Living La Vida Brooklyn - More on my brownstone renovation

Oh my brownstone, my poor abused brownstone...  I look at her and she's the brick and mortar equivalent of Jocelyn Wildenstein.  She's had some unscrupulous contractors butcher her beyond recognition.

I would love to be able to do a total gut renovation, but my pockets don't match my aspirations right now.  So what I've decided to do is work as organically as I can.  That equates to my brownstone being in various stages of renovation.

We're living on 3 of the 4 floors rather inefficiently, but it's the best I can do right now.

First floor:
Our kitchen is on the back half of the first floor, and the front half of that floor is being used as a gathering ground for all the debris from the renovation.

Second floor:
Our living room is on the front half and the back half is being used as a collection space for all items to be donated.

Third floor:
The third floor is totally unoccupied because it's in the process of being gutted.

The fourth floor:
This is where the bedrooms and laundry room are, and I've left them relatively undisturbed.


The first floor for me is the ideal place to for the rental apartment because it has an entrance that can be dedicated to it alone.  I could make the apartment on the top floor, but I don't like the idea of the tenant would have to travel through our floors to get to their apartment.

So I decided to play around with some ideas using SketchUp.  The plans are approximate, and so is the scaling on the furniture models which I farmed from the 3D Warehouse.

As it stands it looks like this:

The hallway to nowhere on the bottom of the image is a makeshift storage space.  When the building was used as a day care center, it extended to the front door on the bottom right corner as an egress for wheelchair bound children.  It had been sealed when we had the tenants from hell living on this floor and the one above.


The bathroom is currently too large to be efficient, and the space could be better used.  Overall, that is the case.  The kitchen is not efficient as well, and is 4 inches higher than the rest of the floor because of the multiple layers of plywood and linoleum through the years.

No more quick fixes!!!  I'd like to do this right and have begun to strip her down to the bones.


 Idea #1

The first option is Hubby and my favorite because it feels more open.

• It closes off the apartment so that when we travel to the basement from our upper triplex, there is privacy for the tenant, which is a necessity.  
• The original plans for the house had the bathroom where it's shown in this drawing.  The difference is that the kitchen was adjacent to the bathroom.  
• I thought it might be good to use some of the existing plumbing for the bathroom and convert it to a kitchen along the middle of the apartment.  This can easily be changed and made into the living room.  
• I think this plan will be the most expensive because it would involve some movement of plumbing which would make the job more expensive, so I came up with a couple of other options.

Idea #2

The second option is based on a friend's one bedroom in Fort Greene.

• My husband loved that she had a breakfast bar with stools so that we could "visit" her in the kitchen without being in her way.  I liked it too, but am not sure it will work for us due to are some major differences.  
• Our friend Jay's place is on the third floor, meaning there is an additional room adjacent to the bedroom which we cannot place due to the entry way.  
• More importantly, her brownstone is 3 feet wider than ours which means she can place her couch opposite the fireplace and make space for a TV.  
• In our plan, there's no logical space for the TV, so I created another plan.

Idea #3

The third plan doesn't have the breakfast bar.

• I believe there are advantages to having a hidden kitchen.  For me, it's a buzzkill to see all the dishes pile up while I'm entertaining.  I like to face the music after the fun is done.  
• In this case, freeing up the extra wall allows for a more logical placement of the sofa and TV, while maintaining the general location for the kitchen and bath as it stands today.

Next is to run these ideas by a childhood friend of mine who is a contractor and another friend who is an architect.  I'd like their take on them.  I'm sure there's something I'm not seeing, this is why you pay an architect.  I'll have to be a little more creative since I need my current cashflow for my living expenses.