Walls opened, ceilings dropped, cavity clean.

Opening walls and ceilings is how a remodel actually starts. The electrician needs the cavity. The plumber needs to see the stack. The framer needs to know what's behind the plaster before he prices the change. And the difference between a good job and a bad one is whether what's behind the drywall survives the process.

Drywall

Pulled in sheets where it'll come in sheets, scored and broken where it won't. Screws and nails pulled or driven flush, corner bead out, and the framing left clean enough that the next trade isn't picking gypsum out of every bay.

The wiring, plumbing, and ductwork in the cavity stay intact. That sounds obvious. It is routinely not what happens when demo is handed to whoever's cheapest — a nicked romex or a cracked PVC drain line inside a wall is a problem that surfaces two weeks later, at someone's expense.

Plaster over lath

Older post-1978 construction on the Front Range still has plenty of plaster and wood or metal lath. It's a different job than drywall: far more debris by weight, far more dust, and lath that has to come off the studs nail by nail. Plan for more container and more time than a drywall equivalent of the same square footage.

Suspended ceilings

Grid and tile come down fast, and in commercial space it's usually the first thing out because everything above it — lighting, mechanical distribution, sprinkler drops, cabling — has to be accessible for the next scope. Sprinkler heads are their own licensed trade and their own permit path; we work around them or wait for the fire-protection contractor to drop them, we don't cut them.

Soffits and bulkheads

Kitchen soffits, retail bulkheads, and the boxed-in runs above cabinets almost always hide something — a duct, a vent, a drain, a beam, or sometimes nothing at all. We open them carefully rather than sledging them, because finding a 4-inch waste line with a hammer is expensive.

Textured ceilings: a specific warning

Sprayed or troweled ceiling texture is one of the suspect materials Colorado regulates, and so is drywall joint compound. Regulation 8's trigger levels are 32 square feet on surfaces, 50 linear feet on pipes, or a 55-gallon drum equivalent in a single-family home, and 160 square feet, 260 linear feet, or the same drum equivalent everywhere else. A single room of ceiling clears 32 square feet without trying. Above the trigger, suspect material has to be inspected by a Colorado-certified Asbestos Building Inspector before it's disturbed, and abatement is licensed work for a certified General Abatement Contractor — not us.

So we do the honest thing: flag it, coordinate the inspection, hand abatement to a certified contractor, and mobilize for the non-hazardous demolition after clearance. Here's how that sequence runs.

And the same line we draw everywhere: we don't take residential work in housing built before 1978, because demolition of painted surfaces there requires an EPA Lead-Safe Certified firm and we aren't one.

Permits: drywall is often the trigger

Here's a thing worth knowing. Cities that exempt flooring and cabinet removal frequently do not exempt drywall. Golden publishes it directly — flooring, cabinets, and countertops are on its no-permit list while drywall is on its permit-required list, as is removing a wall whether it's bearing or non-bearing. Denver, by contrast, exempts residential drywall work under one 4×8 sheet and runs everything larger through a permit.

That's the pattern across the Front Range: the line moves city to city, and drywall is usually on the wrong side of it. We check your address before the crew mobilizes. Each city's verified rule is on its service-area page.

Structural is a different trade

If a wall is carrying load, taking the drywall off it is fine — taking the wall out is not demolition work. That needs an engineer's detail, shoring, and a permit everywhere on the Front Range. We'll tell you which walls look structural when we walk the space, before it's a schedule problem.

Volume, and where it goes

Drywall is light and enormously bulky; plaster is heavy and enormously dusty. Either way a couple of rooms fills more container than people picture. The bins are ours through Frontier Dumpster Bins — sized to the material, on site with the crew, swapped when full, one invoice. Get an estimate.