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Pocket Shutters
Does anyone know where I can buy pocket shutters or have extras available? I need one one for a large sized window and two for a smaller sized window, one without slats.
02/16/2009 4:29 PM
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Handyman recommendations
Hey all,
We are in need of a handyman that does decent work for around $20 an hour or less. Needs to have a bit of an eye for detail and be able to help us clean up and repair our walls and doors so that they look nicer, basically painting prep and door repair.
Any recommendations?
02/03/2009 1:54 PM
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Iron window and doors (cont)
I posted earlier about iron window and door frames that we removed. We had a bit of a holiday hiatus and are trying to sell them again.
Specs are:
Doors: 109″x54″ and 77.5″x32.5″ for the front and back doors
Windows: 90″x38″ and 103″x40″
They’re pretty standard styles (no belly for window boxes, so they’re just flat) … if they fit your window/doors let me know and you can come see them. They are in good shape, although they could probably benefit from a fresh coat of black paint.
Price is best offer/soonest offer because we’re sick of having them chained up in our front yard.
12/06/2008 4:54 PM
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Hot water for sinks/shower
We just moved into a 3 story 2.5 bath brownstone. The hot water takes about 30 seconds to reach the shower and even longer for the smaller faucets (b/c the pipe has to empty of cold water before the heater water gets there). I feel like we’re wasting water every morning and would like to have the convenience of quick hot water for the shower. I’ve looked at “comfort pumps” which use the cold water line as a return line and keep recirculating hot water from the heater, but noticed most are designed for long houses and not high ones. I talked specifically with a person at a plumbing supply store and he said the max “head” for the pump is about 30 feet, close to which the pump can’t handle the water. My question is: has anyone had these installed without getting a specific hot water return line. If so, which model (we heard grundfos is the best). Any recommendations from a plumber would be helpful as to what the options are for a tall house (3 stories) and not wanting to tear apart the walls to put a return line in.
Does everyone else just wait for the hot water? I’m assuming this is common on all the older building with dated plumbing.
11/18/2008 2:36 PM
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steel front and back door gates and window bars
Do people actually buy these? My contractor says he has a metalworker friend that would take them off our hands for a few hundred dollars, but I imagine they are worth more if there actually is demand. Is anyone interested in them? The four window grates I think are standard sized for high windows on most brownstones (flat, no window box or AC room) and the front door grate fits in the arched doorway which is also pretty standardly sized, same with back door (that one fits the door jam).
I can post more specifics like pictures and dimensions if there’s enough interest. Just didn’t know if people bought these nowadays. They’re in good condition, a little exterior rust (nothing structural) on some that needs to be wire brushed and all could probably uses a good coat of black weatherproof paint. I’ll take best offer for all, preferably offers on sets.
11/13/2008 2:05 PM
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Need tin installer
Hey,
Can anyone recommend a tin installer? Most contractors flat out refuse to try and the only real quote we’ve gotten was close to $5k for one room ($1500 materials)! We need one room completely installed and one repaired.
11/03/2008 11:28 AM
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Wrapping up a sale — recommendations
We just closed on a place in Park Slope and I’d like to list a few recommendations from my experiences:
RE Agents/Brokers: Robert Kreiger (Corcoran) and Lori Snerson (Warren Lewis)
Although in the end our house was a Warren Lewis place and they don’t co-broke with Corcoran (meaning we didn’t have Robert represent us), we had good experiences with both of these brokers. Lori was the seller’s broker — she went out of her way and spent way more time than was necessary letting us into the house with contractors between offering and closing and was overall a great person to work with. This was especially important because we decided to go it alone once we figured out Robert wouldn’t work as a buyer’s agent, which left me on the defensive that we’d get out-maneuvered by some sneaky broker tricks. Lori was good about keeping both sides happy and the deal fair.
Mortgage Brokers: Alan Trachtman/Trachtman and Bach Mortgage
Alan was great — he twice saved us a huge amount of time by transcending the communication nightmare with the banks and getting things done. The first time was a title violation that the bank was considering holding the mortgage up until the seller redid the facade. He convinced them to let us do the work instead (we wanted control over the look, etc.). The other time was a phone call in to the higher up at the bank after they had spent more than two weeks dotting their i’s and were requesting unnecessary (and difficult to get) documentation when we were clearly qualified. Alan is one of the reasons why I think a mortgage broker is completely necessary — they can put pressure on the bank at key points to make the entire process much smoother and avoid weeks in delays (and you don’t pay them anyway).
RE Attorney: Bob Dubno
Bob seems to know everyone in the Park Slope area and was a very tempting choice given a few recommendations. However, his fee of around $3.5k for a large house closing is definitely not worth the price. Initially I chose him because I wanted someone that is on the ball and was willing to pay an extra thousand or so to have a responsive, efficient attorney. This was a huge mistake and waste of money. From what I’ve read since then on the forums, real estate attorneys are notoriously slow and poor on the customer service end of things, so I won’t fault him for necessarily being below average — my point is that he does not justify his higher fees. Couple of examples so people don’t think I’m randomly picking on him: he waited close to a week to get in touch with the bank re: a title violation, which caused us to delay closing for over a week because it moved the final stages smack into the middle of the Jewish holidays; the day of closing (one hour before closing to be exact), he finally gave us the certified check amounts, which exceeded our $50k buffer because of an escrow the bank threw on at the end for the facade renovation — the only reason we had enough money to cover these costs is because both my wife and my paychecks had direct deposited the day before… we had less than a thousand left in the bank afterwards and an additional bank transfer from our brokerage account would’ve taken at least a day. Scary!
Finally, contractors!
We will give a score card on these guys after they’re done, but so far we’ve chosen these people to do our contracting work based on recommendations and estimates.
Painting: Daniel Genova (rec from Lori(above), he’s an artist as well, so he has given us invaluable advice on colors in addition to a great rate for painting)
Facade work: Z. Abedin (rec from Brownstoner, he’s an honest guy that has good prior work and doesn’t charge too much)
Flooring: Verrazano (rec from all over, they give per sqft estimates, so it feels less like you could be getting a good deal if you had just negotiated more)
Drywall: Angelo Cingari (angie’s list, seems hard working, honest about what he can’t do, doesn’t charge too much)
Will add more as they come. Thought this would be handy for other people getting starting/being their own general contractor as the whole process was a mess for us. Let me know if you disagree!
10/17/2008 4:53 PM
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Real estate lawyer (cont)
Okay. Taking a step back a second from my more frantic post on Monday. I was really just upset at the atty for losing us the closing on Friday and all the extra work it will now take for our (still unknown) closing date next week (hopefully).
Today my wife called the bank attorney to follow up on the doc that my atty had forwarded and realized that he had not even seen it. We almost lost yet another 1-2 days because my attorney was “at a closing” and too busy to follow through on the one simple task we have needed for a week.
We are anxious to get our contractors in, but didn’t do the “silly” thing that cmu mentioned and actually schedule anyone. Our only real losses will be weekend time that we could be preparing the house for contractors and possibly $2000 if we lose a month getting the attached rental unit filled.
That being said — why do we put up with these people and what is the recourse against these terrible attorneys? I have email evidence of two events where he did not act in our interests to get this done and forced the closing date back further than necessary. We have caught him lying twice when we have had the chance to verify his claims (mostly just stalling — blaming delays on other people when they’re completely free/waiting) and question many of his “out at a closing” or “they had two closings today” as reasons to delay close to a week further still. I realize RE attys have to be at closings, but come on — he has a blackberry, something that we actually paid up for because of the illusion he can multi-task and stay in touch.
Somewhere in this, I realize that these people are in a service driven industry. I have asked multiple times what exactly I am paying him for, but am bound to the fixed fee that we agreed on. Is my only recourse to post a bad review on the internet and maybe complain to a few agencies?
10/01/2008 8:27 PM
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Help — real estate lawyer problems
I have a little bit of a problem with my real estate attorney. It started with a verbal disagreement we had — I won’t go into too many details, but it was the result of him not making the appropriate phone calls in time, causing us to delay our closing because he realized we needed a document from us at 2:30 the day before the Jewish holiday when both my wife and I were working (we had until 4 to get him said document). Now I am beginning to question his ability when there are exactly 4 business days (that aren’t Jewish holidays — and all three lawyers involved are Jewish) until our last possible closing date and this title restriction is still not cleared up with the bank. If this somehow doesn’t go through, we risk losing an over $150,000 deposit we paid. What is my recourse? Can I get another lawyer to step in and take over? Would this just take longer and be less likely to help?
The biggest problem is that I work in the finance industry and don’t exactly have a lot of free time to deal with this right now because of work. I’d like to just trust my lawyer to get this done, but he has given me absolutely no reason to do this at this point.
09/30/2008 4:47 PM
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Brownstone facade (yet another post)
I’ve been scrolling through the posts on redoing a brownstone facade and realized a few things:
-There’s a lot of mudslinging, possibly fake posts, and advertisements strewn about, leaving me with no idea who is serious or not
-This is very important to get right, since it is prone to cracking/other damage if the workman is not good at their job
-It’s very expensive
We need to get our facade redone (3 story, 20′ wide) with brownstone stucco. However, given the three things above, I find it really hard to make a decision on whether to go with the guy who charges twice as much and looks great or the guy who charges half and seems competent enough. Even if they do provide references, those could just be the people that they “got right” and are not providing the names of their screwups. Has anyone gotten through this process alive? How much did they pay? Are they satisfied? If all of those things, who did you use?
09/10/2008 6:05 PM
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artistgarden
May 21, 2012 | 02:16 PM