How Level Two Chimney Flushing Was Born in Flushing
We didn’t pick Flushing because a spreadsheet told us to. We picked it because the housing stock here demands a standard most chimney companies never hit. When Level Two Chimney Co. expanded into Queens, Corrine Halstead was asked to build the local branch. She had spent years in the field for the parent brand, watching the same pattern repeat across metro neighborhoods: homeowners paying for a “chimney inspection” that was really just a flashlight glance from the roof, followed by a scare quote for liner work nobody could see and nobody could prove.
The moment that settled it happened on a cold January morning in a brick rowhouse near Kissena Park. A homeowner had paid another company nine hundred dollars for a cleaning and a “full inspection.” What she got was a wet chimney, a carbon monoxide detector going off at 2 a.m., and a report with no photos, no measurements, nothing but a typed paragraph and a phone number. Corrine’s team ran a camera from top to bottom. The flue was cracked in two places. The previous company had never looked. That woman’s family had been sleeping under a slow leak for six months. Level Two had the archived footage from its own jobs proving this was not rare. It was routine. So when the Flushing branch opened, it opened with one promise: every chimney gets a camera. Every customer sees the footage. Every recommendation comes with evidence, or it doesn’t come at all.
Corrine Halstead’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
Corrine Halstead didn’t grow up dreaming about chimneys. Nobody does. She came into the trade through masonry, running repointing crews on old buildings in the outer boroughs, and the chimneys were always the part everyone else ignored. Masons would rebuild the crown and walk away. Roofers would flash around the base and shrug. Nobody wanted to climb up and actually look down the flue. That struck her as backwards. The chimney is the only part of a house that carries fire through the middle of a wooden structure. And here was an entire trade treating it like an afterthought.
The first time she dropped a camera down a flue and saw the footage come back on the monitor, she understood what the job actually was. It was not about brushes and soot. It was about being able to show a homeowner, in their own kitchen, what was happening inside the wall of their house. The soot on her hands, the creosote smell that stays in your jacket, the cold air against your face when you’re on a roof in February in Queens. All of it is real. But the footage is what matters. That became the standard she carried.
What keeps her in it after seventeen years with this company is the same thing that pulled her in at the start: the difference between what a homeowner is told and what a homeowner can see. When someone shows you a cracked liner on a screen in your own living room, you don’t need a sales pitch. You just need the facts. And then you can decide. Corrine would tell you she’d still be doing masonry if the camera had never come along. But once you’ve seen inside, you can’t go back to guessing.
Meet Corrine Halstead - The Person Behind Every Job
Corrine Halstead is the Owner & Founder of the Flushing branch of Level Two Chimney Co. She came up through masonry and chimney service in New York City, working on the old brick and brownstone chimneys that define Queens housing stock, before being chosen to open and lead this location. Her background is field-first: she has run the camera herself, rebuilt crowns, repointed stacks, and diagnosed thousands of flues. She is not a salesperson with a clipboard. She is a tradesperson who can read a chimney the way a doctor reads an X-ray, and she has built her crew to work the same way.
What separates Corrine from a corporate franchise technician is simple: she answers for the work in the place where the work happens. When a Flushing homeowner opens a report with her name on it, that name means something. It means she stood behind the camera footage, signed off on the scope, and put the price in writing before anyone picked up a brush. Outside the job, she is a serious cook, the kind who makes stock from scratch and thinks a Sunday sauce needs at least four hours. She brings that same patience to a flue. Nothing rushed. Everything documented. The customer sees what she sees, every time.
Before
AfterOur Promise to Flushing Homeowners
We work under the Haven Standard, and we name it because it has teeth. Five commitments, each one written down, each one enforceable:
- Have it in writing. Flat price, written scope, written warranty, before anyone starts. No verbal estimates, no “we’ll see when we get up there” pricing.
- Arrive on schedule. A real window, a named tech, and a text when we’re on the way. Your time is not a suggestion.
- Verified crews. Every pro working under our name is required to hold the license and insurance their state requires. We put the license number on the page.
- Evidence on every job. Photos and readings of what we actually found. You see the footage. You keep the report.
- No surprises. No door upsell, no scope creep, no “while we’re in here” add-ons. The price you approved is the price you pay.
This is Clause 4 of the Haven Standard made real: the inspection that actually looks inside. That’s not a slogan. It’s the job.
Our Credentials
Every contractor in your home should be able to show you the paperwork before you ask. Here is ours:
- State-licensed. Every pro working under our name is required to hold the license their state requires for chimney and venting work. We’ll show you the number before the job, not after.
- Insured & bonded. Because anyone working on your roof or inside your flue should carry protection for you and for your home.
- Seventeen years of company history. Level Two Chimney Co. has been inspecting and cleaning chimneys since 2009, and this Flushing branch carries that full record, including a camera archive that predates most local competitors.
- A documented record on every job. The company has inspected and cleaned over 38,000 chimneys since 2009, every one with a written price before work began and a documented record when it ended.
Those credentials matter because a chimney isn’t cosmetic. A bad cleaning or a missed crack means a house fire or a carbon monoxide leak. When you let someone into your flue, you’re trusting them with the safety of your family. That trust should be backed by paper and footage, not a handshake.
Rooted in Flushing
Our trucks work the streets from Flushing to Bayside, from Jackson Heights down to Forest Hills, and out toward Fresh Meadows and Elmhurst. We know the pre-war brick stacks near the LIRR line, the mid-century rows with clay liners in Throgs Neck, the converted brownstones in Astoria. Different chimneys, same standard. We shop at the Asian markets on Main Street, we know the traffic patterns around Citi Field on game days, and we don’t need GPS to find a side street off Northern Boulevard. This is where we work, and the people we work for are our neighbors.
Written by Corrine Halstead, Owner at Level Two Chimney Flushing, serving Flushing and surrounding Queens neighborhoods since opening this branch.