NY Daily News Home Section - Friday August 7th, 2009
- All this rain hasn't hurt the standard apartment owner or renter, but it has played havoc with residents of brownstones. Basement walls made of old stone and dirt have caused leaking and severe flooding in some 150-year-old New York dwellings. Top Hat Home Services, a company established to help brownstone owners run their homes smoothly, knows how to cure these ills.
In addition to referring contractors and helping with minor repairs, Top Hat will wait for your cable installation, help with computer setup, paint, renovate your closet, shovel snow, and do anything from being a personal assistant to a handyman. They even have a 24-hour emergency line. "In one case, there was a crack in the ceiling by the first-floor stairwell," says Richard Herman, a 25-year New York contractor who founded the company with Gary Mindlin. "The beam holding the structure wasn't attached to the header. We had an engineer come in and build abrace."Mindlin says that 20% of the company's 40 clients recently experienced flooding. "It's not just cleaning up the water," he says. "It's making sure we fix where the leaks are coming from.
These are old buildings. We can throw a pump in to get rid of the water, but it's safer to fix the problem for good." To learn more, go to www.tophathomeservices.com.
