How to prep a space for demo day

A demo crew's speed is mostly decided before they arrive. A space that's clear, accessible, and shut off gets stripped in a fraction of the time of one where the crew spends the first two hours moving your stuff and hunting for a water shutoff.

None of this is complicated. It's just a list, and most of it takes an evening.

One to two weeks out

Settle the scope in writing. What's coming out, what's staying, and what's borderline. The borderline items are where money leaks — a soffit nobody decided about, a closet that might stay, a floor in the hallway that may or may not be in scope. Get it decided before the crew is standing there asking.

Answer the testing and permit questions. If suspect material needs an asbestos inspection, that's a lab turnaround, not a phone call — schedule it with room to spare. If the job needs a permit, it needs to be in hand. Both of these are week-one items, not week-of items. The full sequence is here.

Order the things with lead times. Not demo's problem, but the reason demo exists. If the cabinets are twelve weeks out, stripping the kitchen in week one just means living with a plywood floor for eleven weeks.

Sort out the container. Where will it sit? Most Front Range cities require a right-of-way permit for a container placed in the street, and almost none require one for a bin on your own driveway or pad. If we're doing the demo, this is already handled — the bins are ours through Frontier Dumpster Bins, and they arrive with the crew.

The week before

Decide what you're salvaging, and pull it yourself. This is the single biggest time-saver, and the thing people most regret skipping. Cabinets you want to reuse in the garage, the light fixture with the sentimental value, the vintage door hardware, the appliances going to a new house — pull them, wrap them, and move them off site. Demolition is a destructive process by definition; anything staying in the room is at risk.

If you want fixtures or cabinets removed carefully for donation or reuse, say so when we scope it. Careful removal is slower than demolition, and it needs to be in the plan rather than a surprise request on the morning of.

Empty the space completely. Cabinets, drawers, closets, medicine cabinets, under the sink, the top shelf you can't reach. Everything. The crew will not sort your belongings out of the debris and you would not enjoy the result if they tried.

Clear the route. The path from the work area to the door to the container needs to be wide, clear, and protected. Move the furniture out of the hallway. Take the pictures off the walls along the route — vibration travels and frames fall. On a commercial job, confirm the corridor, freight elevator, and dock access with the property manager in advance.

Take down wall art and mirrors in adjacent rooms too. Demolition shakes a building more than you'd guess. Anything hanging on the other side of a wall that's coming down should come off it.

Photograph everything. Before pictures of the work area and of the areas you're passing through. It's five minutes, and it settles any question about a scuff that may or may not have been there before.

The day before

Confirm utilities. Know where the main water shutoff is and make sure it works. Know where the electrical panel is and that it's accessible. If gas appliances are involved, a licensed plumber handles the disconnect — schedule it so it's done, not pending.

We shut and cap what we're taking out, but we need to be able to reach the shutoffs. A panel behind a stack of boxes costs everybody time.

Sort out parking and access. The crew needs to park close enough to carry debris, and the container needs its spot. On a residential street, tell the neighbors — a courtesy heads-up prevents most of the friction a demo causes. On a commercial site, get the after-hours access codes, badges, and COI requirements confirmed in advance.

Plan for pets and people. Pets go elsewhere for the day — noise, open doors, and debris are a bad combination. If anyone in the household is sensitive to dust or noise, plan to be out. Working from home through a demo day is usually a bad bet.

Decide the HVAC plan. Registers and returns in the work area get sealed so the system doesn't distribute dust through the whole building. If the system is running, we seal. If it's a bigger job, it may be better off shut down entirely for the day.

Demo morning

Walk it with the crew. Ten minutes, out loud, pointing at things: this comes out, this stays, this is the path, this is where the bin goes, this is the shutoff, here's where you can park. It prevents nearly every misunderstanding that happens on a demo job.

Be reachable. You don't need to be present all day, but somebody needs to answer a question in ten minutes. When a crew opens a wall and finds a duct nobody knew about, the decision that follows either takes ten minutes or a day.

Then let it happen. Protection goes up, systems get killed and capped, and it comes out in order — trim and fixtures, then finishes, then substrate, then framing. The debris goes onto the bin as it comes out rather than into a pile in the yard, and the space gets swept before we call it done.

What "done" should look like

Broom-clean. Debris gone, nails pulled or driven flush, floor swept, protection removed, and the rooms we passed through looking the way they did when we got there. The next trade should be able to start without cleaning up after us.

That's the standard. Tell us about the space and we'll scope it.