Condo bathroom remodel in Miami

The association letter comes first

Nothing gets demolished in a Miami condo until the association approves the scope in writing. Miami Beach has required a letter of authorization from the association for any work inside a unit since March 14, 2022. Aventura and Coral Gables ask for association approval with the permit application. In Coral Gables that approval has to cover the floor sound-control material too.

We put the package together for you: the written scope, a floor plan, the tile and underlayment specs and the work schedule. You sign it as the owner and hand it to management, or we drop it off with your OK. The permit side of a condo job, including why the state's small-project exemption does not cover condos, is in our Miami bathroom permit guide.

Many buildings also ask the contractor for a certificate of insurance before the first day of work. Your management office gives you the exact wording, and we follow it.

Service elevator and work hours

Every bag of debris and every box of tile goes up and down by the service elevator, on the days and hours the building assigns. We pad the elevator, cover the hallway carpet from the elevator to your door with floor protection and keep the unit door closed while we cut.

Buildings set their own work hours, and they are usually tighter than the city's. In the City of Miami, construction noise is not allowed from 6:00 PM to 8:00 AM on weekdays or at all on Sundays and holidays. Fort Lauderdale allows construction equipment from 8:00 AM to 7:00 PM Monday through Saturday. Your condo rules can cut that window further, and we schedule demo and tile cutting around them.

Labor and materials included, in US dollars, October 2026. Each bathroom job has one fixed price for the scope written next to it. Plumbing and electrical work is done by licensed trades and permits are pulled when the job needs them. Rot, mold or old pipes found behind the walls are priced before we fix them.

Post-tensioned slabs and drain moves

Some condo towers are built on post-tensioned concrete slabs, with steel cables under tension inside the concrete. Cutting one of those cables can hurt someone and cause expensive slab damage. That is why we never core or cut a condo slab without the association's written approval, an engineer's review and a ground-penetrating radar scan to locate the cables first.

The condo price keeps every drain where it is today. Moving a toilet or shower drain means going through the slab into the ceiling of the unit below, and the shared risers belong to the building, so it becomes a separate project with its own approval and price.

Sound control under the tile

Replacing floor tile above another unit usually means an approved sound-control underlayment under the new tile. In Pompano Beach, units on the second floor and up need a floor sound barrier tested to STC 50 and IIC 50, and other buildings set their own rules. We install the product your association approves and keep the data sheet for the file.

Waterproofing protects the neighbor below

A slow shower leak in a house rots a wall. In a condo it shows up in your neighbor's ceiling. We waterproof the shower floor and walls with a bonded membrane and flood-test the pan before tile goes on. Our guide to waterproofing a shower walks through each layer.

Trading the tub for a walk-in shower with a low curb often leaves the slab untouched, and our walk-in shower installation page explains what is possible on a slab. Buyers and owners in towers along Brickell Avenue face their own building rules, covered on our Brickell bathroom remodeling page.

Frequently asked questions