Springtime Fix-ups in Boerum Hill

CHOOSING EXTERIOR PAINT COLORS is even more nerve-wracking than choosing interior paint colors. After all, everyone will see them. And you have to consider context. You don’t (I don’t anyway) want it to clash with the house next door.

I’m doing some spiffing up at my 3-family rental property in Boerum Hill this month. It’s an 1830s Greek Revival with, remarkably — considering all the trials the building has been through in terms of ownership, receivership, and changing neighborhood over almost two centuries — a nice original doorway, left, with fluted pilasters and egg-and-dart molding.

In addition to a new wood vestibule door, below, which replaced a salvaged French door that never closed properly and had cracked panes of glass (and therefore did nothing to exclude noise and dirt), I’m debating colors for a partial re-painting of the building’s facade.

The block is not landmarked, so I could do chartreuse and hot pink if I wanted, but I’ve decided to stick with the same general scheme as before. When we bought the house in 1979, it was dark red. We changed it to the present gray with white trim — probably a bad idea in any urban environment. I’d love to repaint the entire facade, but that will have to wait. Right now I’m just doing the ground level, from the cornice down, and I’ve chosen a medium gray (Benjamin Moore Platinum Gray) for the concrete section, pale gray (Ben Moore Cliffside Gray) for the wood door surround, and dark gray-blue (Ben Moore Hamilton Blue) for the door itself. Classic, conservative, safe. Very safe, as the paint company pairs the three colors on one of their “Color Preview” chips. Why mess?

As long as we’re discussing the ground floor of this building, I have to admit to making a pretty dreadful design mistake there when I was young and ignorant. The building, when we bought it, had a bodega in the ground floor with an ugly aluminum storefront. The c. 1940 NYC tax photo shows a store with an old wood storefront, but that was long gone. Wanting to convert the ground floor store to an apartment, we decided against restoring the old wood storefront (probably for money reasons, but also practical ones — it seemed less secure than concrete). We built a new solid wall with these odd windows, which look much better from inside than out.

If I had it to do all over again, I would restore the storefront, as I’ve occasionally seen done. It can still be used as an apartment. There’s one I know of in Carroll Gardens, on Hicks Street and Union, and another that springs to mind on Court between Kane and DeGraw.

Meanwhile, I wouldn’t mind doing some planting in large tubs or containers below those awkward windows. The building next door (to the right in the photo), which has an unusual-for-Brooklyn cast-iron decorative front, has an old clawfoot tub in front with evergreens  that persist year after year, despite passersby chucking trash in there and spotty watering.

Historic Rhinebeck under 400K

THE CHELSEA CLINTON WEDDING EFFECT on real estate prices in Rhinebeck, N.Y., if ever there was to be one, seems like a non-starter. As we head into the best time of year for house-hunting — the dead of winter, when only the most serious shoppers are on the case — the mid-Hudson Valley is still very good value, especially compared to eastern Long Island, where for $400,000 your choices are nil but for the dreaded ranch.

In the Rhinebeck area, venerable architecture is not too much to ask for 400K. Were I in the market for an upstate place at this moment — and gosh, maybe I should be — I’d look at these two, a rare brick Federal-style farmhouse for 379K, above, and an 1830s Carpenter Gothic, offered at 399K, right. The listing agent for both is Paul Hallenbeck.

Brick houses are fairly unusual in this part of New York State (most are frame). To find a stately 1849 farmhouse on River Road, very near the Hudson River and the Bard College campus, is a double-whammy (there are no ‘bad parts’ of River Road). The 1.1 acre lot is high and open; the house has 3BR, 2baths, and original details including woodwork, floors, doors, and built-ins, with updated mechanicals, baths, and windows (pics below). Period barn and wildflower meadow included.

Rhinebeck village has almost exclusively old houses, many with some pedigree. The 3BR, 2-1/2 bath on Montgomery Street (all pics below) is an 1830s Carpenter Gothic reminiscent of Washington Irving’s Sunnyside in Tarrytown. It’s on 1.4 acres, with mature trees and a fenced garden; the house has 9-foot ceilings and a large porch, and there’s a classic red barn. The taxes are high for the area at $8,306/year (twice that of the house above), which is a drag.

For more pics and info on both houses, go here.

Note: I am not a real estate broker, nor do I have any financial interest in the properties mentioned on this blog. I just like spreading the word about old houses on the market and what I feel are viable investment opportunities.

FSBO: 1830s Huguenot House in New Paltz 360K

A READER alerted me to this very vintage cedar-sided cottage on 9+ acres, five miles from the town of New Paltz in Ulster County, N.Y. It’s on the market with an asking price of 360K.

Built for tenant farmers in the 1830s, the original deed has the names of early Huguenot settlers on it (the Huguenots were French Calvinists, many of whom settled in the New Paltz area in the 17th and 18th centuries).

The house has 2BR, 2 baths, hand-hewn beams, wide-board floors, and a barn with an upstairs studio. There’s a beehive oven in the basement, as well as an ice house.

According to legend, slaves were smuggled along the creek at the base of the property during the Civil War, and in the 1920s, locals say, the place was used as a brothel.

Sounds worthy of an archaeological dig.

The current owner is Diana Salsberg, a onetime puppet builder for Jim Henson, who purchased the house in 1991 and lived there full-time for 14 years.

For further information: dsalsberg@earthlink.net

Summer Rental: Hudson Valley Greek Revival

IT’S THAT TIME AGAIN: time for city dwellers to think about renting a country place for all or part of the summer. If a totally charming 2BR, 1 bath village house in Columbia County works for you, take a look at this one. It’s owned by good friends of mine, but that’s not why I’ve given it the casaCARA seal of approval.

It’s a renovated 1830s Greek Revival in Chatham, N.Y., half an hour from Tanglewood and the Berkshires. Comfortably and attractively furnished with mostly modern furniture, there’s a big eat-in kitchen and a glassed-in sun room at the back.

At just $1,000 for the month of June, $1,200 for July, and $1,200 for August, it’s an inexpensive getaway for sure. In fact, I’d consider renting it myself if I was the sort of person able to make plans more than 2 weeks in advance.

For more info, e-mail franeheller@gmail.com.

How to Renovate an Apartment in 3 Weeks

 

BEFORE

NOTHING I love more than a quickie renovation. When a longtime tenant finally vacated the ground-floor apartment of my building in Boerum Hill on January 31 (never having dusted in 10 years, apparently), my son Max and his handy dad swooped in like a SWAT team to unhook the old kitchen sink, install a new one, move and re-plumb the stove, and build an L-shaped half wall that makes the kitchen an entity instead of three appliances floating in space.

I called a re-glazing company to make the pitted, rusty bathtub like new ($300), and hired an electrician to install a ceiling fan, hang new pendant fixtures in the living room and kitchen, and a sconce in the bedroom (all IKEA), and add grounded outlets in the kitchen and bathroom.

Then Max installed over 100′ of baseboard. He and his girlfriend Alexis (they’ll be moving in there this weekend) spackled and puttied; I primed; she painted two coats of a gorgeous sage green (Benjamin Moore’s Green Tea), exorcising all traces of the previous occupant’s salmon pink.

Total cost: just under $3,000.

In the process, I re-appreciated the ol’ place. The building is 1830s. The ground floor was originally a store; the ceilings are nine feet tall.

What’s left of the original architecture is practically nothing, but the exposed brick wall (very trendy in the early ’80s, when we first turned the former bodega into a rental unit) has a beautifully proportioned fireplace opening.

In the back bedroom, overlooking a garden the tenants share, are the most paint-caked window moldings ever, bottom.

They should be stripped. We didn’t bother, but as I lovingly stroked yet another coat of semi-gloss over them this past weekend (at least the fifth time I’ve done so since we bought the building  — as children! — in 1979), I was conscious of the whole Greek Revival thing: how these fluted columns, lumpy and chopped up as they are, were intended as an homage to ancient Greece, in days when the building and the neighborhood were a lot more elegant than they are now.

What a difference a base makes

That they’ve survived 180 years is miraculous; I’m not getting rid of them now.