Brooklyn, NY
Demolition Contractor in Brooklyn
We strip out brownstones, apartments, shops, offices and houses across Brooklyn. Most of that work happens in a building that is still lived in, on a block that is watching, and inside a historic district with its own paperwork.
- Based at107 Fenimore St, Prospect Lefferts Gardens
- WorkingBrooklyn, borough wide
- Call(929) 998-9251
The block decides how the job runs
Not the other way round.
Taking a wall down is the quick part. In Brooklyn the difficulty is the stoop, the stair and the street.
A brownstone has no freight elevator. Every bag of plaster and every length of lath leaves down a stair that was built narrow and turns twice, then down a stoop, then into a container that has to sit somewhere on a block where parking is already a fight. In a prewar elevator building the one passenger car is shared with everyone who lives there. In a co-op the alteration agreement sets tighter hours than the city does.
We plan all of that before we plan the demolition. We walk the space, work out how material gets from where it is to the curb, and build the sequence backwards from there. That is what keeps a job from stalling on day three.
What we take on
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01
Interior
Interior Demolition
Full and partial gut-outs. We take a space back to whatever your next stage needs, whether that is bare brick and joists or a clean shell with the services left live.
Interior demolition
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02
Commercial
Commercial Demolition
Offices downtown, shops and restaurants on the avenues, converted warehouses in the north of the borough. We work to a fit-out schedule and around the tenants who are staying.
Commercial demolition
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03
Residential
Residential Demolition
Brownstones, row houses, apartments and the attached houses of south Brooklyn. We work to your building's alteration agreement, its approved hours and its rules about the stair and the elevator.
Residential demolition
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04
Concrete
Concrete Cutting and Removal
Cellar slabs, stoops, yard slabs, pads and openings. Cut clean, broken down to pieces the route out can carry, and taken out.
Concrete cutting and removal
Brooklyn rooftops
Before anything comes down
Three things decide when a Brooklyn job can actually start, and all three sit ahead of the work.
The asbestos assessment. For a building put up before 1 April 1987, the city wants an asbestos assessment on file before the Department of Buildings will issue a permit for work that could disturb material. A DEP certified asbestos investigator does the inspection and files Form ACP-5. Nearly every brownstone and most of the borough's apartment stock predate that date, so this is usually the first gate rather than an unusual one.
Landmarks. A large part of the brownstone belt sits in a historic district. There, the Department of Buildings will not issue a permit until Landmarks has issued a certificate. For an interior job that leaves the protected features alone it is a Certificate of No Effect, issued by staff without a hearing, often in about ten business days. It is a step to file early, not a hurdle.
The hours. Construction work runs 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM on weekdays. Anything earlier, later, or at the weekend needs an After Hours Variance from the city, filed a few business days ahead.
We will tell you where your job sits on all three on the first call, before you have spent anything. How permits, Landmarks and building access work sets out the whole sequence.
How a job runs
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Step 1 of 5
We walk the space
Ideally with you there. We look at what is coming out, what is staying, what the walls and floors are actually made of, and how material will leave the building.
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Step 2 of 5
You get a scope and a number
Written down, itemised, and tied to a sequence. If something is likely to change the figure once the plaster is off, we say so then rather than later.
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Step 3 of 5
We protect, then we start
Stoop, stair, hall, floors, the parlor mantel and anything else staying in the space. Protection goes in before the first wall does.
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Step 4 of 5
We clear as we go
Debris does not pile up in the front room waiting for the end of the job. It leaves on the schedule the building and the block give us.
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Step 5 of 5
You get the space back clean
Swept, clear, and ready for whoever is next in. We tell you what we found behind the plaster, because your next trade will want to know.
Where we work
We are based on Fenimore Street in Prospect Lefferts Gardens and we work across Brooklyn.
The borough is not one job. A Park Slope brownstone has a stoop, a narrow stair and a Landmarks certificate ahead of its permit. A Downtown Brooklyn office floor has a shared freight elevator and a fit-out date. A Bay Ridge two-family has a driveway and room for a container off the street. Each changes the crew, the sequence and the price.
Common questions
What drives the cost of a demolition job in Brooklyn?
Less than people expect comes from the demolition itself. Most of the figure is decided by four things.
- How material gets out. A freight elevator you can book is one price. A brownstone stair and a stoop is a different one, because it takes more people and more time. A house with a driveway is different again.
- What you are taking out. Plaster on brick or on wood lath, which is most of the older stock here, is slower than drywall on studs. Concrete is slower again. Tile on a mortar bed adds hours.
- When you can work. A job that fits inside the standard weekday window costs less than one that needs evenings or weekends, because after-hours work needs a variance and a crew outside normal hours.
- What has to be protected. An empty house needs very little. An occupied brownstone with a family downstairs, an original stair and a tiled vestibule needs a great deal.
We price against the actual space rather than a rate per square foot, because in this borough the square footage is rarely the thing that decides it.
How soon can you start?
Usually sooner than the paperwork does.
If your job needs a Department of Buildings permit, the asbestos assessment has to be filed first, and in a historic district the Landmarks certificate sits ahead of the permit too. If your building is a co-op or a condo, the board and the managing agent will have their own approval to give.
Call us early and we will tell you which of those apply to you. On work that needs none of it, we can start quickly.
Do you work in buildings that are still occupied?
Yes. In Brooklyn that is the normal case rather than the exception, whether it is a family on the garden floor or tenants on the floors above a shop.
It changes how the job is run. It does not change whether it can happen. Protection goes further, dust control matters more, noisy work gets grouped into agreed windows, and debris moves when the building and the block let it move instead of whenever it suits us.