Grow the house, keep the canal.

Lighthouse Point lots are wide, flat and finite, and almost every one of them ends at a seawall. That geometry drives the additions built here: a rear great room and primary suite pushed toward the water in Venetian Isles, a second story over a low-slung ranch in Coral Key Harbor so the upstairs bedrooms can finally see the canal, a garage turned into a guest suite in Pompano Waterway Estates for the family that arrives by boat every winter. Nobody in this city wants to leave the water. They want more house between the street and the dock.

Additions are the most paperwork-intensive thing you can build in this city, and the Lighthouse Point Building and Zoning Department is specific about it. The single-family checklist wants sealed plans and structural calculations, three surveys with site plans showing setbacks, soil density tests, a separately filed drainage plan, product approvals signed by the designer of record, and, on waterfront property, three sealed engineer's letters confirming the seawall can carry the added upland improvements. Zoning adds geometry: anything above 28.5 feet steps back two more feet for every foot of height. Broward County environmental review stamps new-home plans first.

Tying new construction to a 1960s block house is where experience earns its keep. Footings have to meet existing footings, the new tie beam has to land somewhere real, and the stucco seam has to disappear or everyone will see it forever. We stage the work so the half of the house you still live in stays livable, keep the site tidy on a street where the neighbors are also your dock neighbors, and run a fixed written scope with a supervisor present daily. One accountable team from the feasibility conversation through final inspection and warranty.