Apartment Renovations near you

Work out which one you are in before you do anything else, because it determines who has to say yes and what happens to the work when you leave.

Verbal permission from a landlord is worth very little when the building changes hands or the property manager changes. Ask for consent in writing and make it specific, because a vague approval to renovate the kitchen is not an approval to move the plumbing.

Two separate federal rules apply to older rental housing and it is worth knowing which is whose. The first sits on the landlord. Under the federal lead disclosure requirements, sellers and landlords of most pre-1978 housing must give buyers and renters a copy of the Protect Your Family From Lead In Your Home pamphlet, disclose any known lead-based paint and lead-based paint hazards and the condition of painted surfaces, provide all available records and reports on lead-based paint and hazards, including evaluations of multi-unit buildings, and include a lead warning statement in the lease or contract. Homebuyers get a ten-day period to conduct a paint inspection or risk assessment unless the parties agree otherwise in writing, and signed disclosures are retained for three years.

The second sits on the contractor. EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting rule applies to work in houses, apartments and child-occupied facilities built before 1978, and EPA states that anyone paid to perform work that disturbs paint in such housing must be certified, firms included. The minor repair and maintenance exemption covers activities disturbing six square feet or less of paint per room inside, or twenty square feet or less on the exterior, but EPA is explicit that window replacement and demolition of painted surfaces are always covered regardless of square footage.

In an apartment renovation the RRP rule bites more often than people expect, because old apartments are full of painted trim, painted window sashes, painted radiators and painted plaster, and removing any of it at scale is demolition of painted surfaces. Ask for the firm's EPA certification, keep a copy, and do not accept an assurance that the paint is probably lead-free in place of it.

In a multifamily building the partitions around a unit are not just partitions. Seattle's adopted building code, reprinting the model text used for multifamily buildings nationally, requires walls, partitions and floor-ceiling assemblies separating dwelling units and sleeping units from each other or from public or service areas to have a sound transmission class of not less than 50 where tested in accordance with ASTM E90, or a Normalized Noise Isolation Class of not less than 45 if field tested to ASTM E336.

The sentence that matters most during a renovation is the next one. The code requires penetrations or openings in those assemblies for piping, electrical devices, recessed cabinets, bathtubs, soffits, and heating, ventilating or exhaust ducts to be sealed, lined, insulated or otherwise treated to maintain the required ratings. That is the rule a crew breaks when it cuts a recessed medicine cabinet into a party wall, or runs a new duct through a demising wall and leaves the hole loose around it. The same section requires unit and guest room entrance doors from interior corridors, and interconnecting doors between separate units, to have perimeter seals and a sound transmission class rating of not less than 28.

Those assemblies are usually doing fire duty as well as sound duty, so the same penetration is normally a firestopping detail too. This is the part of an apartment renovation where hiring a contractor who works in multifamily buildings, rather than one who works in houses, shows up most clearly.

The hardest part of most apartment renovations is not the work, it is doing it politely inside somebody else's day. Every load of material and every load of debris goes through a shared entrance, a shared corridor and usually a shared elevator, which has to be booked and protected. Noise carries structurally in ways that surprise people, so a hammer drill on a concrete slab is audible several floors away, not just next door.

Utilities are shared too, and that is where neighbors are actually affected. Isolating water for your bathroom often means shutting a riser that serves a whole line of apartments, which requires notice and a scheduled window. Electrical work may need access to a panel in a common area. Ventilation may run through a shaft shared with other units, so changing a bathroom fan is not a private decision.

Dust is the complaint that generates the most letters. Containment at the unit door, negative air where it is warranted, protection along the route to the elevator and a daily cleanup of common areas are not extras in a shared building; they are the reason the building lets renovations happen at all. Where the building is pre-1978 and paint is being disturbed, lead-safe work practices under the RRP rule overlap with all of this, so the containment is required rather than courteous.

The permit requirements themselves are familiar: structural alterations, plumbing, electrical and mechanical work, and anything affecting a fire-rated assembly or a means of egress. What differs is the paperwork around them. Larger multifamily buildings are regulated under the building code used for commercial and multifamily construction rather than the one-and-two-family residential code, which changes some requirements and can change who is allowed to prepare the drawings.

The application itself is the practical hurdle. Permits are issued against a property, and the owner of record for a rental building or a cooperative is the landlord or the corporation, not you. Find out who signs, what they require before signing, and how long it takes, and get that moving before your contractor's schedule depends on it. Doing work without a permit in a multifamily building is a poor bet: it surfaces at sale, at refinancing, during a neighbor's renovation, and in any insurance claim that follows a loss.

Three things drive the number more than the finishes do. First, access: elevator bookings, restricted hours, protection of common areas, no on-site storage and carrying everything by hand. Second, the building's construction: concrete slabs, shared risers and rated assemblies limit where plumbing and ventilation can go, and penetrations have to be treated to maintain the ratings. Third, the age of the building, because a pre-1978 apartment brings the RRP rule into the scope and older plaster, wiring and plumbing tend to produce discoveries once a wall is open.

Tell LokalMatch what the unit is and what you want done: your ZIP code, the floor, whether you rent or own, roughly how large the apartment is and which rooms are involved. Contractors who work in apartment buildings in your area receive the request and the interested ones get in touch. Contractors pay for the requests they receive and homeowners and renters use LokalMatch at no cost. LokalMatch does not perform renovations, does not quote and does not screen, rank or recommend any contractor, so checking their license, their insurance and their EPA lead certification where the building is pre-1978 is your responsibility.