Kitchens that face the water.

The mid-century builders who filled Venetian Isles and Coral Key Villas put the kitchen where the plumbing was cheapest: usually toward the street, walled off from the family room, and blind to the water the whole lot was sold for. Sixty years later that is the single most common complaint we hear in Lighthouse Point. A kitchen remodel here is really a reorientation. Take out the wall to the Florida room, move the range off the exterior wall, and put the sink and the island where somebody can watch a boat come up the canal while dinner cooks.

A serious kitchen touches plumbing, gas, electrical and often structure, so it is permitted work through the Lighthouse Point Building and Zoning Department, with a separate application for each discipline and inspections along the way. Painting and tile need no permit; nearly everything else in a kitchen does. If the scope enlarges a window or cuts a new opening to the terrace, the replacement unit needs an HVHZ product approval, because Broward County sits inside the High-Velocity Hurricane Zone alongside Miami-Dade. And a sixties panel often needs upgrading before an induction range and a wine room become realistic.

The sequence is what protects a kitchen. Cabinets are ordered early and stored dry, stone is templated after the boxes are set rather than off a drawing, and appliance specifications are locked before a single rough-in gets cut. A supervisor is on site daily, floors and the route from your front door are protected, and the site is swept before anyone leaves. Twenty-plus years in South Florida, 150-plus remodels and additions, all of it permitted and inspected. Lic. CGC1539072.