Remodeling Brookline's prewar apartments and homes

An old, dense town next to Boston

Census figures count about 62,700 people in Brookline on less than seven square miles of land, with roughly 28,500 homes. The median building dates to 1940, and close to half of all homes were built before then. Only about 18 percent are single-family detached houses. Owners occupy roughly 46 percent, so more households rent than own.

Those numbers describe a place unlike most of the towns we serve. The typical project is not an addition on a house with a yard. It is a condo kitchen on the third floor, a bathroom in a two-family, a rental unit between tenants, or a large single-family home with a century of history in its walls.

Those larger houses deserve their own mention. The single-family homes here are often big, built with plaster, hardwood and trim that would be hard to replace today. Remodeling them well means matching or protecting what is original while updating what has to change, such as kitchens, baths, wiring and insulation. Owners in these houses tend to care about the details, and so do we. Where a room has original trim or built-ins, we protect them during demolition and plan new work so it meets the old cleanly.

Turning a unit between tenants calls for a tight, written scope and a schedule you can plan rent around.

Working inside multi-unit buildings

Condominium buildings usually have rules about work hours, moving materials through shared halls and stairs, protection of common areas and approval of plans before work begins. We ask for those rules at the start and build the schedule around them. Shared walls and floors mean sound and dust travel, so containment and daily cleanup are not optional.

Prewar buildings bring cast iron drains, plaster on masonry or lath, steam or hot-water radiators and wiring added over many decades. Opening a kitchen wall can turn up any of it. We tell the owner what we find before the job moves forward, and licensed plumbers and electricians handle what falls under their trades. Old buildings also tend to be out of level and out of square, so cabinets and tile are laid out from careful measurements rather than assumptions.

Lead paint is likely in buildings this old. Renovation follows lead-safe work practices, which matters even more when other households share the hallways. Containment goes up at the unit door, floors in common areas get covered, and dust is cleaned before the crew leaves each day.

Owners, landlords and the drive in

With most homes rented, landlords and investors make up a real share of the people who need work done. Turning a unit between tenants calls for a tight, written scope and a schedule you can plan rent around. Owner-occupants usually want the opposite: careful, finished work in a home they intend to stay in. We do both, and we are clear about which one a given scope is.

Brookline is about 28 miles north of Raynham, inside the denser part of Greater Boston. Parking, material deliveries and debris removal take more planning here than in the suburbs, and we work that out before the first day on site. The owner and, where it applies, the building manager know when debris pickup is coming and when large materials will be carried in, so nobody is surprised on the stairs.

Steve stays in contact through the job. Every owner gets the scope on paper, any change comes back as a written price for approval, and there is one person to call, not a rotating cast. The building department issues the permit under the state building code, and we book each inspection once that stage of the work is ready.