Brooklyn - The Hunt - Old, Roomy and Stroller-Friendly - NYTimes.com AFTER the birth of their daughter, Jeanne Rondeau and Chris Beach knew they would need larger quarters than their 600-square-foot one-bedroom in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. A co-op in a 1930s brick building, it was filled with original detail. Their next home had to be similar - a place with the weight of history behind it, as far from new as possible, and in School District 13 of Brooklyn. The couple, graduates of the University of New Hampshire who met when they worked the overnight shift at a restaurant in Portsmouth, were at first unsure about the size of home they needed, even after Ms. Rondeau became pregnant again. Could they make do with two bedrooms, especially if they had another girl? The couple began looking about a year and a half ago. They found a nice two-bedroom on the third floor of a walk-up building in Fort Greene. Then they thought about carrying a double stroller, maybe with sleeping children, up and down all those stairs. Besides, wouldn't they eventually need three bedrooms? They would just have to hunt again. Reason prevailed: a three-bedroom it would be. But then they noticed that three-bedroom co-ops, which were scarce, generally ranged from $700,000 to $1 million, not all that much less than houses. So a house would be their best bet: either a single-family or a place with tenants to provide rental income. A postcard happened to arrive in the mail from Eve Levine, a vice president of the Corcoran Group, and the couple enlisted her help. Their price range included "places we thought we could talk down to $1.2 million," said Ms. Rondeau, 37. She is a former shoe designer, while Mr. Beach, 40, works as an information technology manager for a real estate finance company. Their taste for the historic was obvious. "Every time they saw something with lots of original detail," Ms. Levine recalled, "they lit up, even if the property wasn't viable for other reasons." They were disturbed when they found renovations that destroyed the integrity of the original construction. Often a place "looked like a brownstone on the outside and a new condo on the inside," Ms. Rondeau said, "and it kept making us really sad." Sometimes selling agents emphasized the ease of modernizing a place. This rubbed them all wrong. "If there was a Jacuzzi tub or a Toto toilet, it was off our list," Ms. Rondeau said. The couple shied away from vacant houses, too. At least if a place was occupied, they knew it was livable. They were open to the idea of being landlords, as long as they had the yard to themselves for the children and the tenants were on the upper floors. The one three-family house they seriously considered, however, was priced uncomfortably high. They saw a frame house with a peaked gable on Adelphi Street in the Fort Greene Historic District. It was an estate sale requiring a complete renovation. They needed flashlights to look around. The listing price was $899,000. The couple offered $600,000, figuring they would spend about $500,000 in repairs. They were turned down. That house later sold to an architect for $830,000. They visited an adorable carriage house, with a garage in front and a yard in back, on Clifton Place in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The block "felt very industrial but very neighborly," Ms. Rondeau said. The open house was packed, and the place, which had been restored by an architect, sold quickly for $975,000, well above their bid and the listing price of $899,000. A few months later, a listing appeared for a four-story house, also on Clifton Place. The asking price was $829,000. Ms. Rondeau visited, by now wheeling not just little Ada, 3, but a second daughter, Josie, 1, in a double-decker stroller. It fit easily through the door. Seven people lived there, roommate-style. Ms. Rondeau noted the untidy kitchen, the shower curtains dark with mold, the trash heaped in the backyard. But she also saw marble mantels, tin ceilings, claw-foot tubs, original moldings - even a skylight on the top floor. "I couldn't hide my emotions," she said. I really liked it.