Real Estate

Brooklyn stars

BUDGET BEAUTY: The stainless-steel kitchen (above) was largely redone for just $2,800, courtesy of an IKEA sale. (
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Greenleaf, Rey, Primo and lapdog Julio enjoy the bright living area that features a favorite artwork above the sofa, a photo of a trailer. (
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Primo also likes his colorful room. (
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I believe in real estate miracles,” says “Talk Stoop” host Cat Greenleaf. “If you believe in it, it can really happen.”

Greenleaf (whose NBC-produced show airs every weeknight on New York Nonstop and is likely familiar to any New Yorker who’s been in a taxicab recently) and her husband, Michael Rey (an Emmy-nominated CBS investigative news producer), had long yearned for a brownstone in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn.

In 2005, they caught their first break, when the perfect 1890 Federal brick townhouse became available. Then, like a fairy godmother (or rather, godfather), the owner, who’d gotten a great deal on his first home, decided he wanted to “repay the favor,” Greenleaf says, and offer the same to another young family.

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At a time when even badly run-down brownstones in the area were going for $1.3 million, he asked the couple for only $850,000. For that amazing price, they got three floors and a full basement — a total of 2,300 square feet — and a garden.

Greenleaf and Rey opted to convert the ground floor into a two-bedroom rental, and they and their 15-month-old adopted son, Nick (whom they call Primo), have taken over the top two floors. On one floor is the open living space, which includes the living room, dining area and kitchen, as well as one bathroom. The top floor has three bedrooms, one bathroom and a laundry room. (An added patio and the updated 100-foot-deep garden are shared with their tenant.)

“Our living space is about 1,500 square feet,” Greenleaf says. “It does the trick for us. But we redid everything down to the studs. It was a very dark house with dropped ceilings and lots of wood paneling: a very different vibe. Even the lines from the old gaslights were still in place.”

With the renovation came another real estate miracle. “We were lucky to find a young company that was just starting out and needed to show what they could do,” Greenleaf says.

The cost of the entire renovation: $200,000. (During the five-month-long renovation, they lived in a friend’s basement, right next to the boiler.)

“A lot of this is veneer,” Greenleaf says. “We covered over the old floor with a new one. We did the same thing with the staircase. We tried to keep the costs down with some smarts. A cabinet and the stainless-steel kitchen chairs were all from Craigslist. And the floors were the cheapest pine you can get. We rubbed them with a gray dye to give them a pickling effect.”

The kitchen was another great buy.

“It came from IKEA,” Greenleaf says. “Everything except the refrigerator and the dishwasher — all the cabinets, the stove, the oven and everything else cost $2,800. And it’s all stainless steel. We got it because we waited until they had a kitchen sale. We’d studied everything and knew exactly what we wanted.”

And Greenleaf and Rey use their kitchen to entertain often, sometimes more than three times a week.

Because they had a tight decorating budget, their home is furnished with many found objects — such as a curio cabinet they got off the street in Fort Greene — alongside items Greenleaf found by actively scouring Craigslist. (“Early-century IKEA” is how Rey describes the aesthetic.) And because the décor is minimal, Greenleaf says, every piece is meaningful to her.

Brooklynites since 2004 (their last home was in Prospect Heights), Greenleaf, 38, and Rey, 39, do plenty of the typical neighborhood things, like having the Brooklyn Seltzer Man make regular deliveries.

Also in typical brownstone Brooklyn fashion, Greenleaf has always sat on her stoop and chatted with her neighbors. That’s what gave her the idea for her show.

“I’d always assumed I’d have a life just like this,” Greenleaf says, “with a family like this, living in a home like this, even having a front stoop like this one. It was the stoop that changed my life.”

She’d been working for NBC doing lifestyle features when, in 2009, she started taping stories for the NBC-owned New York Nonstop (Time Warner channel 161/Cablevision channel 109). One morning, she went to work and announced she had an idea for a show called “Talk Stoop.” She wanted to do celebrity interviews, but on the stoop of her townhouse. Her producers told her to run with it.

Run with it she did. The show was nominated for an Emmy the first year out. The interviews are with celebrities like Edie Falco, Valerie Bertinelli, Clay Aiken, Peter Frampton and Kim Kardashian, who gladly make the trek out to Brooklyn.

And neither rain nor snow stops the show.

“We have snazzy see-through umbrellas that we use in bad weather,” Greenleaf says, “and, so far, all our guests have been fine about it. When there’s snow on the ground, they usually just wipe off their spot before they sit down on the steps.”

The ubiquitous “Talk Stoop,” with segments broadcast in cabs, on PATH trains and even at gas pumps, airs every weeknight at 8 p.m. on New York Nonstop. Overall, “Talk Stoop” reaches 11.5 million viewers a week.

“Everywhere you see NBC, you see ‘Talk Stoop,’ ” says Greenleaf, who also tapes a variety of lifestyle pieces for WNBC channel 4’s “Today in New York” morning show and the 11 o’clock news.

Even so, there’s a lot more that goes on in her life than her TV career. She and Rey are currently looking at adopting another child. (They can have biological children, but they choose to adopt.)

“My sister is adopted,” Greenleaf says, “so I learned what adoption meant when I was 3 or 4 years old. From that second on, it wasn’t even a question. I just always thought that’s how families are built. On our second date, I told that to Mike and he said, ‘Great’ — and then he gulped and ordered another glass of wine.

“We’re just waiting now for an opportunity to adopt again. So if anyone knows someone who has a child for adoption, let me know. Sometimes people aren’t ready to have children. And here we are hoping for another. We just want to grow our family.”

Cat Greenleaf’s favorite things

* A 40-pound Buddha head that Greenleaf dragged home from a Park Slope street fair

* A delicate crystal chandelier recovered from Hurricane Katrina that Rey bought in New Orleans

* Barn beams from a farm in Sullivan County that line the door leading to the living room

* The $2,800 kitchen from IKEA

* Rey’s guitar, which he built himself

* A black-and-white lacquered photograph of a trailer that reads “Health” across the side

* A curio cabinet that was found on the street in Fort Greene