The ugly stage, over in a day or two.

Kitchens and baths are the two rooms where demo goes sideways fastest. They're small, they're full of water and power, and everything in them is fastened to everything else. They're also the rooms where a clean tear-out saves the most time on the back end — because a remodel crew walking into a properly stripped, properly capped room starts the same morning instead of spending a day cleaning up someone else's mess.

What comes out of a kitchen

Upper and lower cabinets, including the ones somebody scribed and screwed into the framing. Countertops — laminate, solid surface, quartz, or granite, which comes out in pieces and is heavier than it looks. Backsplash tile and the drywall behind it when the drywall isn't salvageable. Sink, faucet, disposal, and dishwasher. Range, hood, and the ductwork if it's changing. Flooring down to subfloor, including thinset and mud bed under tile. Soffits above the cabinets, which almost always hide something.

What comes out of a bath

Vanity, top, sink, and mirror. Toilet — pulled, wax ring scraped, drain plugged so the room doesn't smell like sewer gas for three weeks. Tub or shower pan and the surround, which in an older post-1978 build is often tile over mortar board over a mud bed, and is the single heaviest thing in the room. Wall tile and the substrate behind it. Flooring. Exhaust fan, medicine cabinet, and towel bars. Linen closets and built-ins when they're going.

Capping matters more than swinging

The part that separates a demo crew from a guy with a sledge is what happens to the systems. Water gets shut at the valve or the main and the stubs get capped, not left open with a rag in them. Drains get plugged. Circuits get killed at the panel and labeled, and live wire ends get capped and boxed rather than left hanging in the cavity. Gas, if there's gas, gets shut off at the appliance valve and left for a licensed plumber to disconnect properly.

Where demolition actually disconnects or removes plumbing, electrical, or mechanical, most Front Range jurisdictions want the corresponding trade permit pulled — that's the same rule whether it's a homeowner or a contractor doing it. We tell you which permits your city expects before the crew shows, and the rule for each city is on its service-area page.

The volume problem

One kitchen fills more container than most people estimate. Cabinets are bulky, counters and tile are dense, and a bath adds a cast-iron tub or a mortar-bed shower pan that eats weight allowance by itself. Sourcing that container yourself means calling a hauler, matching their delivery window to your crew's start, and losing a day if it doesn't show.

Our bins are in-house through Frontier Dumpster Bins. The container lands with the crew, gets swapped if it fills, and goes on one invoice. If you want to know what size a kitchen actually takes, we wrote it down: sizing a dumpster for a demo job.

The rules that apply to your house

Two things decide whether we can take your job, and we check both before quoting.

Year built. If the house was built before 1978, demolition that disturbs painted surfaces is covered by the EPA's Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting Rule and has to be performed by an EPA Lead-Safe Certified firm. We aren't certified, so we don't take pre-1978 residential work. We'll say so immediately and point you to a firm that is.

Suspect material. Older vinyl flooring, sheet flooring backing, mastic, mud-bed thinset, textured coatings, and some drywall joint compound can contain asbestos. Colorado requires an inspection by a certified Asbestos Building Inspector before you disturb suspect material above the state's trigger amounts, and abatement is licensed work we don't perform. We coordinate testing and refer abatement out, then come back and demo. Here's how that sequence actually runs.

Tell us the room and the year the house went up, and we'll tell you what it takes. Get an estimate.