Tips for Your Apartment Renovation: Five Decisions to Make Early

Five decisions shape an apartment renovation more than any finish you will choose: what the building’s alteration agreement allows, which walls go, whether the kitchen opens, shower or tub, and where the closets are built. Make them early and in roughly that order, and the rest of the job follows from them.

Read the alteration agreement first

We used to list this tip last. It belongs first. In a co-op or condo the alteration agreement is the rulebook for your renovation, and it can overrule your plans. The New York City Bar Association’s model agreement for co-ops shows the usual terms: work on weekdays only, within set hours and not on holidays; insurance from every contractor and a security deposit from you; and a completion date, with a payment for each working day beyond it (City Bar model alteration agreement). Many buildings also bar moving wet rooms such as kitchens and bathrooms above a neighbor’s dry rooms. Ask the managing agent for your building’s own agreement before you draw anything.

Make sure you and your contractor are reading the same document. We go over every step of the process with our clients, and on co-op jobs we keep checking back with the co-op as the work goes on.

Decide which walls can go

Taking down a wall is often the quickest way to a better layout, and people are more afraid of it than they need to be. What matters is the kind of wall. A partition that only divides two rooms is one thing. A wall that holds up the floor above, or one that carries the building’s pipes to your neighbors, is another, and the second kind stays where it is.

Do not guess. The Department of Buildings gives moving a load-bearing wall as an example of work that needs an application filed by a professional engineer or registered architect (NYC Buildings), and that professional is the one to say what each wall is doing. In a landmark building or a historic district, interior work that needs a Buildings permit needs the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s permit as well (LPC).

Open the kitchen, if the building lets you

Many older buildings have small kitchens closed in on all four sides. Opened to the living room, the kitchen becomes the center of the apartment, and even a small apartment feels generous. Whether the wall can come out depends on what is inside it, which is often the gas line, the plumbing or the vent. If it cannot go entirely, a wide opening, a half wall or a counter passing through it gives most of the effect and leaves the pipes alone.

Shower or tub

A shower in place of a tub makes a small bathroom feel bigger, and many owners lean that way. It is not always the right call. A household with young children needs a tub, and so will many of the people who might one day buy the apartment. A fair rule: with two bathrooms, keep one tub. With one bathroom, think about who lives there now and in five years.

Whichever you choose, a fixture that stays on its existing drain is a much smaller job than one that moves.

Plan the closets as part of the walls

Closet space is the thing people overlook during design and miss every day afterward. Built-in closets, planned together with the walls, use depth that furniture cannot, run to the ceiling, and can be fitted inside for what you own: long hanging, short hanging, shelves, drawers. Decide where they go while the layout is still on paper, because a closet is far easier to draw into a wall than to add to a finished room.

Then choose the finishes

Only when these five are settled is it time for tile, paint and hardware. They are the pleasant part, and they are the part that can change late without harm.

Our pages on apartment renovation in NYC and co-op renovation describe how we run this work, and bathroom renovation in NYC and custom storage and closets cover those rooms in detail. For the order of approvals and paperwork before demolition, see planning an NYC apartment renovation.

Questions people ask