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The Least Boring Story Ever Told:How I Built A HouseW ithin A HouseBY L.J. DAVISBrownstone stories in Brooklyn are like saeurkraut stories up in Monroe Codflty or sheep stories out in Idaho: everybody%u2019s got one, a lot of them are alike, and after a while you wish they%u2019d for God sake talk about something else. Still, you wouldn%u2019t be reading this if you didn%u2019t have a consuming interest in the subject, and by a happy chance,. I happen to have lived through what is arguably the most, er, colorful renovation in the history of the planet. The house 1 bought possessed everything but a carved curse on the doorjam, and I know just how Lord Carnarvon felt when the mosquito bit him.The house 1 bought. Well, actually, it was the house we bought, we being my wife, my next-door neighbor, and your humble servant, hereinafter collectively known by the lighthearted name of the Thirty-seven and a Half Years of Collective Education Down the Drain Construction Company. Get out the kleenex. This is not a joyous tale.We were not without skills. My next door neighbor, a scientist, knew how to repair a computer. My wife, the former Lady Barbara ffoulke-Menzies, had studied flower arranging. And I, the Stewart Granger of our little party, had accidentally bought a perfect house on Dean Street in 1966, slapped on a couple of coats of paint, and was thus a canny expert in the art of home repair.I warn you again, this is not a happy tale. It involves catastrophe and death.The house in question is a beautiful little thing, one of a row of three 1871 Second Empire structures on Hoyt Street, next to the Indian reservation and on the edge of the landmark district, asking $28 thousand. My next-door neighbor needed a place to live. I needed a source of income. Perfect.Shrewd dealing reduced the price to $24 thousand. It was at this point, with our signatures hardly dry on the contract, that we discovered that the guy who was selling us the house didn%u2019t own the house. Someone else owned it instead. It was our man%u2019s plan to buy it at a dual closing ceremony and sell it to us in a single swift motion, making himself a tidy pile. Naturally, we didn%u2019t stand still for this. What we did was, we hired a private detective; okay, okay, it seemed like a good idea at the time. The shamus looked in the telephone book, located the true owner and, following instructions, offered her the shyster%u2019s price plus a sweetener. She took one look at his porkpie hat and denied all knowledge of the property, the English language, and the planet earth. We bought the house at the shyster%u2019s price.HAD NO CELLARBy way of preserving my reputation as a man with his wits about him, let me state at once that we knew all along that the place had no cellar; what comes next happened only because 1 was trying out an idea for a movie called Abbott and Costello Build Their Dream House. First, we ignored the fact that the house had no cellar fencing the back yard, seiving the voodoo jars out of the dirt, and building a deck; we had a reason, but 1 forget it. Then we went through the house like a team of demolition commandoes, ripping out everything including the baseboards because my partner thought baseboards were possessed by an evil spirit.We had bought a house. We now owned a shell. A shell with a deck and a beautiful garden, but a shell nevertheless. It was then that I turned to somebody or somebody turned to me, and this individualsaid, %u201c Hey, this house hasn't got any--%u00bb%u00bb w w u w i %u2022What it had instead was a concrete floor apparently made of adamite, a unique combination shower stall and toilet, and a furnace. The furnace was in the middle of the proposed tenants%u2019 kitchen. It was big enough to power the Delta Queen.The floor made of adamite%u2014a geographical feature also known as The %u2019lumber Killer%u2014eventually yielded to themassage of a gold-plated Con Edison-style jackhammer. The shower-toilet was a piece of cake. The furnace we removed by hand.1 don%u2019t think I%u2019ve mentioned that the prospective tenants%u2019 apartment was eight feet below street level. The furnace weighed an estimated 900 pounds. I think I had better tell you what we did; you couldguess for a week, and even then I suspect you would have to give up. First, we walked it across the floor to the foot of the steps. Tip, roll, breathe. Tip, roll, breathe. This took two hours. Then we got all this scrap wood, see, and then we tipped the furnace back and edged it over the lip of the first step. Then we tipped it forwardand built a little platform with the wood. Then we tipped it back onto the platform, edged it forward over the lip of the second step, knocked apart the platform, and rebuilt it on the first step. Then we tipped it back onto the platform and....OUR PLIGHT CONTINUEDYou haven%u2019t lived until you%u2019ve been half way up a steep and narrow flight of steps on the down side of a 900 pound furnace, and nothing between you and getting crushed like a bug but a teeny little wooden platform that comes apart when you kick it.A lot of other stuff happened, too, like the time the house next door had a broken waste line and we called the building inspector and the building inspector came and inspected our house rather than the house next door and slapped us with a lot of violations and we ended up having to pay to fix the broken waste line anyway. Or the time my associates became convinced there was buried treasure in the back yard.Or the time I was cleaning a brick wall and threw a container full of muriatic acid into my face. Or the time it rained and we found out the roofers hadn%u2019t put on the new roof they said they%u2019d put on. You have to understand that what we were doing was building a house inside a house, and we were doing it on weekends. It took years. It especially took years because my associate discovered that it was possible to double-layer sheet rock, which meant that every wall had to be put up twice. We double-layered the ceilings, too. You haven%u2019t lived until you%u2019ve double-layered a twelve-foot ceiling. It%u2019s fun. Try it.Then my associate managed to get himself murdered in a way that defies the imagination and everybody, especially our creditors, made the hilarious discovery that our lawyers had forgotten to put my name on the deed, which led me to receive some very strange phone calls at some very odd times of the night, during which some interesting men my late associate had borrowed money from exhorted me to do the right thing.ALL IN THE PASTThat%u2019s all in the past now. I own a lot more house than I ever wanted to own, I am a^lot poorer than I ever thought I would be, and the nice people who live in the triplex have a lot of things no landlord in his right mind would ever install in a rental unit unless the rental unit was on Park Avenue, like an intercom and an instant hot water dispenser and a restaurant stove and a double oven and two freezers and an acre of quarry tile floors and an in-the-wall stereo system and a floating staircase and a brass-railed sleeping loft and a bathroom that does everything but sing to you.And two decks and a garden and a cherry tree. And a roof that started to leak again when the, shall we say ill-advised? chap down the way covered his mansard roof with asbestos shingles and ripped out the ornate iron fence that crowned it and broke it into a dozen pieces and dumped it on my roof instead of hauling it away. Then it got hot and the tar got soft and the iron got hot too, and then some kid threw a rubber ball onto the roof and it rolled into the drainspout and stuck there, and then it rained.But you know what? I%u2019ve got the guy%u2019s iron fence, and one day when I%u2019ve got the time, I%u2019m going to put it up. Funnily enough, I%u2019ve been bored lately.%u201cShrewd dealing reduced the price to $24 thousand. It was at thispoint, wiiri uur signatures naraiy dry un the contract, inat wediscovered that the guy who was selling us the house didnft own thehouse. Naturally, we JAdn%u2019t stand still for this. What we did was, weh i d a private detective