Staten Island, NY
Residential Demolition on Staten Island
Detached house interiors, attached townhouses, the older houses of the North Shore, and kitchen and bathroom strip-outs across Staten Island, run to the house, the neighbours and the hours rather than around them.
What residential demolition covers here
Houses. Staten Island is a borough of detached houses on their own lots, and taking one back to the studs, or taking a kitchen and two bathrooms out of one while the family stays upstairs, is what residential demolition on this island usually means.
Beyond the detached houses it means attached townhouses with street-level garages across the mid-island and the south shore, the older frame and brick houses of the North Shore, basement and garage conversions, and the condo and co-op units the island has fewer of than the rest of the city. Partitions, ceilings, floors and underlayment, kitchens and bathrooms, built-ins, decks that are being rebuilt, and the redundant pipe and wire behind them.
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 and, where there is one, the managing agent. If you are a homeowner reading this, the person to send it to is your contractor.
01 Houses
The container in the driveway
In a Staten Island house the route out is a driveway and a container off the street, which removes the container permit and most of the argument, and material leaves by the side or garage door over protected floor.
What replaces the elevator as the constraint is the family and the neighbours. The family is usually still in the house, so the rooms in use get sealed from the work and the noisy hours get agreed at the kitchen table. The neighbours are across a driveway or, in a townhouse, through a shared wall, and the legal hours are what they will hold you to. We talk to the people next door before the first day rather than after the first complaint.
The North Shore, and the townhouses
Two kinds of Staten Island house run differently from the detached ones.
The older frame and brick houses of St. George, Tompkinsville, Stapleton, New Brighton and Port Richmond sit close together on narrow lots, often with no driveway, and many sit inside a historic district. The route out is the front door or a stair, the container sits at the curb with its permit, plaster on lath replaces drywall, the pre-1987 asbestos gate nearly always applies, and a permitted job files with Landmarks ahead of the permit. It is a different job from a New Dorp split-level with the same scope on paper.
The attached townhouses of the mid-island and the south shore have a garage at street level, a shared wall on one or both sides, and a driveway apron just long enough for a container. The garage door is the route out and it is a good one. The shared wall is the constraint: everything the neighbour hears, they hear through it, so the hours matter more than anywhere else on the island.
A Staten Island street
Living there while it happens
The family upstairs
The rooms in use are sealed from the work, the stair and hall protected, dust stopped at the doors, noisy work in agreed hours, and a clear-down every evening so the house is livable at six.
Partition or load-bearing
A partition comes out with the rest. A wall that is carrying the floor above needs an engineer's drawing and a permit before anyone touches it, and we will tell you which it is before you plan around it.
Kitchens and bathrooms
Tile on a mortar bed, cast-iron tubs, and plumbing that has to be capped live. A partial strip-out in an occupied home is a real scope and we run it as one.
What we leave behind
The space swept and clear, services capped and tagged, the driveway back, and a plain account of what we found behind the walls for the trades who follow.
Common questions
Will my co-op or condo board need to approve the work?
If you are in one, almost certainly, yes.
Staten Island has fewer co-ops and condos than the rest of the city, but the ones it has run the same way: an alteration agreement the owner signs before work starts, setting out what the board needs to see, usually drawings, the contractors' insurance certificates, a deposit and a schedule, and the rules the job runs to. Boards often meet monthly, so this can take longer than the city's permit. In a detached house you skip this step entirely, which is one reason the same job moves faster in Eltingville than in a Grymes Hill condo.
Can you take out a wall?
Yes, and the answer to 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 that is carrying the floor above, which in an older frame house 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. 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 the material gets out, what the walls and floors are made of, when you can work, and what has to be protected. A drywall house with a container in the driveway and nobody home is the simplest case in the city, and Staten Island has more of them than any other borough. A plaster-on-lath North Shore house with the family staying, a stair as the only way out and a curb container is a larger job for the same square footage.
We price against the actual space rather than a rate per square foot, and we tell you which parts could move once the walls are open.