Handyman & Renovations in Bedford-Stuyvesant
Bedford-Stuyvesant has one of the biggest concentrations of intact nineteenth-century row houses in the country, and a lot of them are still owned by the families who held on through the decades when nobody else would. The work here is rarely about making a house new. It's about making a house right.
What we’re usually working on
Brownstone, brick and limestone row houses in Romanesque Revival, Queen Anne and Neo-Grec — block after block of them, largely unbroken.
A great deal of original interior detail still in place: newel posts, pocket doors, plaster medallions, parquet, marble mantels.
Houses cut into multiple units or rooming houses mid-century, many now being brought back to one, two or three families.
Garden-level and cellar apartments below grade, with the damp that always comes with them.
What Bedford-Stuyvesant calls us for
- Bringing a subdivided house back to fewer units — walls, kitchens, bathrooms, stairs
- Repairing plaster and original woodwork rather than tearing it out
- Kitchen and bathroom renovation on the parlor and upper floors
- Turning over rental units in owner-occupied two- and three-families
- Garden-level damp, drainage and finish work
Four historic districts — and your block might not be in one
Bed-Stuy has several designated districts, added over more than fifty years: Stuyvesant Heights in 1971, the expanded Bedford-Stuyvesant/Stuyvesant Heights district in 2013, Bedford in 2015 and Willoughby-Hart in 2024. They don't cover the whole neighborhood, which is the part that catches people out — two houses a block apart can sit under completely different rules. Inside a district, anything visible from the street needs a Landmarks permit, and so does interior work that needs a Buildings Department permit. Outside one, none of that applies. Find out which you are before you plan the job, not after.
What we do in Bedford-Stuyvesant
Kitchen Remodeling
From new cabinets and counters to a full gut — kitchens rebuilt in prewar apartments and row houses, on a schedule you're told up front.
Drywall & Plaster Repair
Holes patched, cracks filled, water damage cut out and replaced — finished flat and ready for paint.
Interior Painting
One room or a whole apartment, prepped properly — walls, ceilings, trim, doors and the prewar details that make a room.
Nearby
Working in Bedford-Stuyvesant this week.
Call, text, or send a photo. Flat price before we start — usually back to you within 90 minutes.
(929) 500-4434