins to dry out and become soft, with actual surface wood peeling away. No amount of sanding will return this floor to a usable condition.

Posted by: Anonymous at January 25, 2006 9:26 AM

Taste is subjective, but to me the only gripe I can see about the place (besides the price) is that it was built as a single family and chopped up into two units.

That ruins the character of a townhouse more than the lack of original moldings. The subdivision of buildings intended to be single family only creates overcrowding in neighborhoods not intended for this density. So brownstoner and others, for all your patting yourself on the back for saving some plasterwork or installing new old floors (that's not restoration), how about keeping the home as a single family?

Posted by: arx at January 25, 2006 9:32 AM

the house is on clermont avenue between willoughby and myrtle. greenhouse is on CARLTON and greene.

Posted by: Anonymous at January 25, 2006 10:14 AM

As for the subfloors, sometimes they had wood parquet on top, sometimes wall to wall carpet, depends on the house. They were not the original floor that was used in any house. Lockwood's book talks about this too.

Posted by: Anonymous at January 25, 2006 11:03 AM

Thanks for all the answers from everyone on the floors. Ours had linoleum with a wood pattern on it! Well we sanded them down and we love them, imperfections and all.

Posted by: Ben at January 25, 2006 12:52 PM

i think you are all a bunch of a holes. the place looks beautiful! floors are beautiful!!! I bet most of you can't even afford this place. your all dogging the paint? its just a color! guess what? its an easy fix!

Posted by: Anonymous at January 25, 2006 5:26 PM

Only an a hole could think this place is beautiful.

Posted by: Anonymous at January 26, 2006 12:57 AM

The bathrooms and backyard aren't my taste, but I think the rest of it looks lovely. I don't know what all the fuss is about.

Posted by: anon at January 26, 2006 8:53 AM

THIS HOUSE HAS EVERYTHING TO OFFER VERY VERY NICE ORIGINAL MOLDINGS TOP OF LINE APPLIANCES I HAVE BEEN LOOKING AROUND AT SIMILAR HOUSES NOTHING COMES CLOSE TO THIS HOUSE IF ANYONE HAS SOMETHING PLEASE TELL ME WHERE

Posted by: mark at January 31, 2006 10:21 PM

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January 24, 2006

House of the Day: Mint But Missing Something

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