Interior demolition
Interior Demolition in Brooklyn
Breakara strips out interiors across Brooklyn, in buildings where the walls are lath and plaster, the stairs are the only way out, and the neighbour is on the other side of the wall.
Tell us what is coming out
One wall, one apartment or a whole floor. Call and describe the building.
What interior demolition is
Interior demolition means taking the inside of a building apart and leaving the structure standing. Walls, ceilings, floors, kitchens, bathrooms, fixtures and finishes come out. The things holding the building up stay exactly where they are.
People also call it a strip-out or a gut. A gut usually means everything back to the studs and the subfloor. A strip-out can be partial, like clearing one apartment or removing a single wall to open two rooms into one. We do both and the difference is scope, not method.
The skill in it is knowing what is structural and what is not. In a Brooklyn row house that is not always obvious from the room, because walls get added, openings get closed up and previous work gets covered over.
Who we do this for
Owners renovating
You are gut renovating a house or an apartment and need it cleared properly before anything new goes in.
Landlords and managers
A unit needs stripping between tenancies or before a larger refit, in a building that stays occupied.
Contractors and architects
You need the strip-out done and cleared on schedule so the trades behind you are not standing in a pile of plaster.
Lath and plaster is the thing people do not expect
More than half of Brooklyn's buildings went up before 1930, and in that stock the interior walls are not drywall. They are plaster laid over thin timber strips called lath, nailed across the studs.
It matters for three reasons. It is far heavier than drywall, so the same room produces much more weight to carry out. It breaks into dust rather than into sheets, so containment has to be real rather than a sheet taped over a doorway. And it hides things, because a century of work sits behind it.
We open a small area first and look before we quote the whole room. Finding out what is behind the wall on day one is much cheaper than finding out halfway through.
How we work through it
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1
We look at what is holding the building up
Before anything comes out we work out which walls carry load, where the joists run, and what has been altered before. A wall that looks like a partition is not always a partition.
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2
We find the services
Gas, water, waste and electrics get traced and isolated. In older buildings the runs are rarely where the drawings say.
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3
We seal and protect
The work area is closed off. The stair, the hallway, the entrance and the floors on the route out are covered, because those are the parts of the building everybody else still has to use.
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4
We strip in order
Fixtures and fittings first, then finishes, then the walls and ceilings. Working in order keeps the material sorted and keeps the weight moving out steadily instead of all at once.
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5
We clear as we go
Material leaves the building through the day rather than piling up. On a narrow lot with one stair, letting it accumulate is what turns a four-day job into a seven-day one.
Getting it out of a 20-foot-wide house
Around two thirds of Brooklyn lots are 25 feet wide or narrower. There is no driveway, no side alley and usually no rear vehicle access. Whatever comes out of the building goes down the stairs, through the front door and across the sidewalk.
In a walk-up there is no elevator either, and walk-up apartment buildings are the second most common building type in the borough. Every bag is carried.
So the route out is not an afterthought, it is the thing that decides the sequence and the timeline. We plan it first, protect it properly, and keep it clear while the work runs.
Not sure what is behind your walls?
Tell us the age of the building and we will tell you what to expect.
Working next to your neighbour
On an attached building the wall at the side of your house is shared. The plaster on your side is yours. The wall itself is holding up two buildings.
We treat anything beyond that wall as something to protect. That means knowing which side of it we are working on, keeping the vibration down when we are cutting close to it, and not opening anything through it.
We also tell you what will be loud and roughly when, so you can give your neighbours some warning. It costs nothing and it prevents most of the trouble that comes up on attached lots.
What decides the scope, the time and the cost
How much material there is, what it is made of, what floor it starts on, how far it has to be carried, and what has to be protected along the way. Those five things move the number more than anything else.
On timing, a single wall is usually a day. A full apartment gut runs from a few days upward, and the building decides more of that than the square footage does. A second-floor unit above a shared entrance takes longer than a ground-floor one of the same size, because everything has to come past a door other people are using.
We do not publish prices, because a price we have not looked at is a guess and you would be right not to trust it. What we will do on the phone is tell you what your job depends on, and the drivers are set out in full here.
Interior demolition questions
How much does it cost to demolish a wall?
It depends first on whether the wall is carrying load. A partition coming out is straightforward. A load-bearing wall needs support put in before anything is removed and that is a different piece of work.
After that it is the same drivers as any other job. What the wall is made of, what floor it is on, and how the material gets out of the building.
Is interior demolition the same as a gut?
A gut is one kind of interior demolition, the one where everything comes out back to the structure. Interior demolition also covers partial work, like clearing a kitchen or taking out one wall.
How much dust will there be?
Plaster makes a lot of it, which is why containment matters more in this building stock than it would elsewhere.
We seal the work area rather than draping it, keep the dust down while we work, and clean the route out at the end of each day.
Can you work in an occupied building?
Yes, and most of the time that is what we are doing. Two-family houses are the most common building type in Brooklyn, so there is often somebody living upstairs or next door.
We keep the shared parts of the building usable and protected for the whole job.
Do you take the material away as well?
Yes. Clearing is part of the job, not a separate thing you arrange afterwards. Construction material cannot go out with the building's household rubbish, so it is handled properly from the start.
Tell us about the strip-out
What is coming out, what floor it is on, and how old the building is. That is enough to start.