Taking a sign down is a real job, not the reverse of putting one up. Disconnect the power, cut it free without damaging the building, get it down safely, then patch and seal what's left behind.

That last part is where most removals go wrong. A sign coming off a wall leaves anchor holes, an electrical penetration, and usually a rectangle of un-faded paint or clean brick where the sign was. Left open, those holes take water into the wall. We patch and seal them.

Why people call

You're closing a location or moving, and the lease requires the space returned without your signage. You've rebranded and the old name has to come down. You've bought or leased a space with the previous tenant's sign still on it. A sign has failed, or been damaged, and isn't worth repairing. Or a landlord or the city has told you it has to go.

Lease surrender is the one with a deadline

Most commercial leases require signage removed and the facade restored at surrender, and that clause tends to get read the week the keys are due. If you're on a deadline, tell us — this is straightforward work, but it needs a truck and a crew scheduled, and the last week of a month is when everybody wants one.

We take down signs we didn't build

Almost all of them, in fact. We don't need to know who made it or when. If you have paperwork or a spec, useful; if all you have is a photo, that's usually enough to quote.

Disposal

We haul it away. Cabinets and channel letters are mostly aluminum and steel and go to metal recycling rather than a landfill. Older signs sometimes contain fluorescent lamps or ballasts that need handling separately, and neon transformers and tubes have their own disposal requirements — that's routine for us and it's not something you should be putting in a dumpster.

If you want to keep it

Say so before we start. Removal for reuse is a different, more careful job — relocating a sign to a new address, keeping a piece for the wall of a new space, or preserving old neon that's worth saving. We'd rather slow down and take something off intact than find out afterward it mattered to you.

Access

We run our own 35-foot bucket truck and our own crew. Removals over sidewalks or in tight parking areas sometimes need a right-of-way or street occupancy permit to stage the truck — we'll tell you if yours does.

Send a photo of the sign and the address. Most removals quote from that.