Status: complete. Client: JMC Builders. Location: a landmark high rise apartment tower in Darlinghurst NSW. Scope: two full apartment strip outs back to slab, blockwork and soffit ahead of new fitouts, the first in August 2023 and the second in November 2025, both with the building occupied and everything going out through the goods lift.
The brief on both was the same. All walls, ceilings and floor finishes back to bare structure, and every load into four wheeled bins, down a pre booked goods lift and out to the loading dock at the rear. The residents in the rest of the tower never saw a skip in their lobby.
What the job involved
- Protection to the common corridor, lift lobby and lift car before the first bin moved: adhesive floor film, taped door edges and corflute to the apartment windows and doors
- Strip out of wall panelling above and below the windows, television and joinery wall panelling, column panelling, doors and frames
- Demolition of every internal wall and ceiling, framework included, with the redundant services removed once the builder's trades had disconnected them, and the fire sprinklers left live
- Bathrooms stripped to the structure: floor tiles and 40 mm bedding, wall tiles, cabinets, fittings and fixtures. Kitchens out: joinery, splashback tiles, appliances, fittings and fixtures
- Carpet and underlay lifted across the whole apartment on the first job, floor tiles and bedding jackhammered off the slab on the second
- Render and tile adhesive ground off the blockwork walls and columns so the builder had a clean substrate to line
- Plasterboard, steel stud and track, ductwork, timber and mixed waste kept apart and wheeled out in bins through the goods lift to the loading dock, then carted to recycling
- Follow up loads through the fitout: the builder kept calling us back for bin runs from the first apartment for two years after the strip out
What made it hard
The tower was full of people living their lives. Every trip from the apartment to the truck went through a common corridor, a lift lobby and a lift that residents used, so the corridor floor, the door edges and the lift surrounds were protected before the first bin moved. Noisy work sat inside normal hours and the route was left clean and the site secured at the end of each shift.
The lift is the bottleneck on any high rise strip out. One goods lift, booked in advance, sized for a four wheeled bin, and shared with deliveries. The job was planned around it: strip, sort into the bins, then run the bins down to the loading dock in batches rather than holding the lift for the rest of the building.
The second apartment had blockwork walls under the linings and tiled floors on a bedding layer. That meant jackhammering inside an occupied tower and grinding the render and adhesive off block and concrete. Electric tools only, dust extraction on the grinders, and the windows and entry door protected so the finished shell was clean.
How it was run
Protection first, then a set order in every room: fixtures and joinery out, ceilings down, wall linings off, partitions unscrewed and carried out as frames, then the floor. Steel stud and track went into its own bin for the metal recycler, plasterboard into another, and the mixed waste separately, so the recyclable streams stayed clean and the tip bill stayed small.
The first apartment ran across three weeks in August and September 2023 with the crew on site in a single establishment. The second ran as seven shifts from 24 November to 2 December 2025 with three to six people on site each day: strip out and loadout for the first four days, jackhammering and loadout, then detailing and demobilisation on the last day.
How it went
Both apartments were handed back as clean shells: bare slab, blockwork and soffit, floor wastes and sprinklers left in place, windows and entry doors protected and intact. JMC Builders came back to Perfect Strip Out and Demolition for the second apartment two years after the first, and kept us on for bin runs and labour through the fitouts that followed.
If you have something similar
Apartment and penthouse strip outs in occupied towers, where everything has to go out through a shared lift and the neighbours must not know you were there: that is a job Perfect Strip Out and Demolition does for builders across Sydney. Have a look at our commercial strip out, demolition and make good and defit pages, or get in touch.
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