Interior demolition in Edina for kitchens, baths and basements

Selective demolition is not a small teardown

Knocking down a whole building is mostly about force and hauling. Interior work is the opposite. The job is defined as much by what must survive as by what must go: the floor system under the kitchen, the hardwood in the hallway next door, the furnace in the basement, the windows you just replaced, and a family that may still be sleeping upstairs.

That changes the tools and the pace. Most of the work happens with pry bars, reciprocating saws, oscillating tools, rotary hammers for tile and a lot of hand labor. Small skid steers occasionally come into a basement through a walkout door, but in most houses everything leaves by hand, in bags, buckets and carts. If you are taking the entire house down instead, see the house demolition page.

Rooms and projects that typically call for a gut-out

Most interior demolition in the west metro falls into a handful of familiar jobs.

• Kitchens: upper and lower cabinets, countertops, backsplash, soffits, flooring down to the subfloor, and sometimes a wall between the kitchen and dining room.
• Bathrooms: the tub or shower, the tile surround and its backing, the vanity and toilet, floor tile and the mortar bed under it, and damaged subfloor around the toilet flange.
• Basements: paneling, drop ceilings, carpet over concrete, stud walls built tight against damp foundation walls, and old bars, closets or built-ins.
• Whole-floor renovations, where every room on a level is taken back to studs and joists before new plumbing, wiring and insulation go in.
• Water and mold damage, where wet drywall, insulation and flooring have to come out quickly so the framing can dry.

Protecting the parts of the house that stay

Before the first cabinet comes off the wall, the contractor sets up protection. Floors along the path from the work area to the exit are covered with heavy paper, ram board or plywood. Doorways that should stay closed are sealed with plastic sheeting and tape, and the opening used for access gets a zippered dust door so people can move through without letting dust escape.

Inside the room, anything being saved is either removed and stored or covered. Stairs, railings and narrow halls get padded, because a cast-iron tub or a load of tile carried down a staircase can gouge every surface it touches.

Keeping dust and debris under control in an occupied home

Plaster and tile produce fine dust that drifts through ductwork and settles on every horizontal surface in the house. Good interior crews treat dust as a planned part of the job rather than an afterthought.

Common measures include shutting off or sealing the heating and cooling registers in the work area so the furnace does not distribute dust to every room, running a negative-air machine with a filter that exhausts out a window, misting plaster lightly as it comes down, using vacuum shrouds on saws and grinders, and cleaning with a filtered vacuum rather than a broom at the end of each day.

Debris removal follows a route agreed with the owner, often through a back door, garage or basement walkout. Contractors often park a roll-off bin on the driveway or a trailer along the curb, and where it can sit comes down to the driveway layout, the street and city rules.

Load-bearing walls: an engineer decides, not a website

Opening a kitchen to the dining room is one of the most requested changes in houses from the 1950s and 1960s, and it is also where interior demolition can go seriously wrong. A wall that looks like a simple partition may carry floor joists, a ceiling, a roof load or a point load from above. In a story-and-a-half, a wall on the main floor may be holding up the knee walls and floor of the upper level.

Clues such as joist direction, a wall that lines up with a beam in the basement, or a wall running down the center of the house are only clues. Whether a wall carries load, and what has to replace it, is determined by a structural engineer or through the city's plan review. If the wall is structural, temporary shoring goes in before the wall comes out, and a beam and posts sized by the engineer are installed as the opening is created.

Making plumbing, wiring and gas safe before anything is removed

Every interior tear-out runs into utilities. Kitchen and bath walls hide supply lines, drains, vents and electrical circuits, and some older homes still have a gas line feeding a range or a wall heater. All of it has to be dealt with before walls open up.

A plumber shuts off and caps supply lines and plugs open drains so sewer gas and debris stay out. An electrician identifies the circuits feeding the work area, turns them off at the panel and makes the ends safe, often leaving a temporary circuit for lights and tools. Gas lines are shut and capped by someone qualified to work on them. Cutting into a wall with live wiring or a pressurized pipe behind it is the quickest way to turn a remodel into an emergency.

Plaster, lath, drywall, flooring and tile: what comes out and how

Houses built before the mid-twentieth century, common in Minneapolis and parts of Edina, usually have plaster over wood lath. It is heavy, dusty and slow to remove, and the lath is full of nails. Drywall in later homes comes off faster.

Floors can hide several layers: vinyl over linoleum over old wood, or ceramic tile set in a thick mortar bed. Bathroom tile from mid-century homes is often set in a reinforced mortar bed that has to be broken out with a rotary hammer, and that bed adds real weight to the debris. Carpet and pad in basements may hide asbestos-era floor tiles glued directly to the concrete.

Cabinets are unscrewed and lifted out whole when possible. Countertops, especially stone, are removed carefully so they do not crack across a cabinet below that is staying.

Older finishes: lead paint and asbestos come up more often than people expect

A large share of the housing stock around the Twin Cities was built when lead-based paint and asbestos-containing materials were in everyday use. In a remodel, the materials most worth testing include paint on trim, doors and windows, vinyl floor tiles and their mastic, sheet flooring backing, textured or popcorn ceilings, some plaster and joint compound, and insulation around old pipes or ducts in the basement.

Testing comes first. A qualified inspector takes samples and a lab reports what is present. If asbestos is found in materials that will be disturbed, an abatement specialist removes it under the controls that state and federal rules call for before general demolition continues. Where lead paint is present, federal renovation rules generally expect lead-safe work practices from contractors working in older homes, with containment, careful cleanup and attention to children and pregnant residents. The contractor should explain who tests, who abates and how the results are shared with you.

Basement tear-outs and the moisture question

Full basements sit under nearly every house in this region, and many of them were finished decades ago with paneling, carpet and stud walls placed directly against concrete block. After years of seasonal dampness, those walls often hide mold, rotted bottom plates and wet insulation.

A basement gut-out typically removes everything back to the foundation walls and slab, exposing the bare block or poured concrete and showing where water actually comes in. That is the moment to deal with cracks, drain tile, downspouts and grading outside, before new framing and insulation go back in. Old carpet tack strips, glued tiles and leveling compounds come off the floor so the new finish has a sound base.

What a complete interior demolition proposal should spell out

Two quotes for the same kitchen can describe very different jobs. A clear proposal answers the questions below so you can compare them fairly.

• Exactly which rooms, walls, ceilings and floors are included, and where the line between removal and protection falls.
• Who handles hazardous material testing and abatement, and how results will affect the schedule.
• Who disconnects plumbing, electrical and gas, and whether temporary power and water are left on.
• How dust is controlled, how the work area is sealed and what daily cleanup looks like.
• How debris leaves the house, where any container sits and how long it stays.
• Whether the work stops at the studs and joists or includes subfloor, insulation and damaged framing.
• What happens if a wall turns out to carry load or hidden damage turns up once things are opened.

What drives the price of an interior gut-out

The contractor prices the work after walking through the rooms, and the factors below explain most of the difference between one job and another. Plaster and lath take longer than drywall. A mortar-bed bathroom floor weighs far more than vinyl. Upper-floor rooms with a narrow staircase cost more to empty than a ground-floor kitchen beside the garage.

Hazardous materials, structural shoring, utility work by other trades, the level of dust protection needed in an occupied home, and disposal all add up. Metal from ductwork, pipes and fixtures can be scrapped, clean drywall and wood sometimes go to recycling, and the rest heads to a landfill or transfer station. If you are also removing a patio, steps or slab outside, the concrete removal page covers that work. For how these jobs fit the housing in nearby cities, see the areas we serve.

Interior demolition in Edina for kitchens — common questions

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