A Whole-Home Remodel in Country Walk, Same Footprint, Different House
This was a roughly 2,100 square foot single-family home in Country Walk with a common Miami-Dade problem: nothing was wrong with it, and nothing about it worked. The structure was solid. The kitchen was a small galley walled off from the living space. The finishes were dark and dated. The ceilings were low and flat. It was a house that functioned and did not feel like anything.
We delivered it as a design-build luxury remodel on a 14-week schedule, entirely within the existing footprint. Not one square foot was added. The owners are staying long-term, which changes every decision on a project like this — you are not building for a resale photo, you are building for years of ordinary Sunday mornings.
What We Started With
The before condition is worth describing precisely, because it is the most common condition we walk into in Miami-Dade.
- A galley kitchen closed off from the living area by a wall, so whoever was cooking was in a different room from everyone else.
- Dark dated finishes throughout — heavy cabinetry, dim surfaces, a color palette that absorbed all the South Florida light coming through the windows.
- Low flat ceilings that capped the volume of every room and made the plan feel tighter than its actual square footage.
- Baths that were serviceable and nothing more.
None of that is a defect. It is a house built to a different decade’s idea of how families use space. The remodel was not a rescue; it was a translation.
The Two Moves That Did Most of the Work
Opening the Living Area
The wall between the galley kitchen and the living space came out. That single removal is the most requested change we get in Miami-Dade, and it does more for how a house feels than any finish selection. The cook stops being isolated, sightlines run the full depth of the house, and daylight from one side reaches the other.
Taking the Ceiling Vaulted
The flat ceiling over the main living area came out and the space was taken vaulted. This is the move homeowners assume is off the table and it frequently is not. Vaulting adds volume without adding footprint, which on a house this size is the difference between a room that holds a family and a room a family wants to be in. It is also the part of the project that most clearly belongs in structural work, because you are altering how the roof frames and how loads travel.
Those two changes are why the finished house does not read like the same plan with new surfaces on it. Everything after them is execution.
Can you vault the ceiling in an existing Miami house?
Often yes — a flat ceiling in a Miami-Dade home can frequently be opened and vaulted within the existing footprint, but it is structural work requiring engineering, a permit, and confirmation that the existing roof framing can be modified to carry the loads.
What determines feasibility is the framing above the ceiling. If the roof is framed in a way where the ceiling members are carrying structural load, opening it means a new load path — typically a ridge beam or reframing designed by an engineer. If the assembly allows it, the change can be straightforward.
You also inherit the systems in that space. Ductwork, wiring and sometimes plumbing run above flat ceilings, and all of it has to be rerouted before the volume can be opened. That work is invisible in the finished room and real in the schedule.
This is a question to answer in preconstruction with an engineer and your general contractor looking at the actual framing, not from a photograph. In Miami-Dade the change is permitted and inspected, and the roof assembly has to satisfy current code once altered.
The Kitchen
With the wall gone, the kitchen had to hold the room rather than hide from it. A broad marble-look waterfall island anchors the space with seating on one side, so the kitchen doubles as where people actually sit. A statement hood gives the room a vertical focal point — important once you have vaulted volume overhead, otherwise the height reads as empty. Shaker cabinetry keeps the millwork quiet against the island. A full recessed lighting layout was designed rather than inherited, which is the difference between a bright room and a room with lights in it.
Why the Lighting Plan Matters More Than People Expect
In an open plan with a vaulted ceiling, lighting stops being a fixture decision and becomes a layout decision. Cans have to be placed against the room’s geometry, work surfaces need dedicated light, and the island needs its own treatment so it reads as a destination. Laid out properly in the drawings, this costs almost nothing extra. Handled in the field as an afterthought, it is the thing owners quietly regret.
Flooring: One Material, Everywhere, Unbroken
Warm light-oak wide-plank flooring runs through every room in the house with no breaks and no transitions. This is a deceptively large decision. Continuous flooring is what makes an open plan actually read as open — the eye follows the material and the house feels like one connected volume rather than a set of rooms that were joined. Combined with a gallery-bright repaint of the entire interior, it turns the same floor area into noticeably more perceived space. The dark finishes were not just dated; they were making the house smaller.
How long does a whole-home remodel take in Miami-Dade?
Scope drives a whole-home remodel schedule in Miami-Dade more than square footage does, because kitchens, baths and structural work each stack a sequence nobody can reshuffle. This Country Walk project — vaulted ceiling, new kitchen, all baths, full-house flooring and paint — was delivered on a 14-week schedule.
That window covers construction, not the front end. Design, engineering, selections and permitting happen before the schedule starts, and in Miami-Dade the permit path for structural scope should be treated as its own phase with its own timeline. Owners who compress the front end almost always pay for it later in change orders.
Baths and kitchens are the slow rooms. Each one stacks demolition, rough plumbing, rough electrical, inspection, tile and finish trim, and every step waits on the one before it. Flooring and paint move fast by comparison, which is why two houses of the same size can sit weeks apart on the calendar.
A design-build delivery shortens the overall calendar because the drawings and the build are coordinated by the same team, so buildability questions get resolved on paper instead of discovered in the field.
Baths Rebuilt to a Spa Standard
The baths were taken back to studs and rebuilt: full-height tile, frameless glass, custom vanities. Two details are worth calling out for anyone planning the same work in South Florida. First, full-height tile is a moisture decision before it is an aesthetic one — in this climate, tile that stops partway up a wall is a maintenance problem waiting on a schedule. Second, frameless glass has to be planned early, because it demands flat, plumb, true walls. You cannot decide on frameless glass after the tile is set and expect it to fit cleanly.
Do I need a permit to remove the wall between my kitchen and living room in Miami?
Yes — removing a wall between a kitchen and living room in Miami-Dade requires a permit, and if the wall carries load it also requires an engineered detail showing the new beam or header and how the load reaches the foundation.
The first question is whether the wall is structural. A non-load-bearing partition is a simpler permit, but it still typically carries electrical and sometimes plumbing and mechanical that must be relocated and inspected. Assuming a wall is non-structural because it looks thin is how projects go wrong.
If it is load-bearing, an engineer specifies the beam, the posts and the load path, and that detail is what gets permitted and inspected. This is normal work, not exotic work, and it is the correct sequence — engineering first, demolition second.
Skipping the permit creates a real problem later. Unpermitted structural changes surface during resale, refinancing or insurance review, and resolving them after the fact costs far more than doing it correctly the first time.
Living in the House During Construction
Owners staying long-term almost always ask whether they can stay put during the work. On a project with this scope — a vaulted ceiling over the main living area, the kitchen out, flooring running through every room — the honest answer is that full occupancy is not practical. Structural ceiling work and a house-wide flooring installation both need the space empty to proceed at pace, and dust control in an occupied home with open framing is a losing fight.
What is practical is a partial-occupancy plan, discussed openly in preconstruction: phasing the work so the family occupies a wing or the bedrooms while the public spaces are under construction, with a temporary kitchen arrangement. It extends the schedule. Sometimes that tradeoff is right. What we will not do is promise a family they can live comfortably through work that cannot be done that way, and then discover otherwise together once demolition starts.
Building for Owners Who Are Staying
This is the difference between a remodel and a flip, and it shows up in every specification. A flip optimizes for what photographs well at the lowest defensible cost. A long-term remodel optimizes for what still works after years of use — drawer hardware that survives daily opening, tile detailing in wet areas that does not need attention, a lighting layout that suits how the family actually lives in the room rather than how a listing photo is staged. Our investment and repositioning work is built to a different brief on purpose.
If you are in Country Walk, Kendall or anywhere in south Miami-Dade looking at a solid house that does not work, the questions to settle first are structural: can the ceiling open, can the wall come out, and what does the permit path look like. Those answers set the entire project. The full sequence is documented in the Country Walk residence case study, and a walkthrough plus a line-item preconstruction scope is the right way to start — you can request one through our proposal page.