221 Prospect Place: A Renovation Story

One of the subjects of Sunday’s Prospect Heights House Tour is a recently-completed gut renovation of an old brick house. The couple that did it provided us with the blow-by-blow below. Enjoy.

We bought our first house, at 223 Prospect Place, in 1997. The house next door, at 221, was sold by the long-time owners to a Manhattan couple in 2002. The first year they owned it, they demolished the entire interior and about 1/3 of the front façade, doing things like replacing all the beams that weren’t necessary. And then it sat there, a boarded up worksite, with virtually nothing going on inside for two years and they rarely came to supervise. Tired of living next to an abandoned work site, we offered to buy it from them, and closed on the building in July 2005. We obtained DOB plan approval to proceed in September 2005 to keep the building with the existing C of O as a 2 family, which the previous owner was going to change to a 1 family.

We spent two months interviewing over 20 contractors in depth, and developing an extremely detailed spec sheet with the approved plans…

We briefly hired an architect to re-work our sketched-out floor plans and draw them to scale, but did not have new blueprints drawn up. Instead, we developed an extremely detailed list of specs and looked for a general contractor willing to work from that which some were not. Out of the 20 contractors we interviewed in depth, five said to call them back in six months, and after chasing them to get their bids in, another five never bothered. Five put in initial bids one sending a proposal meant for a different client — that seemed way too high or unrealistically low. We entered serious discussions and negotiations with five, spending many late-night hours at our dining room table with them going over all the details, discussing potential solutions to various challenges, and many other evenings visiting their references and checking out their work all over Brooklyn.

Finally we had our contractor. We gave him a 10% deposit check and two days later he called us saying he couldn’t do it after all because he was getting out of the business and gave us back our check. We again met with our second choice, who when reviewing our updated specs would sigh and say he needed to bring in his subs again to re-price things. Every little tweak was more money. We were being nickel-and-dimed before we even began, so we put in a last-minute call to our third choice, whose company handles several large new-construction projects at once and has the staff to be flexible. Reviewing our updated specs, he didn’t see a need to change the price at all. And miraculously, he was available to start our job immediately. We began in November 2005.

One year and one week later, we moved in. It was a year of incredible stress, anxiety and excitement as we slowly transformed the building from an empty shell into the comfortable, modern home that now perfectly suits our needs. Though it is exactly the same footprint as the house we were in, and we didn’t gain a single square foot, we designed it so differently that it more efficiently uses the space and feels much larger.

Some highlights and lowlights: We wanted to make the building as green as possible. We priced out solar panels to generate electricity, but it proved too costly up front. We were able to use ecologically friendly soy-based blow-in foam insulation, which has sealed the house beautifully. The architect we consulted helped us design the house so airflow would optimize natural cooling. At her suggestion we put a mechanical skylight at the top of the stair case, which, in addition to letting in lots of sunlight, acts like a chimney pulling warm air up and out, when it’s open, to cool the house naturally. She also suggested putting a door on the back end of the master bedroom walk-in closet, so that both ends can be open and air flows through it from the front to the back of the house. (Living room is in front, MBR is in the back). We also put ceiling fans in every room. We put in central air conditioning but have used it only on the most humid, terribly hot days. We also have radiant floor heating throughout the entire house, which is a total delight. The house stays cleaner than when we had conventional radiators, and it heats totally evenly….walking into the house in winter it just feels perfectly comfortable. No hot spots, no cold spots. Just comfortable.

Initially we wanted to put in an ‘architectural’ staircase, and sourced vendors. Then we realized it would quickly look dated, so we put in a clean-lined traditional staircase in the same red oak that is the flooring on the second and third floors, with a stainless steel railing. It took a long time for our contractor to find the right fabricator for the railing, and we essentially had to trust his design sense (which in general was very good, even though this was the first really modern house he had worked on). We were away on summer vacation when he installed it, and returned to find that it didn’t look like what we were expecting, exactly. But it looks great and we’ve come to love it.

The day before we left for that vacation, we discovered that someone had broken into the job site through a basement window that didn’t yet have security bars on it. Fortunately the thief took only a bunch of ceiling fans and a couple of sconces that were still in their boxes. It was a hassle to deal with, but there could have been far worse damage.

We spent what felt like endless months finding just the right finishes, from tile to cabinets to flooring. I am very particular….so finally I found just the right shade and translucency of pale green glass tile at a company whose only showroom is an hour upstate. After designing the master bath with different sizes of the tile, for the border and field, we ordered it. But when we took delivery about 2 months later, it arrived as different shades for the different sizes it turns out that though we had bought tile that they had agreed to hold until we were ready for delivery, they re-sold it to a different client and what they sent us was from different manufacturing lots, hence the color problems. Days of back-and-forth between us and salesperson and manager to find out that they had some more in a Texas warehouse and would send it. Still not a match. More days of back-and-forth to learn that maybe more would be coming from its overseas manufacturer. Time goes on….our contractor is ready to bring in the tiler, but won’t until everything is here….new tile is sent from Texas warehouse. We try a different color of the same tile altogether. But they don’t have enough in stock for the whole bathroom, and we need every wall and the ceiling tiled because we are having a steam shower put in. They refuse to refund cost of original tile, which is being sent back. Have to deal with credit card company to contest charges. Right tile still not here. Still more frustration….and there was no other tile from any other company that had the look that we were after. Finally, we end up working with what they could provide, and it looks great. But it was a very upsetting process.

Endless visits to home improvement and specialty home supply stores. Exhausting months of researching bathroom and kitchen faucets and sprays, for example. It was just overwhelming to stand in Expo Design Center staring at a huge wall full of showerheads and handles, each of which was available in a different combination of features and finishes, and not knowing where to begin and unable to find a knowledgable salesperson. We finally found a plumbing supply house that deals mostly directly to the trade, with an excellent saleswoman who helped us narrow down the choices and find the features we wanted for our spa shower.

One of my favorite moments came weeks after visiting the high end Ann Sacks and Artistic Tile showrooms in Manhattan. I’d found a gorgeous, unusual porcelain tile I wanted to use for the entire first floor, which looks something like patinated copper or bronze, but it was just out of our price range. Disappointed, I went to my favorite tile resource in Brooklyn for the third or fourth time, to try and find something else. Walking around, I saw it – the very same floor tile I’d wanted. They had just gotten it in, and without the prestige name on it, were selling it for 1/3 of what the Manhattan showroom had wanted. They had the color I wanted in the sizes I needed, and now I have the floor I adore.

Similarly, I’d seen zebrawood for the first time in a wood flooring supply showroom, and I fell in love. But it was too pricey for us to use. So I went to sleep one night hoping an idea would come to me in my sleep, and woke up with the idea that we could use a zebrawood veneer on a long wall of floor-to-ceiling cabinets on the 1st floor. After working my way through a dozen cabinet showrooms which had nothing but banal choices, I found a fantastic local cabinetmaker, and she did a fantastic job on the zebrawood cabinets and built-in maple bookshelves in the home-office.

There were, of course, many more highs and lows. Managing the whole process was enormously challenging, particularly while we both maintained our jobs and parented our 3 young children. It seems like nothing ever came in the way it was supposed to, and there were myriad snafus on the installation and finishing end. But being able to supervise from next door was ideal.

The last things we did were turning the front and back yards into shared, blue-stoned courtyards. The weeping cherry in front of 221 had somehow survived years of neglect and abuse, and is the centerpiece of the courtyard today. And having a double-width backyard, spacious and cool, is really great. We share it with the tenants who rent out our original home at #223, a family with daughters the same age as ours, and they can usually be found playing together in the shared back yard.