Renovation Contractor in Miami Shores, FL

Miami Shores, Florida

Miami Shores is a village of single-family homes on tree-lined streets, laid out in the 1920s by the Shoreland Company and marketed as “America’s Mediterranean.” It was incorporated in 1932, and its housing runs from 1920s Mediterranean Revival houses to mid-century and later homes, with Barry University, the Miami Shores Country Club and a Biscayne Bay shoreline inside its limits.

Owners here usually want to keep the character of an older house while making it work for how they live now: a larger kitchen, rebuilt bathrooms, an addition, sometimes a garage turned into living space. We have not yet completed a project in Miami Shores. We do this kind of work nearby, and below is how we would approach a house here and why our experience transfers.

What sets Miami Shores apart is that the Village cares about scale and history. Additions and renovations can go before the Planning & Zoning Board, more than forty homes are designated historic, and the Village has spent the last two years tightening how big new homes and additions can get.

What we would check first in an older Miami Shores house

A 1920s or 1950s house can look sound and still hide problems that change the budget. Before we price a whole-home renovation here, we would look at:

• Drain lines. We camera-inspect the original sewer and drain piping before designing new bathrooms. See our article on cast iron pipe replacement.
• Electrical capacity. A modern kitchen, pool equipment and air conditioning can exceed what an older service was sized for.
• Roof framing and walls. Before opening a plan or removing a wall, we confirm what is load-bearing. Yosef trained as a structural engineer, and that shapes how we plan any load-bearing wall removal.
• Windows and doors. Replacing original windows with impact-rated units is a common goal. On a designated home, talk to the Historic Preservation Board first.

That is the same sequence we followed on the Hollywood Lake House, a 1960s home we took back to structure, and the Dania Beach gut rehab, where we replaced the electrical and plumbing throughout, added bathrooms, applied new stucco and replaced every window and door.

Additions, garage conversions and the Planning & Zoning Board

The Planning & Zoning Board reviews site plans, including building additions and renovations, and it hears requests to convert a residential garage to living space. It meets monthly at 6:30 p.m. at Village Hall, except in August, so a missed submittal date can push a project back by weeks.

The Village has also been revisiting house size. In June 2024 the Council adopted a temporary zoning-in-progress pause on applications for new single-family homes and for additions that would grow a house by more than 50% while staff drafted size limits. In April 2026 an ordinance came up for final reading that would require Planning & Zoning Board site plan approval and a master building permit before any demolition permit, with Historic Preservation Board review for structures on the Village’s historic inventory. If you are planning a large addition or a rebuild, confirm the current rules before design.

Historic homes

The Village Council has designated more than forty Miami Shores homes. The Historic Preservation Board advises owners and acts on applications to renovate or rehabilitate structures on the historic register. A 2024 count by local reporters put the number of homes at or near a century old at about 120. If your house is one of them, designated or not, the original details are usually worth keeping, and planning around them costs less than replacing them twice.

Flood zones along the bay

Miami Shores fronts Biscayne Bay, and a bayfront lot and an inland lot can carry different flood zone designations. Check the lot on Miami-Dade’s flood zone map. For a house in a high-risk zone, the federal threshold is simple to state and easy to underestimate: when the cost of the work equals or exceeds 50% of the building’s market value, the whole structure must be made compliant. On a modest 1950s house with a high land value and a lower building value, a kitchen, two bathrooms and new windows can reach that line faster than owners expect. Our FEMA 50% rule article explains how that is calculated.