The Story Behind Bed Stuy House #4

Below is the first-hand account of the owner of House #4 on last weekend’s Bed Stuy house tour. It’s a pretty incredible story that should be inspiration and solace for any brownstone renovators who are feeling overwhelmed by the road ahead. Heck, it puts our recent plumbing problems in serious perspective. Hats off to you.

My mother and I shared a 3 bedroom condo in Fort Greene for 11 years when we decided that we wanted a house. Unfortunately, by this time, brownstones in Fort Greene were out of reach, especially since we both agreed that we did not want to be landlords. Our goal was to find a 4-story brownstone that we could us as a Mother/Daughter–with each of us occupying two floors. Our search took us to Bedstuy, a place where neither one of us had ventured before. We saw a lot of crappy sheet-rocked houses but we wanted original details.

After a year of searching, I gave up. However, some time thereafter, my mother received a call from a seller whom she had contacted the year before. Because I was so disgusted by the whole process, I initially refused to go but my mother insisted. The legal 3-family house had no electricity, so the seller showed us some of the house using a hand-held light powered by a neighbor’s electricity. From what we could see, the bottom two floors had details galore. After weeks of negotiations (the sellers were investors who we flipping the house), we had the house inspected (the seller took the engineer around with the had held light) and entered into a contract after being told that the house needed some updates, but was relatively in move-in condition. Unfortunately, not the case.
Continued…

We closed on December 31, 2000. Once we got the keys, had the lights turned on and called the oil company to service the boiler (the engineer had told us that it would last at least two years) we realized that we were in trouble. I refused to even think about moving in until we had an electrician look at it. Of course, the place had to be rewired from top to bottom. Additionally, all the plumbing had to be replaced and we found out that the boiler had a crack in it – something the engineer had to have seen. ( I forced the sellers to give me some money for the boiler). We even had to replace the roof.

Once the house was rewired and the holes repaired, the floors sanded and the boiler replaced, we moved in in May 2001. We had no kitchen–so we ate out for months. The way the kitchen designer configured the garden floor kitchen, we needed a large fridge that opened at a 90 degree angle (how naïve we were)–this fridge cost almost $5,000 and could not get inside the house the normal way. We had to remove a window and bars from the parlor floor and slide the fridge in. It cost us money to remove and replace the window as well as put the iron bars back together.

During this time, we sold the condo (I do mean “we”–we had the worst brokers). Once the kitchen was finished, we thought we were moving forward. Instead, our contractor informed us that the kitchen contractor had built our kitchen over a compromised beam. Everyday, a tile would crack as our newly installed kitchen began to sink. The engineer must have missed the beam also. (I have no proof, but I think the seller paid him off). Our new kitchen had to be “jacked” up while the beam was replaced and reinforced. This all happened September 13, 2001 two days after fleeing lower Manhattan.

Once that was done we had our contractor smooth out the plaster walls, paint and begin to make the house more habitable. What should have been a six month project lasted for one and a half years and we had to live with dust, debris and contractors who tried to get more money from us because they took so long. Once the walls and new wood (3rd and 4th floor wood was unsalvageable) was done, we decided to have the original wood details taken care of. We hired a great wood restorer, who admits that he treated us a bit shabbily. I still recommend him because he did a great job–even though his 6 month project lasted another year and a half.

People ask if I would do it again. The answer is yes. I would do it differently, but we did not have sites like this back then. We did what we could, when we could and sometimes it worked out well and other times it was a disaster. After four years, our brownstone has been renovated/restored from top to bottom–inside and out (re-did the exterior brownstone, had the ironworks on the exterior stairs repaired and restored, cobblestones and cedar fence in the backyard–the works) and we love the end result. I hated this house for about 4 years because of all the money, time and energy it was cost us. However, now the look on people’s faces when they see the house for the first time reminds me that my goal has been realized and it was all worth it.

Two Walking Tours This Weekend [Brownstoner]