Gut Renovation in Brooklyn
This is the work we've done most of, and it's the reason the small jobs on this site are done properly. Two single-family houses and six Brooklyn studio apartments, all the way back to the studs and back out again.
Free quotes · No trip fee · Mon–Sat, 8am–6pm
What we take on
- An apartment or house that needs everything, not one room
- A layout that has to change to work
- Estate and inherited properties that haven't been touched in decades
- Investors and owners turning over a unit properly
- Studios where the whole apartment is the project
- Buildings where the wiring and plumbing are original
What back to the studs actually means
Everything non-structural comes out: walls, floors, ceilings, kitchen, bath, wiring, plumbing. What's left is the frame of the building and a lot of dust.
That's the moment a gut is worth doing, because everything that's normally impossible becomes cheap. Moving a wall. Adding circuits. Running plumbing where you want it rather than where 1926 put it. Insulating and soundproofing. Putting blocking in the bathroom walls for grab bars you won't need for thirty years. None of it will ever be this easy or this inexpensive again.
The surprises are the budget
In a hundred-year-old Brooklyn building you will open a wall and find something: knob-and-tube wiring still live, a beam notched through by somebody's plumber in 1970, asbestos in the floor tile mastic, a chimney nobody knew was there, or a joist end that's been quietly wet for a decade.
This is normal. It is also why a gut renovation quote without a contingency line is not an honest quote. We build one in, we tell you what it's for, and if we don't use it you don't pay it. What we won't do is quote low to win the job and then discover our way up to the real number.
Permits, boards and licensed trades
A real gut in New York involves DOB filings, licensed electricians and plumbers pulling their own permits, and — in a co-op or condo — an alteration agreement, architect's plans and board approval before anything starts.
We coordinate the trades and the sequence. We don't pretend to be an architect or an expeditor, and on a job of this size you want both. If you don't have them, we'll tell you who we've worked with.
Why a small-jobs handyman is doing gut renovations
It's the other way around. The renovations came first — ten years of them, with my brother, learning buildings like this from the inside out.
The small jobs exist because when we started asking who fixes the little things in these buildings, the answer was mostly nobody. So we do both. The half-hour job and the four-month job get the same person, and that person has seen what's behind your walls before.
Quoted flat, before we start
We quote the whole job before a tool comes out, and that number is the number you pay. If we open something up and find a problem nobody could have known about, you hear about it the same day — with options and a price — before we do anything about it.
Want a ballpark before you call? The gut renovation guide has real Brooklyn ranges and what moves them.
While we’re there
Kitchen Remodeling
From new cabinets and counters to a full gut — kitchens rebuilt in prewar apartments and row houses, on a schedule you're told up front.
Bathroom Renovation
Full bathroom gut and rebuild — waterproofed properly, tiled square, and finished in a room that's usually five feet wide.
Backyard Renovation
Row-house backyards turned into rooms — decking, pavers, fencing, planters, lighting and drainage that actually works.
Where we work
All of Brooklyn — every neighborhood, Greenpoint to Coney Island.
- Bay Ridge
- Park Slope
- Bensonhurst
- Sheepshead Bay
- Midwood
- Flatbush
- Marine Park
- Dyker Heights
- Canarsie
- Brooklyn Heights
- Bedford-Stuyvesant
- Crown Heights
- Brownsville
- East New York
- Bushwick
- Williamsburg
Let’s get it done.
Call, text, or send a photo. We’ll tell you what it costs and when we can be there — usually within 90 minutes.
(929) 500-4434