Small baths, built like ships.

Bathrooms date a house faster than anything else, and on this island most of them were laid out in the 1950s and 1960s. A three-piece bath off a hallway, a tub nobody uses, and a window that vents straight into the neighbor's carport. Owners in Bel Air and Silver Shores solve it by annexing a closet or a small third bedroom and building an actual primary suite. In the condos along El Mar Drive the footprint is fixed, so the work goes vertical: better light, better storage, and a shower you do not step over.

Bathroom work in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea is permitted through the town's Development Services Department, with plumbing, electrical and mechanical inspections at rough-in before anything gets covered. That sequence is a feature, not a hurdle: it means someone verified the shower pan and the rough plumbing while they were still visible. Condominium owners add an association layer first, plus sound-attenuation requirements under new tile and coordination with a building that may be working through its own milestone inspection. Broward's countywide code administration under the Board of Rules and Appeals sets the standard your inspector applies.

The parts of a bath that fail are the parts nobody photographs. So the membrane gets flood-tested and left standing overnight before tile is ordered, slopes get checked with a level instead of an eye, and heavy glass hangs on blocking that was installed for it. Exhaust ducts to the outside, which matters more on a barrier island than it does inland, because the humidity here never really leaves. Fixed written scope, daily supervision, protected floors from the front door in. Licensed, insured and accountable under Lic. CGC1539072.