The Hunt: Old, Roomy and Stroller-Friendly
Chris Beach and Jeanne Rondeau and their daughters have room to spare.
AFTER the birth of their daughter, Jeanne Rondeau and Chris Beach knew they would need larger quarters than their 600-square-foot one-bedroom in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
A co-op in a 1930s brick building, it was filled with original detail. Their next home had to be similar — a place with the weight of history behind it, as far from new as possible, and in School District 13 of Brooklyn.
The couple, graduates of the University of New Hampshire who met when they worked the overnight shift at a restaurant in Portsmouth, were at first unsure about the size of home they needed, even after Ms. Rondeau became pregnant again. Could they make do with two bedrooms, especially if they had another girl?
The couple began looking about a year and a half ago. They found a nice two-bedroom on the third floor of a walk-up building in Fort Greene. Then they thought about carrying a double stroller, maybe with sleeping children, up and down all those stairs.
Besides, wouldn’t they eventually need three bedrooms? They would just have to hunt again. Reason prevailed: a three-bedroom it would be.
But then they noticed that three-bedroom co-ops, which were scarce, generally ranged from $700,000 to $1 million, not all that much less than houses. So a house would be their best bet: either a single-family or a place with tenants to provide rental income.
A postcard happened to arrive in the mail from Eve Levine, a vice president of the Corcoran Group, and the couple enlisted her help.
Their price range included “places we thought we could talk down to $1.2 million,” said Ms. Rondeau, 37. She is a former shoe designer, while Mr. Beach, 40, works as an information technology manager for a real estate finance company.
Their taste for the historic was obvious. “Every time they saw something with lots of original detail,” Ms. Levine recalled, “they lit up, even if the property wasn’t viable for other reasons.”
They were disturbed when they found renovations that destroyed the integrity of the original construction. Often a place “looked like a brownstone on the outside and a new condo on the inside,” Ms. Rondeau said, “and it kept making us really sad.”
Sometimes selling agents emphasized the ease of modernizing a place. This rubbed them all wrong. “If there was a Jacuzzi tub or a Toto toilet, it was off our list,” Ms. Rondeau said.
The couple shied away from vacant houses, too. At least if a place was occupied, they knew it was livable. They were open to the idea of being landlords, as long as they had the yard to themselves for the children and the tenants were on the upper floors. The one three-family house they seriously considered, however, was priced uncomfortably high.
They saw a frame house with a peaked gable on Adelphi Street in the Fort Greene Historic District. It was an estate sale requiring a complete renovation. They needed flashlights to look around. The listing price was $899,000.
The couple offered $600,000, figuring they would spend about $500,000 in repairs. They were turned down. (That house later sold to an architect for $830,000.)
They visited an adorable carriage house, with a garage in front and a yard in back, on Clifton Place in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The block “felt very industrial but very neighborly,” Ms. Rondeau said.
The open house was packed, and the place, which had been restored by an architect, sold quickly for $975,000, well above their bid and the listing price of $899,000.
A few months later, a listing appeared for a four-story house, also on Clifton Place. The asking price was $829,000.
Ms. Rondeau visited, by now wheeling not just little Ada, 3, but a second daughter, Josie, 1, in a double-decker stroller. It fit easily through the door.
Seven people lived there, roommate-style. Ms. Rondeau noted the untidy kitchen, the shower curtains dark with mold, the trash heaped in the backyard. But she also saw marble mantels, tin ceilings, claw-foot tubs, original moldings — even a skylight on the top floor.
“I couldn’t hide my emotions,” she said. “I really liked it.”
Mr. Beach, knowing the house had vinyl siding, didn’t want to bother taking a look, but his wife insisted. And once he walked through, he was taken with the place, even though it would need elbow grease inside and out.
“The backyard was so full of junk and weeds that we weren’t really sure what was back there,” said Ms. Rondeau, who was worried about ticks. “I don’t walk in long grass,” she said.
But after living with two children in a one-bedroom, the couple relished the idea of six bedrooms and four bathrooms. The inspection found the electrical, heating and plumbing systems to be in good shape. With little hesitation, they bought the house for $785,000.
“They were intrepid,” Ms. Levine said.
Before they moved in, they hired a cleaning company; it sent three people who took twice as long as anticipated.
Upon arrival late last summer, the couple created a music room for him and an art room for her. “I can close the door and no one touches my stuff,” said Ms. Rondeau, who paints and sews, making many of the children’s clothes. The dining room, which they called “the creepy room,” is now the game room, with a pinball machine.
Mr. Beach has endured many a sleepless night thinking of all the work needed, “a constant list running through your head and after a while it gets overwhelming,” he said.
They intended to start renovations in the kitchen, but then they noticed that a wall behind some cabinets there seemed damp when it rained. The inspection had covered only visible features. The problem was traced to a crumbling outer wall. The stonemason they hired to rebuild it estimated that the house was 200 years old, older than they had thought.
The wall consumed their budget for a kitchen renovation, but they knew it was wise to invest in a proper repair. A contractor friend told them to “cry just once,” Mr. Beach said, “because if you don’t do it right you are going to cry more than once.”
Next up is cleaning the yard so it will be usable for the summer. The couple are hunting for a vintage stove for the kitchen. At some point they plan to remove the vinyl siding. Ms. Rondeau is blogging at domesticspace.com about life in the house.
They like the idea of living there as they renovate, watching the light change with the seasons, figuring things out as they go.
At first Mr. Beach thought completing the house would take several years. Now he wonders whether it will ever be done. “Every day I am walking around looking at all the potential,” he said, only half-joking.
Copyright © 2012 The New York Times Company. Reprinted with Permission. Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times.