gut renovation costs (demolition)

Before going down this road, I would take a moment to honestly answer some questions for myself:

1. Are we strong and handy enough to do this in a way that isn’t frustrating? Do I understand principles of leverage, or am I expecting to beat at everything with a sledgehammer? (if you are thinking all this takes is brawn, stop and hire someone.)

2. Do I know enough about how my house works not to hurt myself (physically or financially) by, oh, accidentally sawing through an electrical line or taking out a load-bearing wall, or any of the other kerjillion demolition mishaps that routinely occur?

3. Are my friends and family really ready to do hard labor for me for a week? (lots of social groups reciprocate labor like this, I have friends who would do this for me, but not all of my friendships can take a project…)

4. Am I ready to take really good care of my friends in return?

5. Is everyone’s schedule going to accommodate doing this during the day? Demolition is loud, what you are doing is illegal, and so pissing off your neighbors by working until eleven pm is a really bad idea.

6. Do I have a plan for a dumpster that makes sense? When dumpsters sit in Brooklyn unattended, you wind up paying to do everyone else’s dumping. You will need enough labor to fill a dumpster in an afternoon.

7. Can I be organized about this demoliton, or do I have an organized friend? A big demolition job is about flow.

A really bad, inefficient demo job creates huge, undifferentiated piles of “wall” and then guys get on ladders on top of the pile of wall to take down the ceiling. Then either takes a ton of sorting en-route to pull the studs from the plaster, or you have a very inefficiently loaded dumpster (thereby tripling your dumpster cost.)

A smooth demo job creates piles of wood, piles of plaster, and piles of recyclables that are not in the way of other work. Then when the dumpster comes, all the wood is nicely stacked on the bottom and the plaster rains down nicely into the cracks in the wood.

If you don’t have someone in charge of realizing this kind of tidiness, then your demo job will get really drawn out and expensive and stressful, and not be worth the money you saved at all.

Gutting a 3 story is no easy task for someone to take on by themselves. Your friends will disappear after the first couple of days and you will wind up hiring day laborers to help you. Plus, you will need to rent dumpsters and get the permits for those dumpsters, and pull the permits for the demo itself. You will definitely save several thousand dollars doing it yourself, but it will be a hassle. Plus, as others mentioned, you will be physically worn out. Save your energy for other parts of the renovation.

Suggest you really shop around for demo quotes as prices vary widely on this type of job. I had quotes for a large commercial property last year and the quotes went from $15K to $75K.

I disagree.

1. It’s not a few hundred dollars. It’s more like a few thousand. If you are not doing any of the other work yourself and are handy and strong enough to handle demo, then this is a great place to shave off about $5-11000.

2. Toxic, schmoxic. Even the scary words like “aesbestos” and “lead,” are actual threats that depend on specific kinds of repeated exposure. Demo on one house over a few weeks is not going to take five years off your life unless you hurt your back.

*Buy a good mask that filters particulates from someplace like McMaster-Carr. This mask should not be one of those paper things. It should fit your face with a rubber seal. You are primarily concerned with inhaling gypsum dust (plaster). This can cause respiratory havoc, make you sick, give you allergies. Be careful about wearing the mask.

*You are also concerned with aesbestos, particularly in old linoleum. Your mask should protect you from aesbestos well enough because this is not a repeated exposure–this is not your job for the next year. As an added precaution, you can also keep anything with aesbestos or dust in it wet. (sometimes this makes sense and sometimes it does not)

*Lead is not as toxic as you’d think. People still build with it all the time, it is a popular fancy siding material. You don’t want children sucking on it, but contrary to 3:05’s paranoid response, it’s not inhalable unless it’s atomized (like in gasoline). Lead paint is not a serious concern unless you are eating lead paint. Even though as a grownup the exposure to lead you will have in your house is negligible, you could assuage your fears by washing your hands after demolishing your house.

Good hygiene and a good mask will protect you from anything that could really ‘getcha.’ And besides…

…what’s the morality behind thinking that something is inherently dangerous, and therefore someone else should do it?

Get someone else to do it…

You might save a few hundred dollars by doing the demo yourself but you will be exhausted, filthy and bleeding afterwords having inhaled enough toxic lead infused paint to shorten your lifespan by 5 years.