The bath the Cove house needed.

A 1965 Cove house came with a hall bath, a tub you step over, and a primary bath the size of a good closet. A 1980s Deer Creek home came with a garden tub, a glass-block window, and a shower built for someone with no elbows. Both get the same treatment now: the hall bath and an adjoining closet or bedroom combined into a genuine primary suite, a low-curb or curbless shower, a freestanding tub where the floor supports one, and stone that will not stain in the first week. Condo owners over on Deerfield Beach Island chase the same result in tighter space.

The Deerfield Beach Building Division permits bath work, with plumbing, electrical and mechanical inspections before anything gets closed up, which is exactly when a waterproofing mistake is still cheap. In a condominium the city requires a licensed contractor, the HOA affidavit with the application, and the permit card displayed where an inspector can read it from outside your unit. Older beachfront towers also sit inside Florida's milestone inspection era: buildings of three habitable stories and up reach their first structural milestone at thirty years, and the local building official may require it at twenty-five near the coast. Boards have grown curious about anything touching a slab.

It is the smallest room in the house and the least forgiving one. Pans get flood-tested and held, slopes get verified with a level rather than a hopeful eye, and heavy glass hangs on blocking installed for that purpose during framing. Niches are waterproofed like everything else, because that is where the shortcuts hide. Exhaust goes outside the building, not into a soffit to condense. Scope in writing, supervision daily, protection on every finished surface between the front door and the work zone. Lic. CGC1539072, licensed and insured, permitted and inspected without exception.