Your kitchen, rebuilt from the block out.

A high-end kitchen remodel in South Florida is rarely a facelift. It is the room taken back to block and slab, the layout redrawn, and a cabinet package built to order instead of pulled off a shelf. The owners who call us have already concluded the room is wrong: Merrick-era and mid-century houses whose kitchens were designed as service rooms, 1990s builder houses where a soffit and a peninsula still define the space, and waterfront or condo buyers who intend to gut the kitchen before the furniture arrives. The kitchen is the main room of the house now, and it gets built like it.

What changes here is the envelope and the paperwork. Both counties sit inside the High-Velocity Hurricane Zone, so a kitchen that enlarges a window or adds a terrace door carries product-approval documents into plan review, either a Miami-Dade Notice of Acceptance or a Florida Product Approval evaluated for the HVHZ. Near the water, flood rules apply: work valued above half the building's value counts as substantial improvement, and materials below base flood elevation have to be flood-resistant. Permitting then splits by county. Miami-Dade cities each run their own building department with county environmental and water-and-sewer approvals still attached, and Broward's cities run theirs under Broward's county amendments; in each county a Board of Rules and Appeals certifies the inspectors and officials who review it.

Before anything is demolished you get a fixed written scope: cabinetry by specification, stone by slab, appliances by model number, and every trade line named. Cabinet fabrication sets the calendar, so the order goes in early and your existing kitchen keeps working while the boxes are built. Final dimensions are taken after demolition rather than off a drawing, stone is templated once the cabinets are standing, and rough inspections are attended in person. Our supervisor is there every working day. At the end the permit is closed out, which is the part that matters when you sell or refinance.

We build kitchens in 42 areas across the two counties, and no two behave alike. In Coral Gables and the Miami Beach historic districts, an interior kitchen goes straight to plan review while anything visible from the street meets a design or historic board first. On Key Biscayne, Fisher Island and in the Brickell towers, the association's alteration agreement sets hours, elevators and insurance before the city ever sees a drawing. Along the Broward waterfront, in Harbor Beach, Rio Vista, the Las Olas isles and Lighthouse Point, flood elevation drives the detailing. West in Weston, Parkland and Coral Springs it is gate logistics and 1990s framing. Pick your area for the local version.