According to this Times story, Robert Taffera and his younger brother Eric have renovated almost forty houses in Brooklyn Heights. The photo shows one of their works in progress, 77 Columbia Heights, at the corner of Cranberry. Local homeowners, those affluent enough to afford their services, compete for their approval. They can afford to pick and choose their clients.
Tom Scheerer, a decorator who has worked with the Tafferas, describes their clients as “anti-masters of the universe”; as an example, he mentions “a financier client who favors Birkenstocks over Oxfords (and Brooklyn over Greenwich, Conn., or Park Avenue).” These clients face the confines of a brownstone in an expansive mood:
Residents dig down to create wine cellars, and build up to fabricate roof decks. … Elevators are standard fare, not an easy flourish to shoehorn into a historic house.
They’re not just concerned with luxury, though:
They consider the energy efficiencies that come from passive house technology, for example, and they have the means to go wide and deep.
For what they pay, their clients are satisfied with the Tafferas’ work. Not only do they do the renovation work well; they “come in on time and on budget.”
