New York City
Residential Demolition in New York City
Apartment gut-outs, kitchen and bathroom strip-outs, brownstone interiors and the two-family houses of the outer boroughs, run to the building's alteration agreement rather than around it.
Four kinds of New York home, four different jobs
New York has more or less four residential building types, and which one you own decides almost everything about the demolition inside it. The scope on the drawing is the smaller half of the story.
The prewar elevator apartment. Six storeys, one passenger car and no freight, plaster on lath and on brick, parquet over sleepers. Material leaves through a protected cab in the windows the super releases, or down the stair. The lobby is the only way in and out for everyone who lives there.
The walk-up, the brownstone and the row house. No elevator at all. Every load leaves on somebody's shoulder, down a narrow stair that turns twice, and out over a stoop onto the street.
The attached or semi-detached two-family house. A short driveway, a container that can often stand off the street, and a neighbour a few feet away through a shared wall.
The detached house on its own lot. The simplest route out in the city. The container sits on private ground, material leaves by the side or back door, and nobody has to release an elevator.
We work on all four, across the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island. What changes between them is the route out, the approval, and how much of the first day goes into protection.
What the route out actually costs
01 One car, shared
The elevator building
In a co-op or condo the building releases a lift for a fixed number of hours a day and that number, rather than the square footage, sets the pace of the job. The cab is protected before the first bag rides in it. The corridor and the lobby stay in use by everyone else throughout.
The alteration agreement is the document that decides all of it, so we ask for it before we quote rather than after.
02 No car at all
The stair and the stoop
A brownstone, a row house or a tenement walk-up has no service elevator to book, so there is nothing to negotiate and nothing to wait for. What there is instead is a stair that was built narrow and a stoop onto a public sidewalk.
Treads and handrails get covered, loads get sized to what one person can safely carry, and the crew works as a chain, one load moving at a time. It is slower per ton and it is entirely predictable, which is worth more on a programme than it sounds.
03 Off the street
The driveway and the container
A house with a driveway removes the container permit, the elevator booking and the board from the job in one move. What replaces them is the block. In attached housing the neighbour is through the wall, and the hours matter more than the route.
We group the noisy work and we talk to the people next door before the first day, not after the first complaint.
New York rooftops
Who brings us in
On residential work we come in as the demolition trade alongside the general contractor running the renovation, and we work with the architect, the owner, the board and the managing agent.
If you are a homeowner reading this, the person to send it to is your contractor. It is worth getting us into the space early, because the demolition scope and the building's access rules shape their programme more than anything else on it.
The demolition scope covers full apartment gut-outs, kitchen and bathroom strip-outs, plaster removal back to masonry, floor and tile removal, brownstone and row house interiors, and one and two family houses taken back to their framing.
While the work is going on
On a full gut, usually not
Most full apartment and house guts run empty. The protection is still real, because the rest of the building is occupied even when your unit is not.
On a kitchen or a bathroom, usually yes
A partial strip-out in an occupied home is a genuine scope and we run it as one. The work area gets sealed properly, not curtained off, and we agree which rooms stay in use.
The neighbours are the other client
Dust sealed at the doors, noisy work grouped into agreed hours, protection on shared stairs and halls, and a clear-down every evening so nobody is living around a pile.
Say so at the walk-through
If the home stays occupied, tell us then. It changes how we protect and sequence the job, and it is far easier to build in at the start than to retrofit in week two.
Common questions
Will my co-op or condo board need to approve the work?
In almost every New York co-op and condo, yes.
The managing agent will normally want the alteration agreement signed, drawings where the work needs them, and a certificate of insurance naming the building and the agent. The board's approval and the city's permit are separate things and both can sit ahead of a start date. Boards often meet monthly, so this can take longer than the permit does.
Send us the alteration agreement early. It tells us your real working hours, your elevator access and your protection requirements, which are the three things that decide the schedule.
Can you take out a wall?
Yes, and what it takes depends on what the wall is doing.
A partition that divides two rooms and carries nothing comes out as part of ordinary interior demolition. A wall carrying the floor above, which in older housing is more common than people expect, is structural: an engineer designs the beam that replaces it, an architect or engineer files with the Department of Buildings, and the permit issues before we touch it. The same applies to anything carrying a riser or a shared service, and to a party wall between two attached houses.
We will tell you honestly which one you have when we walk the space.
How much does it cost to gut renovate a house in NYC?
We can only speak for the demolition part, and there is no honest average for it.
What moves the number is how material gets out, what is behind the surfaces, when you are allowed to work, and what has to be protected. Plaster on masonry takes far longer than drywall. Tile on a mortar bed is slower than tile on backer board. A detached house with a container in the driveway is the simplest case in the city and a fourth floor walk-up is the hardest, with an elevator building somewhere between them.
We price against the actual space rather than a rate per square foot, and we flag what could still change once the walls are open, so the rest of your budget sits on a real figure rather than an allowance.