General contractor for New York City apartments

We are a general contractor working across New York City, and almost all of it happens inside buildings that are still occupied while we work.

That is a different job from building on open ground. The trades are the same. What changes is the building: who has to approve the work, what hours you are allowed to make noise, how material gets in and debris gets out, and who is on the other side of the wall. Those four things decide a schedule here more often than the size of the job does.

Call (929) 695-3563 and describe the apartment. We will tell you what it involves.

What we take on

We also take on flooring, drywall and plastering, interior demolition, and interior work for small commercial spaces. The services page sets out the lot.

Five questions nobody answers

We read the sites of the firms who rank above us for this work. Between them they publish awards, certifications and project counts. Not one of them answers the five things people actually ask on the phone, so here they are.

Can we stay in the apartment while you work? Usually yes for a kitchen, a bathroom or a room, and usually no for a full gut. The honest answer depends on whether you still have a working bathroom, a way to make food, and a room that seals. We tell you which of those you lose and for roughly how long, before you sign anything.

What about the dust, the noise and the neighbours? Dust is the thing that generates complaints, and a complaint from a neighbour can stop a job. We seal the work area, cover the route in and out, and clean the common parts at the end of each day. Noise stays inside the hours your building allows, which are usually tighter than the hours the city allows.

When do we pay? Against progress, not against a calendar. Payments are tied to stages that you can stand in the room and see: demolition finished, rough work inspected and closed, tiling done, fit out complete. We do not ask for the bulk of the money before the bulk of the work.

What happens if something is wrong afterwards? You call us and we come back. Anything that is our workmanship we put right at our cost. Appliances, fittings and materials carry whatever their own manufacturer gives you, and we hand you those documents at the end rather than leaving you to find them.

What happens when you change your mind halfway? People often do, and it is not a problem as long as it is written down. A change gets priced and agreed before it is built, so the number you are looking at is current. The version of this that goes wrong is the one nobody wrote down.

Five boroughs, five kinds of building

We work in all five boroughs, and what changes between them is the building rather than the trade.

• Manhattan is apartment houses, prewar and postwar, where the board and the managing agent set the terms of the job.
• Brooklyn is brownstones and row houses, where the stair decides what can come in and the garden level is a building of its own.
• Queens puts co op blocks, two family houses and walk ups on the same street, and each one hands you different rules.
• The Bronx is older two family houses and apartment buildings, often with earlier work stacked behind the walls.
• Staten Island is detached houses, with basements, driveways and room to stage material.

How a job runs

1. 01

   A call

   Tell us the apartment, the building and what you want done. Ten minutes usually tells us both whether this is a job for us.

2. 02

   A visit

   We come and look. We measure, we check what we can see behind the walls, we look at the access, and we ask what your building requires.

3. 03

   A written scope and price

   Broken into parts, so you can see what each one costs and change it before anything is ordered.

4. 04

   Approvals

   If the building needs a board package or the city needs a permit, that happens before the first day of work, not during it.

5. 05

   The work

   A start date, a sequence, and one person you call when you have a question.

Questions people ask before they call