Planning a renovation when you share walls with neighbors
Why a condo renovation runs on the building's clock
In a house, the contractor can start at 7 a.m. and leave a dumpster in the driveway. In an apartment building, the rules belong to someone else. Most co-op boards, condo associations and HOAs restrict noisy work to weekdays, often something like 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., ban it on weekends and holidays, and want the freight elevator booked and padded for every delivery. Some buildings in New York and other big cities also limit renovations to a set number of months and charge fees if you run over.
That is why the paperwork sits at the front of this template. Before anyone swings a hammer, the board or managing agent usually wants plans, a licensed contractor, a certificate of insurance naming the building, and sometimes a signed alteration agreement. In the UK, a leaseholder typically needs a licence to alter from the freeholder. In Canada and Australia, strata corporations have their own bylaws and forms.
Three common renovation scenarios
You just closed on a condo and want to renovate before moving in. This is the full template. The unit is empty, the crew can work every allowed hour, and the pressure comes from paying rent and a mortgage at the same time. Watch the critical path from week one.
You live in the unit and remodel one room at a time. A bathroom-first, kitchen-later plan keeps the home livable but stretches the calendar. Duplicate the core construction and finishes tasks for each room so each phase has its own dates.
You own a rental and refresh it between tenants. Here the scope is usually paint, floors and fixtures, and the deadline is the next lease start. Delete demolition and masonry, shorten the rest, and work back from the move-in date.
Paperwork to line up before demo day
The template gives building management approval 5 working days, starting right after design and budget. In practice, start the conversation with the managing agent while the design is still in progress so the review does not stall demolition.
- Alteration agreement or HOA architectural review application
- Certificate of insurance listing the building and managing agent
- Building permit for electrical, plumbing or wall changes, plus a rough-in inspection
- Contractor license number and a written scope with payment milestones
- Freight elevator reservations and corridor protection
- Debris plan: chute, bags or a permitted dumpster on the street
- Notice to neighbors with the noisy weeks marked
Who you will be coordinating
A typical apartment gut job involves a general contractor, an architect or designer for drawings the board will accept, a licensed electrician and plumber for rough-in, a tile setter, a painter, a cabinet maker or millwork shop and a countertop fabricator who templates after the cabinets go in. On the building side you deal with the super for access and the property manager for approvals.
Assign each task to the person who owns it. In Great Gantt the per-person view shows what the plumber or the cabinet shop has coming up, which makes the weekly call with the contractor much shorter.
Mistakes that stretch a renovation
Ordering cabinets late is the big one. Custom or semi-custom cabinets often take 6 to 10 weeks to arrive, longer than the template's 10-day purchasing window. Place the order as soon as the design is final and add a delivery milestone. Countertops add another 1 to 2 weeks after templating.
Other common delays: closing walls before the rough-in inspection, skipping the shower pan flood test, choosing tile that is backordered, and forgetting that many buildings freeze work in late December. Older buildings also hide surprises like cast-iron drain lines or ungrounded wiring, so leave some slack after demolition.
Reading the 65 working days in this template
Planning takes 15 working days before demolition, core construction 23 and finishes 27. Long-lead purchasing runs in parallel with 18 days of slack before it would hold up flooring. Set non-working days to match your building rules, add US or UK public holidays, and save a baseline before demo. When the board asks for a timeline, export it as a PDF.