New Prospects

Architect Jeff Sherman, of Delson or Sherman Architects, has more guts and gall than your average home renovator. In 2000, strapped by a "very finite budget," he bought a wrecked row house in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, that had been used as an illegal breeding kennel. Over the next ten years, working as his own general contractor and builder, he transformed the scariest building on his block into a high-design home, all for about $100 per square foot. "I’m a little wary of the construction-on-a-dime myth trumpeted in the press," says Sherman. "Construction is ridiculously expensive. But yeah, I wound up doing a house for next to nothing."