BrickUnderground

This Park Avenue townhouse has a home gym for the kiddies.

This $13.4 million Carnegie Hill home has 13 rooms and three outdoor spaces…and all of the incredible features any Park Avenue limestone townhouse should have… like a butler's pantry, a gorgeous oversized eat-in-kitchen, high ceilings and original wood mantle fireplaces.  

But the fun happens in the funky indoor game room/kids' bedroom, complete with a basketball hoop and gym-like flooring, a loft bed you can climb up to and a punching bag hanging from the ceiling.

Luckily, in a single-family home you don't have to worry about downstairs neighbors complaining about a competitive Saturday morning one-on-one.

Real Estate Want is a weekly column featuring New York City apartment details we're coveting right now.

Addison Berry

Central air-conditioning, a skylight that actually lets in light and soundproof windows … six New Yorkers us how their city dwellings might be improved.

• Climate change   I hate leaving my air conditioned bedroom in the summer and bathing in sweat by the time I reach my front door to leave. I wish I had central A/C so the temperature would be even and well-regulated throughout the apartment. -Curtis, Astoria

• The siren call of soundproofed windows I live on a street that doesn’t allow any parking on the either side.That’s because it’s the through street for the fire trucks when they race through, sirens blasting. I love my street and neighborhood, so I don’t want to move. But I’d love soundproof windows. - Heinz, Hamilton Heights

Q. I'm in the process of hiring a contractor for my renovations. What questions should I ask his references?

A. First off, ask each candidate for a minimum of three references. Any legitimate contractor with experience should easily have a list of projects under his or her belt from which to choose.

Be sure to ask for references with completed projects similar to yours.

Here are 9 questions to ask:

1.  What did you do to your apartment?

Find out specifically what the scope of the project was.

Did they simply skim coat the walls and paint? Or did the contractor do a complete renovation including kitchens and baths?

This second-floor walk-up studio/junior-one apartment at 221 West 28th Street is listed for $1,875. While certainly not big, it seems bright and clean.

SoHo and Chelsea are two of Manhattan's trendiest locales, with upscale boutiques, cutting-edge galleries and lots of tourists to boot.  Like most other 'hoods, the best apartment deals tend to be in walk-up buildings, such as four rentals that made this week's Hot Dozen--the 12 rental apartments Streeteasy.com visitors clicked on most often over the past seven days.

A studio at 221 West 28th Street (between Seventh and Eighth Aves) is listed for $1,875. It's actually a junior one-bedroom, with a foyer and lots of closet space. The apartment is on the second floor and looks bright and clean. Guarantors are permitted, and so are pets. Also, notes the listing, there is "NO BED BUG HISTORY EVER IN THE BUILDING."

Tony Fisher

You have to watch what you say to New Yorkers. Tell us we can’t do something in our apartments and we’ll do it anyway when you’re not looking, like plugging too many things into one outlet (danger: electrical fire), hanging potholders directly above the stove in our way-too-tiny kitchens (danger: regular fire) and building temporary walls without the proper egress (another fire-related danger).

But in talking to our fellow New Yorkers we've discovered some other chances people take that they later wish they had not.  Here are five things we'd like to politely urge you not to do in the comfort of your four walls.