OK, Give Me Your Top 3
For those who have done gut renovations on townhouses in Brooklyn I want to hear the *top three learnings* you have from the experience. Yes, I realize that there are undoubtedly _hundreds_ (thousands?) of learnings you accumulated during the experience but the challenge is really trying to limit it to three. No constraints otherwise on the area of learning – budget, talent, materials, design choices, mental health, materials, DOB/LPC. Could be positive experiences or frustrating ones. Whatever you want.
Just imagine you could go back in time, sit yourself down, and tell yourself three things that were learned. What would you say?
Guest User | 4 years and 3 months ago
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colonialrevival | 4 years and 3 months ago
Our issue is less outside noise and more “inside noise” from those adjacent to us. ? And yes, if you are renovating, soundproof _during_ work. Same thing if you’re thinking about someday installing AC or something. Just bite the bullet and do it. You can change the kitchen cabinets later. @Bob — lucky you, count your blessings!
colonialrevival | 4 years and 3 months ago
Our issue is less outside noise and more “inside noise” from those adjacent to us. ? And yes, if you are renovating, soundproof _during_ work. Same thing if you’re thinking about someday installing AC or something. Just bite the bullet and do it. You can change the kitchen cabinets later. @Bob — lucky you, count your blessings!
andriywww1990 | 4 years and 3 months ago
bob et al: i went to work yesterday and as i was dragging a paint brush over a door,i thought “Damn!, i just missed an opportunity”. i should have replied to putnam “right, i was taking a poke a Bob Marvin. there is a rumor around brooklyn that he was a front man for a heavy metal band in the 1980’s”
i am trying to guess what colonial likes. the colonial period had influences from europe but was also picking up others things, banjos, and violins being played as fiddles.
JoeBushwick | 4 years and 3 months ago
On the issue of noise, attached row houses are notorious for noise coming through the party walls. Most of rows of houses are not really individual buildings but a single building with brick firewalls between each house. We have ended up spending a lot of money soundproofing these walls and I would include soundproofing in any renovation plans.
Putnamdenizen | 4 years and 3 months ago
I thought you were talking about those darn hippies!
JohnHancock | 4 years and 3 months ago
I’m with Bob!
RobertGMarvin
in General Discussion 4 years and 3 months ago
Right Steve—Bach is more my style
andriywww1990 | 4 years and 3 months ago
putnam, thanks for reading. right, i was thinking heavy metal. i can’t imagine Bob’s music tastes going in that direction and i would guess its safe to say the same about coloniel.
Putnamdenizen | 4 years and 3 months ago
@doorsbytinkerwagon – “long hair and drumsticks or a guitar could spell an issue” ? lol. That’s an adorable throw back image. But the rest of the advice of checking out the neighborhood is spot on.
andriywww1990 | 4 years and 3 months ago
@coloniel & @bob & others who might like quiet: i work all over the city and out front where the traffic is. some places are very quiet and peaceful and some are very noisy (often the outside noise is generated by traffic and cars playing music at a nearby traffic light or motor cycles idling at a light). when we bought here, we did not understand this and suffer from it to a degree.
realtors use tricks to mask the truth about a neighborhood when they show the house. and i learned the hard way. first, we had the crappy windows in the house and what they did was hang lined curtains to block the noise – which the curtains did. second, they would only show the house at certain hours – like 11 am when the nearby school was already in session and the morning rush was well over (the place can be like a rural village at 11 am in the winter – at 8 am the cross street is like a race track).
this advice is too late for colonial and came to late for me and is possibly too late for OP, but if noise might be an issue, i would get in a car and plan on parking outside a potential purchase at say 6 am and stay there. watch it for the morning and maybe into the afternoon. walk around the neighborhood and buy lunch and return. watch who goes in and out of the neighboring houses (long hair and drumsticks or a guitar could spell an issue). if you can, stay until late. better still, return on a different day, at say 2 PM and stay until after midnight, on a different weekday. watch who comes and goes and the evening rush. depending on where you are, you may see different things. here in queens it is general quiet late but we have some people who work shifts – fortunately they are also family types and coming in and making noise does not work. but someone i know once rented next to a taxi driver and that guy came in at 2 am and blasted music.
the good news for us was, this neighborhood has “cycles”. it comes and goes with predictability and we have learned to work around some of it. also, being near a park, on the first nice day of spring, this place is mad and when we moved in we worried that it would be like that all summer (and it has not be) so one incident does not make a trend either.
Guest User | 4 years and 3 months ago
These are all great. I’m really appreciating some of the repetition in the answers as well as gems I haven’t heard before. Thanks to all who’ve contributed!
andy | 4 years and 3 months ago
1. Think hard and independently about anything that will affect your experience of the house daily. Things like heating/cooling systems. The “experts” will lead you astray many times.
2. 6″ of ceiling height makes an enormous difference. Skylights are great bang for buck.
3. Doing a completely legal deck is worst bang for buck.
RobertGMarvin
in General Discussion 4 years and 3 months ago
coloniarevival–FWIW my single family row house in Lefferts Manor is pretty quiet.
colonialrevival | 4 years and 3 months ago
1. if quiet is what you desire, eliminate townhouses from your search entirely. maybe even move to the country. sometimes i wish i did.
2. spec everything and verify materials on site before the contractor opens them.
3. if the contractor misses spec after spec and things have to be told 3-6 times over before they’re done right, it’s okay to thank them and send them on their way for good.
andriywww1990 | 4 years and 3 months ago
some contractors make the mistake of trying to do to much themselves. i can see a GC framing walls, hanging drywall, taping it, and maybe hanging cabinets. perhaps moldings as most GC’s come up as carpenters and that should also mean building a staircase. but there has to be a line some place. as you move forward, be aware of this: there are “General Contractors” and then their are “‘Generalist’ Contractors”. Watch out for the “Generalist” Contractors; what i think most of them are is people who are new to the country and language who do not realize that “General Contractor” is a specific and very legal term – in NYC GC’s are licensed and they have specific insurance requirements. The people who are Generalist Contractors are really glorified handymen who chance their livelihoods on low prices and talking a good talk to unknowing people and taking their money. if someone even as unskilled in other trades as i am ever had to hire one of them for a job, i would very quickly drill down to learn they have no training and are really suited for nothing more than digging ditches and have no interest in learning anymore about anything other than how to get money out of someone’s hand.
there are ways to test contractors. ask a contractor who claims he can do it all if he would run a gas line or an electric line. ask who would do it, him or one of his men. Most GC’s are not licensed electricians or plumbers, they come up as carpenters. if this person says they will run an electric line or gas line, first ascertain they do not have a licensed trades person on their team or who they will sub to and if they do not show them to the door. i would also tell them “i am calling the DOB on you as well”.
that issue with the “General Contractor” term. When i was growing up, no one called themselves a GC unless they were a GC. the city and state can clean a lot of this nonsense up if they only allowed true GC’s do use the term in their advertising. that way, the Generalist Contractors would all have to call themselves what they really are: “handyman” or “jack of all trades, master of none”.
NeoGrec | 4 years and 3 months ago
Insulate and buy the highest quality replacement windows you can afford. If you can’t stretch to brick mold-to-brick mold windows, wait until you can.
andriywww1990 | 4 years and 3 months ago
i like what work is fun said, call the manufacturers. i am 57 years old and have been doing some stuff for a very long time and over and over again and i still call manufacturers. i tell people on here all the time, find contractors who are not so cock proud sure of themselves that they will not pick up the phone and speak to the technical services team at a glue company or flooring company or paint company. if they do not know what those phone numbers are for on the containers, do not hire them. even the smartest contractor does not know it all.
a contractor told someone on this board he was going to do something a certain way and she questioned it and called me and put the question to me and i did not know the answer so both of us called the manufacturer. we got the answer. all it did though was piss the contractor off more.
also, don’t hire contractors whose security in their own manhood is so small that they cannot deal with women. you h ave to find ways to spot these men. and those types of men are not just asses to deal with for women, but i do not like dealing with them either and the last time i checked i was a man.
workisfun | 4 years and 3 months ago
Every time we encountered a challenge/question re materials, process, prescription, and cost, I would bring in one or two contractors first. Then, I’d use their insights and plans to research online, exhaustively. I called contractors in PA and beyond to run the plans and materials by them. They had no skin in the game and therefore could be more frank. I also called the material manufacturers for confirmation that the proposed materials were appropriate for said application. You get the idea. I intervened countless times to prevent disaster, incompetence, etc. And, sometimes, I just wound up doing the work myself. Do your due diligence.
Guest User | 4 years and 3 months ago
These are great!! Keep ’em coming 🙂