Queens, NY
Demolition Contractor in Queens
We strip out houses, apartments, shops and commercial floors across Queens. Most of that work happens in a two-family with a driveway and a neighbour a few feet away, or in a co-op where the service elevator is booked by the hour.
- Based at80-46 162nd St, Jamaica Hills
- WorkingQueens, borough wide
- Call(929) 693-7455
The building decides how the job runs
Not the other way round.
Taking a wall down is the quick part. In Queens the difficulty is the driveway, the neighbour and the elevator.
A two-family in Jamaica or Richmond Hill has a driveway for the container and a side door for the material, which makes it one of the simplest routes out in the city, and a neighbour a few feet away who can hear every hammer. A co-op tower in Forest Hills or Rego Park has a service elevator that management releases in booked windows, a protected cab, and an alteration agreement that sets tighter hours than the city does. A prewar building in Jackson Heights has one passenger elevator and no freight at all.
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 studs and joists or a clean shell with the services left live.
Interior demolition
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02
Commercial
Commercial Demolition
Storefronts under the train on Roosevelt and Jamaica Avenues, the boulevard strips, offices and new-tower fit-outs in Long Island City, and the warehouse floors of Maspeth. We work to a fit-out schedule and around the tenants who are staying.
Commercial demolition
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03
Residential
Residential Demolition
Two-family and detached houses, co-op and condo apartments, garden-apartment units. We work to your building's alteration agreement, its approved hours and its rules about the elevator and the lobby.
Residential demolition
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04
Concrete
Concrete Cutting and Removal
Basement slabs, garage floors, patio slabs, driveway aprons and openings. Cut clean, broken down to pieces the route out can carry, and taken out.
Concrete cutting and removal
Queens rooftops
Before anything comes down
Two things decide when a Queens job can actually start, and both of them 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. Most of the borough's houses and nearly all of its prewar apartment stock predate that date, so on most jobs this is the first gate rather than an unusual one.
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, and that has to be filed a few business days ahead. Your building may set narrower hours still, and a co-op with a hundred households usually does.
We will tell you where your job sits on both of these on the first call, before you have spent anything. How permits 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
Hall, stair, floors, the elevator cab where there is one, and anything 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 house waiting for the end of the job. It goes to the container in the driveway, or leaves in the windows the building gives 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 162nd Street in Jamaica Hills and we work across Queens.
The borough is not one job. A Bayside two-family has a driveway and room for a container off the street. A Forest Hills co-op has a service elevator booked by the hour and a board with its own rules. A Jackson Heights prewar has one passenger elevator and a Landmarks certificate ahead of its permit. A Long Island City office floor has a freight elevator and a fit-out date. Each changes the crew, the sequence and the price.
Common questions
What drives the cost of a demolition job in Queens?
Less than people expect comes from the demolition itself. Most of the figure is decided by four things.
- How material gets out. A driveway with a container off the street is the simplest case in the city. A service elevator you can book in windows is another price. A walk-up stair is a different one again, because it takes more people and more time.
- What you are taking out. Drywall on studs is quick. Plaster on lath, which is most of the prewar stock and many of the older houses, is slower. 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 co-op with a shared lobby, one elevator cab and a working corridor needs a great deal.
We price against the actual space rather than a rate per square foot, because 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 the permit follows that. If your building is a co-op or a condo, the board and the managing agent will have their own approval to give, and that can take longer than the city's.
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 a Queens co-op or apartment building that is the normal case rather than the exception, and in a two-family it is usually the family downstairs.
It changes how the job is run rather than whether it can happen. Protection goes further, dust control matters more, noisy work gets grouped into agreed windows, and debris moves when the building lets it move instead of whenever it suits us. We agree all of that with the super and the managing agent, or with you and the family downstairs, before we start.