Stucco repair in Brooklyn is usually on a rear elevation you can reach but cannot drive to. Surveying the wall is straightforward. Getting the rubble back out through the hallway is the part that decides how big the job should be.
A Brooklyn rear yard is enclosed on four sides with no vehicle access. That is not a problem for the survey. You can stand in the yard, sound the whole elevation and price it properly, which is more than can be said for a lot of city work.
The problem is what leaves. Cutting out failed stucco at seven eighths of an inch produces a serious volume of heavy, sharp rubble, and every bucket of it travels back through the parlor floor, down the hallway and out the front door. As a stucco repair contractor in Brooklyn we scope around that, because on a rowhouse the removal is frequently a bigger operation than the rebuild.
Four things that follow from a yard you can work in but cannot drive to.
Unlike most city stucco work, a Brooklyn rear elevation can be sounded properly from the ground. The scope is knowable before anyone starts, which means the quote can be a real number rather than an allowance.
There is no chute, no container in the yard and no gate wide enough. Rubble is carried through the parlor floor and out the front, which on a Park Slope or Bed-Stuy rowhouse is somebody’s hallway for the duration.
Doubling a repair area on an open site adds labor. Doubling it in a Brooklyn rear yard adds labor and roughly doubles the number of loads through the house. The second cost is the one people feel.
On a building where access is expensive the argument is to do everything while you are up there. On a rowhouse it runs the other way. We repair what has failed and leave sound wall alone.
Rear door width, hallway turns, stair treads and the front stoop. Those dimensions set the container size, and the container size sets how many trips the job takes.
Floors, banisters and door frames on the way through a Brooklyn rowhouse, covered for the duration rather than laid and lifted each day. Sharp stucco rubble in a bucket does more damage to a hallway than the crew's boots do.
Opening the whole repair area first means the yard fills with rubble before any of it moves. Cutting a section, clearing it and moving on keeps the yard workable and the hallway busy for shorter stretches at a time.
Loads, not just square feet. A rowhouse quote that prices the repair area and says nothing about removal has left out the part the household actually experiences. Ask how much is coming off the wall, how many trips that is through the hallway, how the route is being protected and for how many days. Those four answers describe the job far better than a rate per square foot does, and a contractor who has not thought about them has not worked a Brooklyn rear yard.
Rear elevations behind attached houses run through Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Fort Greene, Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights, and the way out is the same on every block.
See stucco contractor Brooklyn for our other stucco work in the borough, or stucco repair NYC for how a repair is surveyed and rebuilt.
Browse our gallery to explore the outstanding projects we’ve successfully completed, highlighting our expertise.
Through the house, in buckets. There is no gate wide enough and nothing can be dropped from a rowhouse rear yard to the street. Every load travels the parlor floor and out the front door, which is why the route gets measured and protected before any cutting starts.
Not if the route is covered properly and left covered. The risk on a Brooklyn rowhouse is not the crew walking through. It is sharp rubble in a bucket catching a banister or door frame on the way past, which happens on every trip rather than once.
More weight than the area suggests. A three coat wall runs around seven eighths of an inch, so even a modest Brooklyn repair area produces heavy rubble in quantity. That volume, not the square footage, is what sets how many trips through the house the job takes.
On a Brooklyn rowhouse, usually not. Every extra square foot is paid twice, once in labor and once in loads through the hallway. On a building with expensive scaffolding the answer would be the opposite, which is why the advice differs by building type rather than by contractor.
Removal is a larger share of it than most people expect. On an open site the repair drives the number. In a Brooklyn rear yard the handling does, because rubble that would take one container elsewhere takes many trips here, and those hours are on the clock like any other.
