Handyman Recommendation: Brian Piersol


I’d like to recommend a handyman I used on a few recent projects around my apartment. His name is Brian Piersol (piersol33@gmail.com) and I found him through another post on this forum (though I don’t personally know that other post’s author). I live in Cobble Hill and I believe he services most of Brownstone Brooklyn and Red Hook. I don’t have his phone number on hand but he responds to email very quickly.

Brian was professional and showed up on time with all of his own tools. He even had some heavy mirror cable on hand which I forgot to pickup myself! I had him cut down some hollow core doors & rehang them, hang a heavy mirror, and install a closing mechanism for my closet doors (that my landlord totally omitted). All these little projects I really needed done and had put off forever were finished in just a couple hours and I couldn’t be happier with the result.

Categories: Handyman
By duckumu | 01/24/2011 11:57 AM | Comment

new google maps street views


just a fun fyi — it looks like with the various google maps street view updates pushed yesterday (there are a ton of canadian cities available now on street view), the street view images for some brooklyn neighborhoods have been completely updated.

cobble hill had a particularly bad street view originally. the brightness on the images was so high you could barely make out any detail. it’s now revamped along with other neighborhoods brooklyn heights, fort greene, park slope, greenpoint, and williamsburg, and prospect heights.

i don’t work for google or anything and i’m not advertising them — i’m just a frequent user of street view as a tool for virtual tourism, even within the borough :)

check it out http://maps.google.com/?q=loc:+Carlton+Avenue+at+Bergen+Brooklyn+NY+US&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Bergen+St+&ll=40.686008,-73.996418&spn=0.010885,0.01929&z=16&layer=c&cbll=40.686096,-73.996358&panoid=JrdEfTP5uoPrW3gmXlFQtw&cbp=12,177.45,,0,-15.72

Categories: Leisure
By duckumu | 10/08/2009 10:39 AM | Comment

Covering Up Exposed Brick


I’m a renter in a 1bed in Cobble Hill. I love my apartment but I have really come to detest the exposed brick covering an entire wall of the apartment. It’s not that sort of attractive dusty looking brick, it’s glossy, shellacked, dark, yellowed, light-consuming brick. (And it’s nearly impossible to decorate around if you’re going for anything but the hip 90′s NYC loft look — which.. no.) My landlord will let me do just about anything in the apartment other than painting the brick, because it of course attracts a lot of people.

Does anyone have any suggestions or good ideas regarding how to temporarily cover up the brick?

Right now my current thought is to make floor to ceiling sized frames out of canvas stretchers and cover it with a neutral fabric and securing it to the wall with velcro. If it’s light enough I feel the velcro should hold it without affecting the wall in a way that would bother my landlord.

It would be lovely to have some sort of thin, hard, lightweight board that I could secure to the wall somehow — something I could paint and then remove when I moved out. Any ideas on that?

Categories: Quality of Life
By duckumu | 08/04/2009 11:40 AM | Comment

Cold calling building managers?


Hey, everyone.

I’m looking to move to Cobble Hill, Brooklyn Heights, or Carroll Gardens this spring as a renter (CH would be most ideal). Since I’m in no hurry to move (I already have a secure place to live — but it’s a share), I figured I would try to do the legwork of finding a place myself instead of relying on a broker and thus avoiding the fee.

Would it be absolutely crass to call building managers, owners, landlords, etc. to inquire about vacancies in their properties? For those of you who are landlords here, do you think this is a good way for possible tenants to reach you?

My basic method for getting info is to gather addresses for buildings that look like they’re split into multiple units. I can then look up the ownership information on the NYC HPD website. From there I figured I’d just use the white pages to get the number for the head officer, managing agent, or owning corporation. Does anyone know which of these people are the best ones to contact?

Thanks in advance for any help!

Categories: Renters
By duckumu | 01/07/2009 2:32 PM | Comment