Recs Post Reno

Hi there. We recently finished a renovation of our brownstone and I wanted to share some notes and also express my gratitude to all the advice gleaned on this forum. Our reno was medium sized, basically turning the bottom two floors of a brownstone into the owner’s duplex. It involved moving a kitchen to the rear parlor, relocating a bath and building out a new bedroom. Here are the recs:

1. Expediting of permits and Drawing of Plans for filing: Phil Ferrara 917-817-6289. Nice guy who got the permits quickly and reasonably.

2. GC Thalal Beer 646-358-6118. FOund him here. Also posted about Beer before. He did a great job, very nice guy, always here, always eager to make sure that we were happy, very reasonable, always had good taste when it came to grout colorings and how to match floorings and old moldings, etc. Very good with historic brownstones. He’s not as familiar with some higher end choices like thermostatic shower systems, etc, and needed some handholding, but it all came out great, and we’d recommend it. Lovely guy to have around as well and very sweet to my kids.

Finish Carpenter: Chris Smylie 917-723-5384. Great with high end choices and complicated tile work.

Plumbing Fixtures: Got everything from Park Slope Plumbing, dealt with Marc. Consistently beat Lowes, etc prices.

Kitchen Cabinets: Ended up going with Medallion Semi Custom from Park Slope Kitchen (connected with plumbing store). Good prices, fair customer service, very happy with cabinetry.

Doorknobs. I didn’t know I would have a guy who just did doorknobs but we reused a lot of old doors that needed knobs. Dutch is the man. Neighborhood guy (Clinton Hill) with great store of old doorknobs, rosettes, etc. Lovely man and awesome quoter of poetry and player of classical guitar to boot. 917-319- 2295.

Doors and doorknobs, Sourced the doors themselves and some knobs and rosettes from Eddy on the corner of Grand and Greene. Great prices, good selection, nice guy.

The one thing we regretted was decided to spray our shutters and some doors rather than having them painted on site. We would definitely NOT recommend spraying shutters in particular. Way expensive. They didn’t fill any of the cracks and they look like crap.

I thnk that’s it. Feel free to contact me if anyone wants further info on any of these recs. I’m at clintonhillbrooklynapt [the at sign] hot mail [dot] com. Otherwise, give em a call and tell them Bliss sent you.

PTF