Kitchens that face the canal.

Ask an owner on Isle of Capri or Bontona Avenue what is wrong with the kitchen and the answer is rarely the countertop. It is the wall. Waterfront houses built here in the 1950s and 1960s put the kitchen at the front of the plan, facing the street, with the canal reserved for the living room and a Florida room nobody uses. High-end kitchen remodeling on the Las Olas Isles is mostly a relocation project: pulling the kitchen toward the water, absorbing a utility room, and putting an island where the view actually is.

A kitchen that moves takes plumbing, gas, electrical and often structure with it, so it is a permitted job through Fort Lauderdale Development Services with inspections at rough and final. Enlarging the window over the sink or cutting a new opening to the terrace brings the exterior into play, which means units carrying product approval valid in the High-Velocity Hurricane Zone that includes Broward County. Older isle houses frequently need a service upgrade before they can carry an induction range, a wine room and a pair of dishwashers, and that work rides on the same permit set.

Our sequence is the one cabinetmakers ask for and rarely get: structure first, then rough-ins verified against the shop drawings, cabinets set and leveled, stone templated on the actual boxes. Cabinet lead times drive the calendar, so we order early and hold demolition until the delivery date is real. A supervisor is on site each working day, the rest of the house is sealed off and protected, and the scope is fixed in writing before a single wall opens. Twenty-plus years and 150-plus projects in South Florida, all permitted and inspected, sit behind that.