We are based in Babylon, so this is the village we know best. It is also the most demanding place we work, because so much of the housing stock here went up before 1929.
A house built in 1910 does not behave like a house built in 1970. The walls are plaster over lath, not drywall. The windows are original wood sash. And a good number of the homes near the water started life as summer cottages and were winterised later, which is why the floors slope, the additions do not quite line up, and almost nothing is square.
None of that is a problem. It just means the person doing the work has to know what they are looking at.
What Babylon Village homes actually need
Plaster repair, not drywall patching. These are different materials that fail in different ways. Plaster lets go when the keys behind the lath crack off and the wall loses its grip on the strapping. Skim-coating over that does not hold. It has to be cut back to sound material and rebuilt in layers. Anyone who treats a plaster wall like a sheet of drywall will be back inside a year.
Original wood windows. Sash cords snap, glazing putty dries out and drops away, and the sash swells shut by August. Most of these windows are worth repairing rather than replacing. The old-growth wood in them is denser than anything you can buy today, and a repaired sash with a good storm window is not far off a modern replacement unit.
Doors that were never square to begin with. After a hundred years of settling, the door is usually fine and the opening has moved. Planing the door is the quick answer and the wrong one, because it takes material off permanently and looks it. Resetting the stop and recutting the hinge mortises is slower and lasts.
Trim you cannot buy. Old profiles are not stocked anywhere. Matching them means sourcing salvage or building the profile up from stock pieces until it reads right. We would rather do that than put a modern colonial casing next to 1910 trim and call it done.
What we do in Babylon Village
What we will not do
We do not do in-wall electrical or plumbing, gas appliances, or anything that needs a permit pulled. In the village this comes up more than it does elsewhere, because exterior work on an older home can trigger review that a homeowner did not expect.
We will tell you that on the phone, before you have booked anything and before we have charged you for showing up.
Questions from Babylon Village homeowners
Do you patch plaster, or only drywall?
Both. Plaster is the more common need in this part of the village, and it is repaired differently. We cut back to sound material, re-key where the lath is exposed, and build the patch up in coats so it sits flush instead of telegraphing through the paint a few months later.
My house is in the older part of the village. Will the work need approval?
Interior work almost never does. Exterior changes sometimes do, and it depends on the street and the change. We will tell you what we think before you commit, and if it is genuinely a permit job we will say so rather than quietly doing it.
Can you match trim in a house this old?
Usually. Not always with a single stock piece, but by combining profiles or sourcing salvage we can get close enough that you have to be looking for the joint to find it. If we cannot get it close, we will tell you that up front.
Do you work on homes that were converted from summer cottages?
Often. They are common south of Montauk Highway and they have a recognisable set of quirks: uneven floor framing, additions built to a different standard than the original, and doors and windows that have been fighting each other for decades. None of it is unusual once you know it is there.
Got a list?
Most of our Babylon customers did not call about one thing. They called about six. Call (631) 910-6240 or request a free quote, and new customers get 20% off the first service.
Nearby towns we serve
We cover the South Shore from Babylon east to Islip. If you are between two of these, call and ask.