Home Remodeling, Miami FL

We handle full home remodels only. Four scope bands — whole-home gut renovation, multi-room remodel, condo gut renovation, and home addition. Each one runs through the full six-phase process: discovery, design, permitting, demolition and rough trades, finishes and installation, punch and closeout.

We do not take on:

• Partial cosmetic refreshes, single-fixture replacements, or vanity swaps
• Single-room paint-only or single-room flooring-only jobs
• Touch-ups, small repairs, drywall patching, or handyman scope
• Roof repair, gutter work, fence work, exterior painting on its own, deck or patio standalone work
• Drywall repair, fan installation, furniture assembly, or any single-trade visit

If your project is one of those, we're not the right contractor. The full-scope home remodeling work we do — kitchen, bathroom, condo, additions, whole-home — runs the full process from licensed CGC permit pull through final inspection. Anything smaller is the wrong fit for our team and our license class.

Most Miami homeowners arrive at the whole-home renovation decision through one of five signals. Knowing which signal applies tells us whether a full home remodel is the right project — or whether you should be calling someone else, or scoping a tentpole project (kitchen-only, bathroom-only, addition-only) instead.

The home is original-build and aging out across multiple systems at once. A 1970s or 1980s Miami-Dade single-family home where the kitchen is dated, two bathrooms are dated, the original aluminum wiring is showing, the cast-iron drain stack is corroding, the HVAC is at end-of-life, and the windows are pre-NOA. Single-trade replacement of any one of these triggers cascade failure in the others. Whole-home gut is the rational path.

You bought the home with the intent to renovate. The walk-through was already a renovation budget conversation. The kitchen and primary bath were planned from day one. The interior layout doesn't fit how the family actually lives. Whole-home renovation scoped from a clean start is faster and cheaper than three separate sequential remodels.

A condo gut renovation is the only way to update a high-rise unit. Condo work in coastal towers means board approval, freight elevator scheduling, slab-penetration limits in post-tensioned construction, and association working hours. The single-bath or single-kitchen scope inside a condo gets handled like the whole unit because the building's logistics are the cost driver, not the trade scope.

Substantial improvement compliance is forcing it. A FEMA SI-triggered project on a flood-zone home turns a planned addition or partial remodel into a whole-home reconstruction with envelope, structural, and elevation work. We screen for SI on every flood-zone property during feasibility — the answer determines what project you are actually buying.

You're combining multiple tentpole scopes in one schedule. A primary kitchen remodel, two bathroom remodels, a layout change, full electrical and HVAC replacement, new flooring throughout — when the scope crosses multiple service tentpoles, running them as a single coordinated whole-home project beats running them as five sequential single-tentpole projects on schedule, on budget, and on trade-coordination overhead.

When a tentpole is the right call (not whole-home). If your scope is really just a kitchen remodel — even a $200K Tier 03 build — the kitchen tentpole page is your starting point. If it's a primary bath, the bathroom tentpole is the right scope. Whole-home is the wrong project when the actual scope is a single room or a single trade scope. We surface that during the discovery call so you don't pay for envelope and structural work you don't need.

When partial work is the right call (and we are not the right firm). Drywall repair, single-fixture replacement, cosmetic-only refresh, paint-only, single-room flooring-only, handyman scope — that's not Gaven scope. We do full home remodels only. Calling a handyman, a flooring-only contractor, or a painter is the right move for partial work, and we'd rather direct you there than bill you for a project mismatch.

Whole-home remodeling in Miami-Dade and Broward runs $150–$400 per square foot depending on scope, finish level, and whether the project triggers HVHZ envelope work or FEMA substantial improvement compliance. On a typical existing single-family footprint, that translates to $200K–$1.5M+ for the full project, with most Miami whole-home remodels landing in the $400K–$800K range. Palm Beach County remodeling pricing tracks the Miami-Dade and Broward bands closely, with Boca Raton's longer permit review adding schedule rather than dollars. South florida home remodeling services pricing follows the same pattern across the broader region.

The variance is real. Four cost drivers explain it.

Renovating inside a coastal Miami or Broward tower is half remodeling and half building-level logistics. The unit work itself is bounded: non-load-bearing interior walls, plumbing on the unit's own stack, and electrical inside the unit's panel. But the building owns everything that crosses the unit boundary, and the building has a process for every one of those crossings.

Board approval typically runs 2–6 weeks before any work starts. The board package includes contractor certificate of insurance with the building named as additional insured, scope of work narrative, working-hours commitment, freight elevator booking schedule, and slab penetration plan if any. Buildings with quarterly architectural review meetings can add another 4–6 weeks if the submission misses a cycle. Buildings with year-round building managers move faster but often have more granular rules about hours, noise, and dust containment.

Freight elevator scheduling is the constraint that compounds with everything else. Most coastal Miami-Dade and Broward towers run a single freight elevator on a building-managed schedule, with bookings released weekly or monthly. A 14-week unit work schedule can easily become 18 weeks if the freight elevator slot for a major delivery (countertops, appliances, tile pallets) misses the booking window. We build the unit work schedule around the building's freight schedule, not the other way around.

Slab penetration restrictions vary by building age and structural design. Post-tensioned slabs from the 1980s onward typically prohibit any new floor or ceiling penetrations without engineered review; pre-tension slabs from older buildings usually allow controlled penetrations with structural sign-off. If your project requires moving a kitchen drain, adding a wet bar, or relocating a powder room, that penetration question goes to the building structural engineer before it goes into the floor plan.

Hours, dust containment, and trash routing are governed by the building's renovation rules document. Most coastal Miami towers prohibit construction work outside 9 AM to 5 PM weekdays, prohibit weekend work without special approval, require negative-pressure dust containment, and route construction debris through the freight elevator at scheduled times only. These rules add roughly 15–25% to the schedule of an equivalent single-family Miami project.

We pull the renovation rules document for your building before drawing a single floor plan. Buildings we work in across the locked Miami, Broward, and Palm Beach service area include towers in Aventura, Sunny Isles, Bal Harbour, Brickell, Edgewater, Coconut Grove, Miami Beach, Hollywood, Hallandale Beach, and Highland Beach. Every building's process is different, and the difference matters.

If your Miami home is in flood Zone AE, VE, or any flood zone with a Base Flood Elevation requirement, FEMA's substantial improvement rule is the single most important conversation to have before remodeling scope is finalized. The rule states that if the cumulative cost of improvements to a structure exceeds 50% of the structure's pre-improvement market value, the entire structure must be brought up to current flood code. For properties seaward of the Coastal Construction Control Line or in Zone VE, that includes foundation elevation to or above the current Base Flood Elevation.

On Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach County coastal stock, this is not theoretical. A 2,400 square foot single-family home in eastern Hollywood, Sunny Isles, Hallandale Beach, or coastal Highland Beach with a $700K assessed structure value has a $350K substantial-improvement threshold. A $400K whole-home remodel on that home triggers the rule. The remediation, typically foundation elevation to BFE plus 1 foot or more of freeboard plus envelope upgrades to current FBC standards, can add $150K–$400K to the project that was not in the original scope.

Three approaches keep this from blindsiding the project.

Most clients call or fill out a form on the website. We respond the same business day during our 7:00 AM – 10:00 PM Monday–Friday hours. The first conversation is a 20–30 minute scope call to understand the home, the project intent, the timeline, and the rough budget band you're working against — whole-home runs at a different price scale than tentpole work, and the discovery conversation calibrates expectations before the site visit.

The site visit comes next, typically within 5–10 business days. Site visits run 2–4 hours for whole-home scope (longer than tentpole work because we're walking every room). We document the existing conditions, photograph the electrical panel and HVAC system, walk through every bathroom and kitchen, identify any structural or load-bearing wall implications for layout changes, and screen for FEMA Substantial Improvement on flood-zone properties. We also walk through the eight scope categories that drive every Gaven proposal.

You receive a written proposal within 7–14 business days of the site visit. The proposal includes scope, schedule range, and pricing band — all three before signing, none of it surfaced as change orders mid-project. If the project moves forward, design and permitting account for 8–24 weeks before any work begins on whole-home scope (longer than tentpole work because the engineering, MEP design, and permit submittal package is bigger). The realistic call-to-construction-start runway on a Miami whole-home renovation is 12–32 weeks once design, selections, and permitting are factored in.

Pricing variance on whole-home is real and documented during the proposal phase. A whole-home project that grows mid-design from "interior gut" into "interior gut plus addition plus envelope reconstruction" because of FEMA SI compliance is a different project, not a 20% scope change — and we surface that before contract, not during demo.