RSB Empire → Construction → Home Remodeling
Sheet A-105 · Bell Engineering & Construction
Whole-home renovations, additions, and exterior restorations across Palm Beach County. Seventeen years of craftsmanship — from Hardie board siding replacement to opening up floor plans — by a licensed GC who understands structure, not just finishes.
The only Palm Beach County contractor who is also a certified energy engineer — the owner inspects every job.
Scope of Work
A remodel is the natural moment to improve efficiency, too. Because the owner is a RESNET® Certified HERS Rater and licensed blower-door tester, we can fold insulation, air-sealing, and efficient windows into the scope and measure the result — see how these upgrades can also lower your energy bills ↗.
Cost Factors
Homeowners usually ask for a per-square-foot number, and every honest contractor in Palm Beach County will tell you the same thing: the square footage is the least useful input. Two 1,900 sq ft houses on the same street can differ enormously in remodel cost, because price is driven by how much you move and what’s hiding behind the drywall — not by floor area. Here is the honest hierarchy, heaviest first.
We don’t publish remodel prices, because a number without your house attached to it is a marketing device, not an estimate. What we do instead: walk the house, open up what needs opening, and hand you a written scope with the uncertain items named as uncertain. Call (561) 779-3213 for a free estimate.
Permitting
The first question to settle is who your building department is. If your home is in unincorporated Palm Beach County — much of Loxahatchee and The Acreage, for example — permitting and inspections run through the county’s Planning, Zoning & Building department. If you’re inside a municipality such as West Palm Beach, Wellington, Royal Palm Beach, Jupiter, Lake Worth Beach, or Greenacres, that city or village runs its own building division with its own submittal portal, fee schedule, and inspector routing. The scope of work can be identical and the process still differ. We permit in both, and we sort out which applies before anything is submitted.
Most remodels of any consequence here need a building permit plus separate trade permits — electrical, plumbing, and mechanical — because Florida licenses those trades separately. As a rule of thumb, you are into permit territory the moment work touches structure, the building envelope, or a licensed system: removing or altering walls, adding square footage, converting a garage, replacing windows or exterior doors, re-roofing, changing out HVAC, moving plumbing, or adding circuits. Paint, flooring over an existing subfloor, and swapping a cabinet run in place generally are not. When it’s genuinely borderline, we ask the building department rather than guess — a rejected application costs weeks.
Where the scope is structural, expect the department to require plans signed and sealed by a Florida-licensed engineer or architect: bearing-wall removal, truss modification, foundation work, new openings in exterior walls, and additions. Florida law also requires a Notice of Commencement to be recorded before work begins on improvements above the statutory dollar threshold — that document protects you under the state’s construction-lien law, and we handle recording it as part of the job.
Then comes review. Florida has tightened the clock on local permit review in recent years, and departments must act on residential applications within a set number of business days rather than sitting on them indefinitely — but the clock resets when a reviewer issues comments, which is why a complete, correct first submittal is worth more than any amount of follow-up. Once issued, the permit carries a sequence of required inspections, and the last one matters most: a permit that is never closed out becomes the next owner’s problem and your problem at closing. We close ours out and hand you the final inspection record.
Process
The projects that go badly are almost never the ones with hard problems. They’re the ones where the sequence got scrambled — demolition before selections, drywall before an inspection, cabinets ordered after the walls moved. This is the order we work in, and why.
Every job carries a written one-year workmanship warranty, and the licensed general contractor whose number is on the permit is the person who walks your job.
Older Homes
A very large share of the housing stock in West Palm Beach, Lake Worth, and the older county neighborhoods predates 1978 — and that single date changes the legal and practical shape of a remodel. Federal law requires that renovation disturbing painted surfaces in pre-1978 housing be carried out by an EPA Lead-Safe Certified Firm using contained work practices, with the required notifications to the homeowner. We hold that certification: EPA Lead-Safe Certified Firm #NAT-F122701-2. It is worth asking any contractor bidding your older home to show you theirs, because the requirement is on the firm, not just on the individual swinging the hammer.
Beyond lead, older South Florida homes bring a recognizable set of conditions. Concrete-block construction with furring strips and thin or absent wall insulation. Original single-pane aluminum or jalousie windows that leak air and offer no storm protection. Cast-iron or galvanized drain lines that have quietly reached the end of a service life. Undersized electrical panels and, in certain build years, aluminum branch wiring. Terrazzo floors worth saving. Ductwork run through a blistering attic with joints that were never sealed. Roof structures built to a wind standard three code cycles behind the current one.
None of that is a reason to avoid an older house — they are frequently better built than what replaced them. It is a reason to remodel one with a contractor who expects those conditions and prices for them honestly, and who sees the open walls as the one chance to correct them. That is where an energy background earns its keep: while the drywall is off, we can air-seal the envelope, insulate properly, seal duct work, and put in impact-rated windows that serve storm protection, comfort, and a possible wind-mitigation credit on your homeowners insurance at the same time. Then we can measure it with a blower door rather than claim a number — see how these upgrades can also lower your energy bills ↗.
Serving Wellington
Village-permitted whole-home renovations, additions and structural remodeling for Binks Forest, Olympia, the Equestrian Preserve Area and every other Wellington community — cleared through the Village Building Division and HOA architectural review where it applies. See our Wellington home remodeling page →
Serving Royal Palm Beach
Village e-permitted whole-home renovations, additions and structural remodeling for Greenway Village, Strathmore Gate West, Madison Green and every other Royal Palm Beach community — cleared through Village Hall's e-permitting system and HOA architectural review where it applies. See our Royal Palm Beach home remodeling page →
Serving Jupiter
Town-permitted whole-home renovations, additions and structural remodeling for Abacoa, Jonathan's Landing, Jupiter Farms and every other Jupiter neighborhood — cleared through Jupiter's own CDS permit portal and HOA architectural review where it applies, and engineered for the higher coastal wind speeds Jupiter's Wind-Borne Debris Region demands. See our Jupiter home remodeling page →
Serving Loxahatchee
Whole-home renovations, additions and structural remodeling for The Acreage, Loxahatchee Groves and Westlake — permitted through whichever of three offices covers your parcel, from a crew whose own shop sits at 16140 Okeechobee Blvd. See our Loxahatchee home remodeling page →
Serving Palm Springs
Village-permitted whole-home renovations, additions and structural remodeling for Palm Springs Village, Lake Clarke Gardens and the Lake Worth Corridor — cleared through Palm Springs' own Planning, Zoning & Building Department and built to the 170 mph wind band this close-in stretch of the coastal plain carries. See our Palm Springs home remodeling page →
Questions, Answered
Yes — anything structural, electrical, plumbing, mechanical, or exterior in Palm Beach County needs permits, and unpermitted work surfaces at sale time. We pull the permits under our own license and close them out properly.
Hardie board is fiber-cement siding — it doesn't rot, termites don't eat it, and it holds paint far longer than wood in Florida humidity. We remove the rotten wood siding, fix what's underneath, and install Hardie to manufacturer spec.
Usually, yes — but it depends on whether the wall is load-bearing. As a general contractor we assess the structure, engineer the beam if needed, and do it safely and to code.
Yes. Randolph flips and holds property himself, so we understand renovation budgets that have to pencil. We can scope a renovation to your ARV, not just to a wish list.
Plan the calendar in two halves. Pre-construction — design, engineering, selections, and permit review — commonly runs a couple of months on a straightforward interior scope and longer when structural drawings or zoning review are involved. Construction itself depends on how much of the house you're touching: a single-room refresh can be weeks, a gut renovation of a whole house is a matter of months, and adding square footage adds inspections at foundation, framing, and dry-in. We give you a written schedule with the estimate, and we tell you which items are genuinely uncertain rather than burying them.
Six things, roughly in order: how much you move (plumbing and load-bearing walls cost far more to relocate than cabinets), the condition of what's hidden behind the drywall, finish level, permit and engineering requirements, lead times on anything ordered, and access. Two houses with identical square footage can price very differently because one has cast-iron drains under a slab and the other doesn't. We open things up and look before we quote — call (561) 779-3213 for a free estimate on your specific house rather than a per-square-foot guess.
If the scope touches structure — removing or altering a load-bearing wall, cutting or modifying roof trusses, changing the foundation, adding square footage, or enlarging an opening in an exterior wall — Florida building departments will want plans signed and sealed by a Florida-licensed engineer or architect. Purely cosmetic work usually doesn't. We tell you which side of that line your project falls on before you spend money on drawings you may not need.
Yes, and it's one of the most-missed items in Palm Beach County remodeling. Federal law requires that renovation disturbing painted surfaces in pre-1978 housing be performed by an EPA Lead-Safe Certified Firm using contained work practices. We hold that certification — EPA Lead-Safe Certified Firm #NAT-F122701-2. Older local homes also tend to bring cast-iron or galvanized drain lines nearing end of life, original single-pane or jalousie windows, undersized electrical panels, and little to no wall insulation — all of which are cheapest to correct while the walls are already open.
Often, yes, if the work is zoned. We phase kitchen and bath projects so at least one bathroom and a working kitchen sink stay available where the layout allows, seal off the work area, and keep dust control up. A true whole-house gut with the electrical service and plumbing down is different — you should plan to be out of the house, and we'll say so plainly at estimate time instead of after demolition.
We do, under license CGC1528750. Be careful with any contractor who asks you to pull an owner-builder permit for work they intend to perform: it moves liability, code responsibility, and any workers'-compensation exposure onto you as the homeowner. On improvements above the statutory threshold, Florida also requires a Notice of Commencement to be recorded before work begins — we handle that paperwork as part of the job.
It generally shows up when a building department pulls the permit history for your new application, and it shows up again in a title or insurance review when you sell. Many jurisdictions allow an after-the-fact permit: the work is documented, opened up for inspection where needed, brought to current code, and closed out. It's rarely as bad as homeowners fear, and it's far cheaper to resolve during a planned remodel than during a closing.
Yes — both are core work for us as a general contractor. Additions bring zoning setbacks, lot-coverage limits, tie-in of the new roof structure, and current-code windows for the new space. Garage conversions add their own questions: where the required parking goes under your local code, moving laundry and water heater, insulating a slab and walls that were never conditioned, and sizing HVAC for the added load. We work both through the local building department before you commit. Garage conversions now have their own page — see garage conversion, including a Lake Worth garage-to-office job photographed floor-first.
It is the single best moment to do it, for three reasons at once: the walls are already open so labor is shared, impact-rated windows and doors can support a wind-mitigation credit on your homeowners insurance, and air-sealing plus insulation is what actually lowers a Florida cooling bill. Because the owner is a RESNET® Certified HERS Rater and a licensed blower-door tester, we can measure the house before and after rather than promise a percentage. See our energy-efficient home improvement page for how that works.
All of Palm Beach County — West Palm Beach, Loxahatchee and The Acreage, Royal Palm Beach, Wellington, Jupiter, Palm Beach Gardens, Lake Worth, Boynton Beach, Greenacres and the surrounding communities. Permitting differs between the unincorporated county and each municipality, and we work in both.
Free estimate, 24-hour response, and a licensed contractor who answers his own phone.
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