Interior Renovation in Brooklyn

Renovation in Brooklyn

Brooklyn is the borough of the brownstone and the row house. The Census Bureau's 2024 American Community Survey counts 986,603 occupied homes in Kings County: 287,231 owned and 699,372 rented, so 71 percent of households rent. Of the 1,122,521 housing units, 170,830 are in two-unit buildings and another 185,674 in three- and four-unit buildings. That is the brownstone and row-house stock, houses that were built as one family's home and later divided into floors. The median year Brooklyn homes were built is 1942.

A divided house asks a particular set of questions. Walls between floors carry sound, plumbing stacks run from the cellar to the top, and a renovation of one apartment often touches the one above or below. Many of the houses have plaster walls and ceilings, original trim and wood floors that can be restored rather than replaced. Others have been renovated before and need a clean rebuild of kitchens and baths. The first walkthrough sorts the house into what to keep, what to repair and what to replace.

Brooklyn

Brooklyn also has co-op apartments in pre-war elevator buildings, and condos in newer construction. Each has its own alteration rules, so the scope is written to fit the building's requirements. For owners of a whole house, the work can be sequenced across floors, starting where the mechanicals and the largest changes sit, and keeping the floors that are not under construction protected.

The outcome we plan for is a house or apartment that keeps its character and works as a modern home: plaster repaired, floors refinished or relaid, a kitchen on the garden level with a clear path to the yard, bathrooms with a tested shower pan, and trim and paint finished cleanly.

A Brooklyn house project begins with a walkthrough from the cellar to the top floor. We note the stair, the plaster, the floors, the trim and the mechanicals, and we mark what is original and worth keeping. The scope then runs floor by floor, usually starting with demolition and rough systems, then plaster and drywall, then floors and tile, and finally cabinets, trim and paint. Protection goes down on the stair and in the hall so that finished floors are not damaged by later work. Because the houses are old, expect to find surprises behind plaster and under floors. We record what we find, adjust the scope in writing and keep the owner informed, so that changes are decisions and not accidents.

Neighborhoods and landmarks

Brooklyn Heights, ZIP code 11201, has brownstone rowhouses as its most common form, along with mansions on Pierrepont Street and Pierrepont Place. It has over 600 pre-Civil War houses, one of the largest concentrations in the country, and its historic district was designated in 1965 as the first in the city. Brownstone, or Jersey freestone, was the dominant building material.

Park Slope sits in ZIP codes 11215 and 11217, divided by Union Street. Its side streets hold brownstone and rowhouse blocks, with six- to eight-story apartment buildings and large Victorian mansions on Prospect Park West. Much of the neighborhood is in the Park Slope Historic District, designated in 1973 and expanded in 2012 to 2,575 buildings across about 40 blocks. Many of its rowhouses were converted from rooming houses to single- and two-family homes starting in the late 1960s.

Kensington, in ZIP code 11218, mixes brick rowhouses, detached one-family Victorians and apartment buildings, with pre-war brick apartment buildings along Ocean Parkway and Coney Island Avenue, many of them co-ops. Ditmas Park, near Cortelyou Road, has large free-standing single-family houses with gables and front porches built between 1902 and 1914; it became a New York City landmark district in 1981.