Hello! Welcome! You’ve stumbled into my personal favorite corner of the Internet, and I’m so glad you’re here! Settle in. Everyone’s really nice, I promise.
My name is Daniel Kanter, and I started this blog in 2010 out of my dorm room in New York City. Since then, I moved into an apartment in Manhattan before taking the leap to an apartment in Brooklyn, and then to my current home in Kingston, New York in 2013 (about 2 hours from NYC by car).
My house—a circa 1865 Greek Revival—was love at first sight. Two years of vacancy had followed decades of deferred maintenance, shoddy renovations, and the original floor plan getting divided into two apartments. It had neither a working toilet nor functional kitchen, the roof leaked horribly, the boiler was shot, and the circuit breakers were each their own little electrical fire waiting to happen. And I’d never been so excited about anything in all my life. Seven years later, I’m still chipping away at the restoration, and it shows no sign of letting up anytime soon!
From early interior design jobs in Manhattan and Brooklyn to larger and larger renovation and rehab projects in Upstate New York (I even got to build a whole house once!), this blog—and the amazing humans who read it—has been with me every step of the way. I’m a self-taught renovator and lover of old houses, and I’m constantly trying to expand my skills (and tool collection!) and share the journey—including the pitfalls, mistakes, and shattering of expectations—with you. It’s not always beautiful, the path is rarely linear, and things can get messy. But that’s just life, right?
So if that sounds like your particular idea of fun, you’ve come to the right place! I also have two very adorable and special dogs named Mekko and Bungee, and if you speak ill of them, I will fight you.