Manny Lassalle
I know some of you have used him (Donatella, rh/ Yente). How do the FPs work? A neighbor had his done about 4 years ago by him and said it smoked a little. He may, of course, have gotten better over the years. Also, does he get them done in the time frame he says?…
I know some of you have used him (Donatella, rh/ Yente).
How do the FPs work? A neighbor had his done about 4 years ago by him and said it smoked a little. He may, of course, have gotten better over the years. Also, does he get them done in the time frame he says? Thanks!
His quote was over a year ago, but under 2 years ago. Let’s say a year and a half. I remember him being willing to negotiate.
I have a friend with a hideous new construction McMansion on Long Island. They had major problems with their fireplace and brought in several guys. Only one was able to detect the problem. Something about the angle of the flue which sent smoke back into the house. Manny had nothing to do with the LI fireplace. I just wanted to share the anecdote to let you know the smoke thing may not have anything to do with Manny.
Manny is very good. There could be other reasons that your neighbor’s fireplace is smoking. Sometimes the flue needs to be cleaned or the flue is not large enough for the logs put on the fire — that was the situation with an apartment I had once. It was a narrow flue which could only handle one duraflame log (I was told not to use wood). Good luck.
Oh, btw, he gave me a long list of references and I called up many. Those who got back were very happy with him. So I suppose he’s my guy?
Thanks, Donatella and rh.
rh, how far back did he quote you those prices for restoring your 5 FPs? I am having 2 done and he quoted 9K for both and for putting a cap on the boiler flue. Fireside also came by to look yesterday and said 8.5K.
Manny wanted me to see one of his worksites. So we went in his van to this place in Clinton-Hill/ Bed-Stuy where he had restored four FPs in this huge brownstone. The work looked pretty good (I even looked up the FP and he had this cool slope made for the smoke to smoothly flow up the chimney).
I just don’t want the thing to smoke. And it seems really pricey to have them restored.
Manny did two things for me. First, he helped me to assemble two marble mantle fireplaces from pieces that I bought from Eddie (owner of salvage store on Grand and Greene). There were some pieces that were missing (marble side slabs) which he found for me and cut; he had the iron cover soddered correctly, he dipped the marble floor slab (don’t have the correct term) to remove stains, had it polished, and put the whole thing to gether. They are decorative and look fabulous.
The other thing he did for me is help me same day when we had that freaky storm with high wind and driving rain that shut down the subways. Some loose breaks in my chimney were liberated by the wind and I had rain pouring down my chimney. He came over as soon as the rain stopped and redid the masonry on my chimney on the roof, fixing the problem. He did a great job and I was very happy that he came so quickly.
So while I did not have him do anything to make my fireplaces functional, he came highly recommended as well.
Manny repaired a marble mantle that was coming away from the wall. He never actually did our fireplaces. We got a quote from him for $15000 to open up our fireplaces and make them functional (there are 5 of them) but decided against doing the work because we don’t live there full time and didn’t want our tenants burning down the house. So…I can’t tell you about smoke. He did come recommended to us by someone who said “He’s the best in the business.” And he did a good job on our repair. Hope this helps.