After a decade working for New York City firm Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, Brent Allen Buck was ready for a change of pace. In 2015, Buck struck out on his own to launch Buck Projects, headquartered in the Brooklyn brownstone he renovated on nights and weekends over the course of two years. That home, whose renovation process Buck will outline in the first ever Renovation Diary series for Curbed, serves as his home base and design laboratory, as well as a backdrop to a complete set of teak pepper mills by Danish modernist Jens Quistgaard. Follow along over the next eight weeks as Buck details the highs, lows, joys, and travails of home renovation.
It was the summer of 2013 when I took plunge into home ownership with the purchase of a circa-1888 brownstone in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. After years of living in condo towers in Manhattan, my wife and I heeded the call of Brooklyn in 2012 with a move to Cobble Hill. We fell in love with the tree-lined streets and rows of stately Victorian architecture. Once we decided to look for a property, we started slow, looking at duplex apartments in Cobble Hill and Fort Greene. With time, our ambition snowballed: A duplex became a townhouse, and the highlighted area on our map grew to include most of brownstone Brooklyn.
After a year of searching, they found a home in Prospect Heights >>