Apartment renovation in prewar Inwood buildings

A full apartment renovation here means working inside a prewar building with its own rules, its own stairs and one shared elevator.

The construction is the part people picture. In practice, the thing that decides whether a renovation goes well in these buildings is everything around it: what your board will approve, what the city needs to see, when the elevator is free, and how the apartment gets protected while the work happens.

Call (929) 695-6242 to talk through the apartment.

What a renovation covers

We can take on the whole apartment or the parts of it you want changed. On a full job that usually means all of the following, run by us as one job with one schedule.

• Taking out the old apartment, down to whatever level the work needs.
• Walls, ceilings and plaster made good, and new partitions where the layout changes.
• Floors lifted, laid or refinished, with whatever your building asks for underneath them.
• Kitchens and bathrooms, either as part of the renovation or on their own.
• Trim, doors, closets and built-in carpentry.
• Painting throughout at the end.

Plumbing and electrical work is carried out by the licensed trades the city requires for it, brought in and sequenced by us as part of the job.

Gut renovation, and when you actually need one

A gut renovation takes the apartment back to its structure and starts again. It is the right answer when the layout no longer works, when the services are original and coming to the end of their life, or when so much is being changed that working around what is there costs more than removing it.

It is not always the right answer. If the walls and floors are sound and what you really want is a new kitchen, a new bathroom and everything painted, a full gut adds months and cost for a result you would have got anyway. We will tell you when that is what we see.

Taking the old apartment out

Demolition in an occupied building is a logistics job. Debris has to leave the building without wrecking the common parts, and in a walk-up it leaves on foot. We protect the route in and out, seal the work area so dust stays in it, book the elevator or the loading window where there is one, and keep the volume of what comes out moving rather than stacked in your hallway.

Floors, and what your building will ask for

Prewar floor assemblies carry sound between apartments, and buildings here set their own requirements for what goes under a hard floor. We ask your building what it wants before anything is ordered, because it decides the build-up and the finished floor height, and that in turn decides how doors close.

Trim, doors and closets

Prewar apartments have wood trim, paneled doors and deep reveals that a modern replacement rarely matches. Where the original is sound we repair and reuse it. Where it has to be replaced or added to, we match the profile so the new work reads as part of the apartment instead of a patch. Closets and built-in storage get made to fit the space that actually exists, which in these apartments is rarely a standard size.

What decides the price

Here is what moves the number, and you can see all of it on a first visit.

• How much comes out. Removing and replacing is more than working with what is there.
• Whether services move. Leaving the kitchen and bathroom where they are is significantly cheaper than moving them, and moving them brings permits and licensed trades into the job.
• The finishes. The same layout can be built at very different budgets depending on what goes into it.
• The building's restrictions. Narrow hours, a booked elevator or a walk-up all add labor time to the same scope of work.
• What is behind the wall. In buildings this age there is usually something. We look where we can before pricing and tell you where the uncertainty is instead of burying it.

Questions about apartment renovation