Façade restoration and exterior renovation for New York City buildings

Repair fixes the items on the list. Restoration fixes the reason they got there. Say brick is cracking above your windows. Repair replaces the cracked brick. Restoration also takes care of the rusting steel lintel behind it, which is what cracked the brick in the first place, so the same crack isn't back on your next report.

When you're repairing the same wall every cycle. Think of white glazed brick that spalls again after each repair, delaminating stucco, or panels that leak through every round of caulk. If a façade keeps turning up SWARMP and Unsafe conditions, a new cladding system can serve the building better than patching it every cycle for the next twenty years. We scope both options so you can put them side by side.

It helps a lot, but no. With the report in hand, we scope each condition line by line. Without it, we run our own condition survey and tell you what we'd expect your QEWI to flag.

Almost always. Most façade work happens from suspended or pipe scaffold outside the building, rigged under our own Special Rigger license. We plan noise, window access and terrace closures around the people living and working there, and they hear about it from us before it happens.

No. In an occupied building we go unit by unit and plan about one day per apartment for the window itself, with the interior finishing done right behind it. We set the schedule with your managing agent and give residents notice.

It depends on the size of the building, how many elevations need work and how much is hidden until the wall is open. One elevation of repointing and brick replacement can take weeks. A full façade rehabilitation of a tall pre-war building can run a year or more. You get a schedule with our proposal, and we keep it current as the work moves. Our cost guide lays out what drives the size of a job.

Most of it does. If your building is landmarked or sits in a historic district, it needs a Landmarks Preservation Commission permit as well. Your architect or engineer files the drawings. We pull the work and shed permits and keep them current.

Sometimes, but it's a bigger conversation. Changing the look of a landmark, or of a building in a historic district, needs LPC approval, and significant changes go to a public hearing. Your architect leads that process. We help with materials, mockups and constructability.

It can. Re-cladding is the one time you can add continuous insulation and close up air leaks across the whole wall, and it's often part of a larger plan for Local Law 97 emissions limits. Treat it as a design decision. Your architect or engineer models the energy performance, and their numbers make the case.

Your architect. We build from their drawings, put up mockups, submit shop drawings and product data, and flag anything that won't work in the field before it gets built.

We stop, photograph it and show your QEWI. You see the added scope and agree to it before we go further. Our proposals name the common unknowns and how each will be measured (per brick, per linear foot of lintel, per square foot of stone patch), so you've agreed in advance how they'll be handled.