Greenpoint sits at the very top of Brooklyn: East River on one side, Newtown Creek on the other, one subway line down the middle. Some contractors treat that as the edge of the map. I drive, so it’s just another stop on the run. The work here splits in two: repairs in houses that have been standing since the yard at Quay and West launched the USS Monitor in 1862, and mounting, hanging and assembly in the towers still going up by the water. Minimum visit is $130, and the number is fixed from your photos before the slot is even booked.
Greenpoint housing: 1850s frame houses to waterfront towers
The landmarked blocks around Noble, Kent, Franklin and Calyer are row houses and small walk-up buildings put up between 1850 and 1900, plenty of them wood frame, several credited to the ship carpenters who worked the yards on the creek. A few blocks north, the Greenpoint Landing towers are still being finished. Both ends of that range land on my calendar, and they need opposite things:
- Frame houses hide their framing. A wall in an 1870s house is plaster over lath, and nothing behind it sits where a tape measure says it should. I map what’s actually there before anything gets drilled, which is how heavy mirrors (from $130) and floating shelves (from $130 each) end up level in buildings where the walls no longer are.
- A century and a half of settling. It shows up in the doors first: they stick in July, don’t latch in January, or wear a groove into the floor. Planing and hinge work runs from $130, a new lockset from $130. The cracked plaster that comes from the same slow movement is patch and paint work from $140.
- No staff in small buildings. Most of Greenpoint is two- and three-family houses and apartments over the storefronts on Manhattan and Nassau Avenues, where Polish bakeries and delis still trade next to the newer coffee bars. Nobody is coming down to fix the running toilet: that’s minor plumbing from $130, and dimmers, outlets and fixture swaps from $130 through minor electrical.
- Concrete on the waterfront. In the newer West Street buildings the wall your TV is going on is poured concrete, not drywall. TV mounting is from $130 on drywall and from $160 on concrete or brick, because that version of the job takes a hammer drill, masonry anchors and dust control.
- Original windows, seasonal A/C. Old wood sash windows still take a unit every June, and they’re the reason brackets exist. Window A/C install is from $130 and removal from $130; my guide to NYC window A/C rules covers what your building can ask for.
Popular services in Greenpoint
Furniture assembly is my most-booked job here, mostly because of the staircases. A house from the 1880s has a stairwell built for 1880s furniture, so an assembled wardrobe often physically cannot make the turn at the landing. The fix is boring and it works: carry the flat boxes up, build the thing in the room where it lives. Furniture assembly starts at $130 for a dresser or a bed frame and $180 for a PAX-size wardrobe, packaging broken down and taken out. When something already assembled has to go up or down those stairs, that’s heavy lifting from $150.
After that it’s walls and finishes: a gallery wall of up to 10 pieces for $140, a re-caulked tub at $130, and closets built into bedrooms that were never designed to have one, which is light carpentry, priced by the job with $130 as the floor. The blocks running toward Newtown Creek are still working buildings, so studios, shops and small offices call too: shelving, door hardware, a fixture that died over the weekend, the same jobs with taller ceilings. Everything published sits on the pricing page; open-ended lists go hourly at $75–95/hour, materials ride on top, and the packaging and the dust leave with me.
How booking works
Text or email photos: the wall, the pile of boxes, the door that won’t shut, whatever it is. I answer my own messages and send back one flat number. That number holds when I see the job in person, because I’d rather quote carefully than argue in your hallway.
Timing is the part people here ask about first, because getting a tradesman up to this corner of Brooklyn is usually the hard part. Van, evenings, Sundays. If it can’t wait, check same-day availability. South of McCarren Park you’re in Williamsburg, which I cover on the same trip, and I’m out across the rest of Brooklyn all week. Long Island City is just over the creek if you keep a place on both sides.
Send a photo of the mess. What comes back is a real number, not a range and not a callback from an office.
Letters to the desk, answered
There's no super in my building. Does that mean I'm on my own?
You're not on your own, you just don't have anyone in the basement with a wrench. That's the standard Greenpoint setup: two- and three-family houses and small walk-ups with an owner instead of staff. The running toilet, the dead outlet, the door that stopped latching, that's the call I get here most. Minimum visit is $130 and the price is set before I arrive.
My apartment is in an old wood-frame house. Will a shelf actually hold on those walls?
Yes, as long as whoever hangs it looks behind the plaster first. In a house from the 1870s you get lath, framing at whatever spacing the builder felt like that week, and sometimes nothing at all where you'd swear there's a stud. I find out what's really back there before I drill, then pick anchors to match it.
Greenpoint is a pain to reach. Does that show up on my bill?
No. The G is the only train through here, and it's the one line in the city that never touches Manhattan. That matters for your commute, not for my pricing: I come by van with the tools already loaded, and my quotes are flat, so whatever the trip costs me is mine to absorb.
Can you put a window A/C into an old wooden sash window?
Yes, and those windows are exactly why brackets exist. The rule is simple: the unit must not be able to fall, and an old sash usually needs a proper support bracket to satisfy that. Install is from $130, and pulling it out and prepping it for storage in the fall is from $130 too.
My landlord lives downstairs and won't deal with it. Can I hire you myself?
Plenty of Greenpoint tenants do. If it's something the owner should be covering, send the request by text or email first so there's a record, then hire whoever you like for everything else. I invoice whoever books me, tenant or owner, and I don't need building staff to let me in.
How fast can you get to Greenpoint?
Often same day. Greenpoint and the blocks south of McCarren Park usually sit on the same run for me, so an afternoon opening can go to you. Send photos early and you'll know by lunch whether today works; evenings and Sundays are bookable too.