How Level Two Chimney White Plains Was Born in White Plains
We didn’t set out to open a chimney company. We set out to fix something that kept going wrong for homeowners in White Plains.
The moment that stuck with us happened years before this branch existed. A homeowner off Mamaroneck Avenue had paid for a chimney cleaning, got a one-page receipt that said “swept and inspected,” and three months later had smoke backing into the living room. Her fireplace hadn’t been cleaned properly. It hadn’t been inspected at all. She had no way to know, because she’d never been shown anything. No photos. No camera footage. Just a receipt and an invoice.
The part that bothered us most wasn’t the money. It was the absence of proof. In Westchester County, where homes range from 1920s colonials in Battle Hill to newer builds near Saxon Woods, chimneys hide their problems. You can’t see a cracked flue tile from the hearth. You can’t feel a deteriorated mortar joint from the firebox. A homeowner either trusts what they’re told or they don’t, and too many had been taught not to.
So when the opportunity came to bring Level Two Chimney Co. to White Plains, we already knew the promise that mattered. Every inspection would include a camera scan. Every customer would see what we saw. Nothing gets recommended unless there’s footage to justify it. That was the standard the brand was built on in 2009, and it’s the reason a branch in White Plains made sense. Not because the city needed another chimney sweep. Because it needed one that could prove its work.
Corrine Halstead’s Personal Connection to the Chimney Cleaning Trade
The first time Corrine Halstead climbed onto a roof for this work, it wasn’t for a customer. It was because a neighbor’s fireplace had been smoking for two winters and every company that came out blamed something different. One said the damper. One said the cap. One quoted a full rebuild without ever putting a camera down the flue.
Corrine spent an afternoon with a technician who actually looked. The flue was packed with creosote so thick it had reduced the opening to the width of a fist. The damper was fine. The cap was fine. The problem was years of incomplete cleanings, each one leaving a layer behind because no one had verified the work. That afternoon changed how Corrine thought about chimneys. The problem was rarely mysterious. The problem was that nobody was looking carefully enough.
That’s what has kept her in this trade for over a decade. The work itself is straightforward when it’s done honestly. You remove the creosote. You document the flue condition. You tell the homeowner what you found, in plain language, with the footage to back it up. What makes it meaningful is the moment when a homeowner sees the inside of their own chimney for the first time and finally understands what they’ve been paying for, or not paying for, all these years.
There’s something specific about the first cold morning in October, when people in White Plains light their first fire of the season. That’s when the phone rings with calls from homeowners who haven’t thought about their chimney since March. Corrine knows that rhythm now. She knows the difference between the soot you’d expect in a home off North Street and the glaze you might find in an older flue near Highlands. She knows what the inside of a chimney smells like after a summer of humidity, and what it feels like to reach into a firebox and find two feet of debris that should have been removed years ago.
If she weren’t doing this, she’d probably be doing something else with her hands. She’s never been comfortable with work that doesn’t produce something you can see and verify. The appeal of chimney work is the same thing that makes it frustrating for dishonest operators, and the same thing that makes it satisfying for her: you either did the job or you didn’t. And now, with a camera, there’s a record.
Meet Corrine Halstead - The Person Behind Every Job
Corrine Halstead is the Owner & Founder of Level Two Chimney White Plains. She grew up with an appreciation for people who fix things properly and explain what they did. That’s the code she runs this branch by.
Her background is in the hands-on trades, and she’s spent more than ten years learning chimney systems from the inside out: masonry, flue liners, dampers, caps, clearances, draft, and the thousand small ways a chimney can fail. She’s trained on the equipment we use every day, including the camera systems that are the backbone of our inspection standard. Brands like Gelco and Olympia Chimney are familiar names on our trucks, because the parts matter as much as the person installing them.
What makes Corrine different from a corporate technician is simple: she’s the one accountable. When a job is done under her name, she wants to be able to stand in the living room and show the homeowner exactly what was found and what was done about it. Outside of work, she’s a reader and a cook who believes in doing things the long way when the long way is better. That patience carries into the job. Nobody rushes through a flue inspection on her watch.
If you hire us, you’re hiring her standard. That’s a personal commitment, not a slogan.
Before
AfterOur Promise to White Plains Homeowners
We work from the Haven Standard, and it governs everything we do in White Plains. You can read the full values on our site, but here’s what it means in practice:
Have it in writing. Every job gets a flat price and a written scope before anyone starts. If additional work is recommended, you’ll see the footage that justifies it. No one gets a surprise line item at the end.
Arrive on schedule. You get a real window, the name of your technician, and a text when they’re on the way.
Evidence on every job. Photos and readings of what we actually found. If we can’t show it to you, we don’t report it as fact.
No surprises. No door-to-door upsell, no scope creep, no “while we’re in here” additions. The quote you approve is the work you get.
Every promise is our Clause 4: the inspection actually looks inside. Since 2009, the brand has inspected and cleaned tens of thousands of chimneys with that rule in force. This branch holds the same line.
Our Credentials
- State-licensed: Every pro working under our name is required to hold the license their state requires for the work they perform.
- Insured & bonded: Coverage is required before anyone steps onto your property or onto your roof.
- Locally led: Corrine Halstead runs this branch and hires for the standards she’d want in her own home.
- Camera-scan inspection standard: The documentation system that proves what we found is the reason this brand exists.
Why does this matter to a homeowner? Because someone who comes into your home and onto your roof should be accountable before they arrive, not after something goes wrong. Licensing and insurance aren’t decorations. They’re the minimum floor. We treat them that way, because a chimney fire or a carbon monoxide leak doesn’t care how friendly the technician was.
Rooted in White Plains
We work across White Plains and the surrounding Westchester towns: Harrison, Scarsdale, Hartsdale, Rye Brook, Elmsford, Greenville, Ardsley, Port Chester, Byram, Eastchester, and Hawthorne. These are places where the housing stock varies enough that you can’t rely on a one-size-fits-all checklist. A pre-war colonial near Battle Hill has different chimney realities than a mid-century split-level off Central Avenue or a newer build toward Gedney. We know which flues in this area tend to run cold and which fireboxes collect debris fast. That local pattern recognition comes from doing the work here, not from a training manual.
The brand behind us, Haven, doesn’t pretend to be from White Plains. We’re the local business. Our license, our trucks, our neighbors. What the brand contributes is the standard we agree to work to and the documentation that proves it. That combination, local knowledge plus enforced accountability, is why homeowners in this area stay with us year after year.
Written by Corrine Halstead, Owner at Level Two Chimney White Plains, serving White Plains and Westchester County since 2009.