House renovation in New York City: the whole house, under one firm

A house in the boroughs is a different job from an apartment or a brownstone. No board has to approve it, but the lot, the yard, the roof and the basement are all yours, and the city’s zoning, building and flood rules apply to each of them directly. Our early years as home builders gave us a deep understanding of the many ways to achieve a fine renovation. We now specialize in high quality home redesign for clients of every taste, including contemporary, traditional and transitional styles.

This page is about renovating a whole house, detached or semi-detached: what the city has on file about it, what needs a permit, what the basement can legally become, the order the work runs in and what to settle before it starts. For a row house or a brownstone see townhouse renovation, and for an apartment, landmark co-ops and condos included, see apartment renovation. If you are still working out what kind of project you have and how to choose a remodeler, begin with home renovation in NYC.

What a whole-house renovation includes

We are more than a contractor. As a design and build firm we take care of all aspects of a house renovation, including but not limited to:

• Accurate and firm estimates
• Gut renovations
• Combining houses or floors
• Kitchen, bath and whole-house remodeling
• Fine cabinetry, built-ins and custom furniture
• Entertainment and audio-video rooms
• Complete plumbing, electric and HVAC
• In-house design services
• All work under single management

Start with what the city has on file

The Certificate of Occupancy and the property record

A Certificate of Occupancy describes how a building may be occupied, for example as a two-family home, and the Department of Buildings notes that one is often required when selling a home or refinancing a mortgage. A house built before 1938 is not required to have one unless later alterations changed its use, egress or occupancy. You can review the history of any building yourself, with its permits, violations and complaints, in the department’s Buildings Information System and the DOB NOW public portal (DOB).

Do this before the design, not after. Older houses often carry work that was never filed: a finished basement, an enclosed porch, a second kitchen. A renovation that needs a permit puts drawings of the house in front of a plan examiner, and the department warns that open violations can prevent an owner from selling or refinancing. Its borough offices hold evening sessions for homeowners, which the department calls Buildings After Hours, with staff on hand to help plan a renovation or address an open violation.

Zoning: what can be added

A dormer, a rear extension or a second story is first a zoning question: how much floor area the lot allows, how much of the lot may be covered and how deep the yards must stay. A department plan examiner reviews the architect’s plans for legal and zoning objections before anything is approved, and the department points owners to the Department of City Planning to find the zoning district of a property and the regulations that apply to it. Ask this question before you fall for a floor plan.

Flood zones

Parts of the boroughs lie in what the city’s rules call areas of special flood hazard. There, a Department of Buildings rule compares the cost of the work with the market value of the structure. If the cost equals or exceeds 50 percent of that value the work is a substantial improvement, and a substantially improved building is required to comply with the flood-resistant construction requirements of Appendix G of the Building Code. The cost that is counted includes all other work performed during the same period, even minor alterations and ordinary repairs (DOB rule 3606-01). In a flood zone the architect runs this calculation at the start, because it can decide the size of the whole project.

What needs a permit, and who may do the work

The Department of Buildings gives its own examples of work that needs no permit: painting, plastering, installing new cabinets, resurfacing floors, replacing plumbing fixtures and non-structural roof repair (DOB). Most of the rest of a whole-house renovation does need one, and the city is specific about who does what.

• The plans. If the project requires a permit, only a registered design professional, meaning a registered architect or a professional engineer, can submit the construction documents, and the department’s approval is required before any work can begin.
• The contractor. The contractor pulls the work permits once the plans are approved. For an alteration to a one- to four-family home, the contractor must give a Home Improvement Contractor license number to get that permit. The license comes from the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, and contractors need it even for the home improvements that require no permit.
• Plumbing and gas. Altering, rearranging, relocating or removing piping must be supervised by a Licensed Master Plumber. Directly replacing an existing faucet, toilet or sink, without changing its shutoff valves or trap, does not require a permit.
• Electrical. An electrical permit is required for most electrical work, and the installation must be performed by an electrical contractor licensed by the Department of Buildings.
• Heating equipment and piping. Repair or replacement of existing appliances and piping, and oil burner installations, can be filed by the licensed plumber or oil burner installer on a Limited Alteration Application when no construction work is included. That filing generally needs no architect or engineer.
• The energy code. The New York City Energy Conservation Code applies to all alterations. As the department puts it to homeowners, when you add an addition to your home or renovate it you will have to comply with the code, and your home will be more energy efficient.

Our specialists guide you through any necessary filings for your renovation. Before you sign with anyone, check the contractor’s license on the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection’s website, and ask every contractor you interview for the license number. Golden I Construction Inc holds Home Improvement Contractor license number 2019617-DCA from the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection.

The basement or the cellar

The lower level of a house is where plans most often run ahead of the law. The city separates two things. A basement is a story partly below curb level with at least half of its height above it. A cellar has more than half of its height below curb level (HPD).

In a one- or two-family home, a basement can be lawfully occupied by the family or families living in the house when it meets the housing code’s requirements for rooms, has a ceiling at least 7 feet high and, where the housing agency finds that the subsoil requires it, has walls that are damp-proofed and waterproofed. By the housing agency’s general rule, a cellar in a one- or two-family home cannot lawfully be used for sleeping and can never be lawfully rented. The same agency describes a pilot program in part of Brooklyn that helps eligible homeowners convert a basement or cellar into a legal apartment. Renting the basement of a two-family house would turn the building into a multiple dwelling of three families or more, which requires a new Certificate of Occupancy. So decide what the lower level is for, whether a family room, a gym, the laundry or storage, before the design starts, and let the architect confirm which of the two words applies to your house.

The order of the work

A house renovation of any size starts with the initial meeting, where we discuss pricing, demolition, design and planning, as well as a time frame for your house. We also work with all project team members to define the logistical requirements of the construction process, such as areas for deliveries, the placement of barricades if they are required and the hours of operation.

House demolition

First things first: the old material and fixtures in the house have to come out, so that we have a clean slate to work with. In an older house two checks come before that. The owner is responsible for finding out whether asbestos-containing material is present where the work will reach, a DEP-certified asbestos investigator makes the determination, and the Department of Buildings must see the asbestos requirements satisfied before it issues a permit. For a house built before 1978, the federal Renovation, Repair and Painting Rule requires any firm paid to disturb paint to be certified and to follow its work practices. The demolition phase then consists of:

• Existing cabinets and counters are removed
• Plaster is stripped from walls and ceilings
• Walls and ceilings are de-nailed
• The finish floor is removed
• All remaining debris is swept and vacuumed to limit the spread of dust during construction

Rough-in

After the demolition comes all the rough-in work: plumbing, electrical and structural. In a whole-house job this is also the time to make the outside of the house sound, because new finishes should not go in under a roof or beside windows that still leak.

Finish work and closeout

Once the rough-in is done the finish work begins: tile, sheetrock, molding, plaster and the other finishing touches. One of the most critical stages of the house remodeling process is the commissioning and closeout of the project with the final details. The finish installation runs like this:

1. Wallboard is installed and plastered
2. Interior trim
3. Waterproof flooring
4. Finish flooring
5. Cabinets are installed
6. Appliances are installed
7. A template is made for the counters
8. Painting and other specialty finishes
9. Counters are installed
10. Plumbing and electrical are connected and finished
11. Backsplash tiles are installed
12. Final cleanup and walk-through

Neighbors, hours and the street

A house job is in plain view of the block. You are allowed to conduct construction on your property between 7 am and 6 pm on weekdays. At all other times, weekends included, it needs an after-hours authorization, and anyone doing construction in the city must have a Construction Noise Mitigation Plan before the work starts (DEP). A container or a stack of materials in the street needs a Building Operations and Construction Activity Permit from the Department of Transportation, which the contractor requests, typically once the building permit is in hand. If your house is semi-detached, the wall you share is your neighbor’s wall too, and the demolition and the structural work beside it are planned with that in mind.

Reporting, cost control and the contract

During the renovation we provide up-to-date information on the changes that have occurred, set against the plan of action drawn up at the start. Everything is in an itemized report for you to see, including any obstacles we met along the way in renovating your house.

The paperwork starts with the contract. New York State law requires a home improvement contract of more than $500 to be in writing and signed by all the parties. It must give the approximate dates when the work will begin and be substantially completed, describe the work and the materials, set out any schedule of progress payments, and tell the owner that the contract may be cancelled until midnight of the third business day after it was signed (General Business Law, section 771). Our jobs begin with accurate and firm estimates for the same reason: both sides should know what was agreed.

How long a whole-house renovation takes

We would rather explain what sets the length of the job than print a figure your house may not fit. The design, the architect’s filing and the Department of Buildings approval all come before demolition, and the department publishes the average wait times for its approvals and inspections in an online Service Level Tracker. After that the length follows the scope: how much of the house is opened up, whether it grows, and what is found behind the plaster. Cabinetry, windows and stone are ordered early, because the work should not wait for them. For single rooms, see the kitchen remodel timeline and the bathroom remodel timeline.

What to settle before we start

• Who will live in the house during the work, and where a working kitchen and bathroom will be at each stage.
• What the basement or the cellar is for.
• Whether the house grows: an extension, a dormer, a second story.
• The style. We work in contemporary, traditional and transitional styles, and pictures of rooms you like are the fastest way to show us which.
• The budget, said out loud. Projects have a way of growing along the way, and a stated number is what keeps the priorities in order.
• The papers: a survey, any old drawings and the Certificate of Occupancy, if there is one.

Rooms, design and where we work

Each room of a house has a page of its own: kitchen renovation, bathroom renovation, custom cabinets, storage and closets and entertainment units. How we handle design, and when an architect is needed, is on our design and build page. Photographs of finished rooms are in the general gallery, and the neighborhoods we cover are on the service areas page.

Questions people ask