10 service categories · 100 service pages · Miami-Dade, Broward & Palm Beach
View all servicesAn addition is two buildings pretending to be one. Whether it succeeds is decided by things nobody sees afterwards — how the new foundation meets the old, how the roofs tie together, and whether the floor and ceiling lines carry through the opening.
Miami-Dade · Broward & Palm Beach Counties
ScrollThe visible work in an addition is a room. The actual work is a new foundation meeting an old one, a load path that has to be continuous through both, a roof junction that will shed water for decades, and services extended from a house that was not designed to feed them.
Survey and structural assessment of the existing house, foundations, structure and envelope for the new work, the tie-in detailed at foundation, wall and roof, services extended and upgraded where the existing supply cannot carry them, and the permit filed in our name and closed at handover.
Start your additionAdding to a house is almost always a decision about staying — a school catchment, a neighbourhood, a lot you will not find again. The question is usually not whether to move but whether the house can become what you need.
Adding to a South Florida house means the combined structure has to satisfy current wind requirements at the connection, and a second storey means the existing foundations and walls have to be shown capable of carrying it. Older construction frequently needs work before it can accept an addition at all.
Which is available depends on your lot, your zoning and what the existing structure can carry. Frequently only two of the four are genuinely open to you.
New footprint at the back of the house, where lot depth usually allows it and where the addition can open into the existing living space. Structurally the most straightforward, and the most affected by setbacks and lot coverage.
No new footprint, so it works where the lot cannot give any. It is a structural project first: the existing foundations and walls have to be verified for the new load before the plan is worth drawing.
Removing an exterior wall so the addition reads as one space with the original. If that wall carries load, a beam and its bearing are engineered and permitted — and that is the real project.
Often the tightest option, because side setbacks are usually the smallest dimension on the lot and access for machines becomes the constraint.
Where two roof planes meet, a valley forms. How it is framed, flashed and drained decides whether the junction is invisible or a recurring leak.
Render texture, roof covering and window proportion all have to be matched deliberately, or the addition announces itself from the street.
Important: every image in this section is an AI-generated educational illustration, not a photograph of an Elbaz Construction project. We do not currently hold cleared photography of completed additions, and we would rather illustrate the structural work honestly than present another company’s job as ours.
How these images are labelledSix things worth understanding about additions before you commission a design.
An addition has its own foundation, its own frame and its own roof, and all three have to behave as though they were always part of the original. Everything difficult about the job is at that boundary.
Every image on this page is an AI-generated educational illustration. None is a photograph of an Elbaz Construction project, and none depicts a real client property.
The single strongest tell of a good addition is that the floor level and the ceiling line continue through the opening without a step or a drop. That is set at foundation and framing stage and cannot be corrected later.
The existing house finished settling decades ago; the addition has not started. That difference is designed for at the foundation, and where it is ignored it shows up as a crack at exactly the junction you were trying to hide.
An addition adds circuits, and frequently air conditioning capacity. Many older services have no headroom left, so a panel upgrade is a real line item rather than a rounding error.
None of the finished illustrations shows the dowels, the load path or the valley flashing, because in a finished addition none of it is visible. That is exactly why it is inspected before it is covered.
An addition is judged at six connections. Select one to see what it does.
Setbacks, lot coverage, height limits and any impervious-area restriction. This decides how big the addition can be and sometimes which elevation it can go on at all.
Checked before design, because it reshapes the brief rather than delaying it.
LayerDesigned for the new load and for the fact that the existing house has already settled and the addition has not. Where that difference is not designed for, it appears as a crack at the junction.
LayerWind uplift has to travel from the new roof, through the new walls, into foundations — and the connection to the existing structure has to carry its share. On a second storey the existing walls and footings must be verified for the new load first.
This is the engineering that decides whether a second storey is possible at all.
LayerWhere two roof planes meet, water concentrates. The valley has to be framed, flashed and sized for the catchment above it — and it is the most common place an addition leaks years later.
LayerExtended from a house that was sized for its original footprint. Panel capacity, air conditioning tonnage and drainage falls all get checked rather than assumed.
LayerTexture, colour and roof covering matched so the addition does not announce itself. On an older house an exact match is often impossible, and painting the whole elevation is the honest solution.
Usually the most straightforward structurally, and the most constrained by setbacks and lot coverage.
No new footprint, so it works on tight lots. Requires the existing structure to be verified for the new load first.
Tightest setbacks and the hardest site access, which affects both the design and the price.
Whether your foundations and walls can carry a second storey, and whether your service capacity can carry the extra load, are structural and technical questions with real answers. They are established before design, because both can change the project entirely.
Requirements are set by the authority having jurisdiction for your municipality and genuinely differ between them. What follows is how the stage runs, not a promise about what your city permits or how long it will take.
An addition is reviewed to current code even though the house beside it was not:
You cannot engineer a tie-in without knowing what it ties into. On older houses that sometimes means opening up a small area to find out what is actually there.
Dowels, straps and the load-path connections are inspected before they are covered. Once render and drywall are on, verifying them means taking them off again.
Setbacks, lot coverage and height limits differ between municipalities and change. Nothing here is a legal opinion. We establish what applies to your lot before you commit to a design.
Illustrations of the structural stages. These are AI-generated educational images, not photographs of Elbaz Construction projects. Use the thumbnails, the arrows, arrow keys, or swipe on the image.
An addition is priced by area, and the area is the least interesting variable. These are the twelve factors that decide it.
A second storey needs the existing structure verified and often strengthened; a ground addition needs new foundations and gives up lot coverage. They price very differently.
What the current foundations and walls can carry. On older construction this is the single biggest unknown and the biggest potential cost.
Opening the original house into the addition means a beam, its bearing and a temporary support scheme while it goes in.
How the new roof meets the old, how many valleys result, and how they drain.
Panel headroom and air conditioning tonnage for the enlarged house.
Soil, water table and how the new footings relate to the settled existing ones.
Render texture, roof covering and whether the whole elevation needs repainting.
Getting machines and materials to the rear or side of an occupied house.
How much of the original house is opened up, and for how long.
Which reviews the scope triggers, and your jurisdiction’s current turnaround.
Whether the new space matches the existing finishes or resets them.
Most additions are built around an occupied house, with a wall opened at some point. Dust control, weather protection and keeping services live are real costs and belong in the price honestly.
After a site visit and a structural assessment you get a written scope priced against drawings — stating what is included, what is not, and where a contingency is likely. Where the existing house needs work before it can take the addition, that is priced separately and visibly rather than buried.
Request an estimateFilter by what you are trying to work out. Every answer stays on the page.
Set by your municipality: setbacks, lot coverage, height limits and sometimes an impervious-area restriction. It is checked at your specific parcel before design, because it frequently reshapes the brief rather than just constraining it.
That is a structural question with a real answer, and it is established before any design work. The existing foundations and walls have to be shown capable of carrying the new load. On older South Florida construction, strengthening is sometimes needed first — and occasionally the honest answer is that going out is cheaper than going up.
From inside, not if the floor level and ceiling line carry through the opening — which is set at foundation and framing stage.
From outside it is harder. Render texture and roof covering age, and an exact match to a twenty-year-old elevation is often not achievable. Painting the whole elevation is usually the honest fix, and it belongs in the budget from the start.
Because the existing house finished settling long ago and the new one has not started. Where that difference is not designed for at the foundation, it appears exactly at the junction you were trying to make invisible. It is a design decision, not a workmanship one.
Frequently not without an upgrade. An addition brings new circuits and often extra air conditioning capacity, and many older services have no headroom. A load calculation answers it during design rather than during rough-in.
The existing system was sized for the existing house. Adding conditioned area usually means either extending capacity or adding a separate system for the new space. Which is better depends on the layout and the age of the current equipment.
Usually yes, with a real caveat: at some point the wall between old and new is opened. We sequence that, protect it and keep services live, but there is a genuinely disruptive week or two and it is better planned for than discovered.
Frequently, once transaction costs are counted — and it keeps the lot and the neighbourhood, which is usually the real reason. What it is not is cheap per square foot: an addition carries foundation, structure, roof and services for a small area, with none of the economy of scale a whole house gets.
Finding out what the existing house is actually made of. Drawings for older houses are often missing or wrong, so verifying the structure sometimes means opening a small area to look. That is far cheaper during design than during construction.
Longer than the construction, because permitting comes first and structural review on an addition is thorough. We will tell you which stage is likely to be the long one on your project before you sign anything, and we will not quote you a review time we do not control.
Where one exists, yes, and its approval is entirely separate from the building permit. It frequently has views on elevation appearance, roof covering and colour that the building department does not. Best established early, because it can change the design.
Yes. We work with four financing partners — Service Finance, Synchrony, Ygrene and Renew Financial — so you can compare options before you finalise the scope. Terms and eligibility are set by each lender and differ by programme.
No questions in that topic yet.
Further illustrations. AI-generated educational images, not project photographs.
An illustration of a completed addition. This is an AI-generated educational image, not a photograph of an Elbaz Construction project.
Zoning and structural assessment, then design and permitting, then foundations, structure, tie-in and roof. The house is opened up late and closed again quickly. Services, then finishes.
Footings and their relationship to the existing foundations before pour. Dowels and load-path connections before they are covered. Valley flashing before the roof covering. Floor and ceiling levels against the original, not against a drawing.
Everything here is either a licence number, a figure Elbaz publishes company-wide, or a description of how we work. No awards, memberships or certifications are listed, because inventing them is the easiest lie in this industry to tell.
Certified building contractor, bonded and insured. Verifiable with the State of Florida.
Across residential and commercial work in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.
Combined years across the team, in this market and this climate.
Cities served across the three counties.
We file with your building department directly, and we close the permit at handover.
Specified products are checked against their Notice of Acceptance or Florida Product Approval before ordering.
Service Finance, Synchrony, Ygrene and Renew Financial. $0 down and 100% financing available on qualifying PACE work, subject to lender approval. Compare all four.
We do not hold cleared photography of completed additions, so this page is illustrated rather than photographed — and every image says so in its caption, its alt text and the media library. Using another company’s project photos would have been easier and is not something we will do.
A family-run, locally owned business. The same point of contact stays with your project through every stage, and the structural assessment is yours whether or not you proceed.
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Project files
A room addition photographed finished, inside and out, and a garage turned into a bedroom and bath. The addition photos show surfaces, not the join to a main house.
These frames are filed under room addition. Inside is a vaulted, beamed room with a white kitchenette and green walls, plus a bathroom in black-and-white patterned tile. Outside, a stucco building with aluminum sliding doors sits in a backyard. The photos do not show how it meets any main house.
The photos show finished surfaces, not the junction. Look at the sliding doors and stucco, the openings and finishes any addition has to get right.
Elbaz Construction project photo · 12 photos
A garage converted into finished living space: a bedroom with sliding closet, a hallway bath and a gray stucco exterior with a glass-lite door. Using the existing footprint adds rooms without adding a new foundation or roof. Vinyl plank flooring and recessed lights run through the interior.
Look at the exterior wall. Where the garage door used to be, there is now stucco, a window and an entry door. Then compare it with the finished interior.
Elbaz Construction project photo · 10 photos
By the numbers
Typical cost shares and a typical build order. Size, floors and site conditions move both.
Typical shares only; a second story or a poor soil report shifts them.
Permitting often takes longer than the build; your sign-offs gate the marked phases.
Drawn out
How the load travels, which type of addition fits, and how block walls are tied together.
A second story must send its weight down walls, through the framing and into a footing that can carry it. Engineers check every link.
Detached, attached, garage and two-story additions differ in foundation, roof and utility work. The choice shapes everything after it.
Concrete block walls get a tie beam at the top and rebar in filled cells. Together they hold the wall against wind and settlement.
Scope planner
Four questions give a sense of the weeks on site and the trades an addition brings.
Finishes
Four close views of the patterned tile and black fixtures in the addition bathroom.
More questions
What South Florida adds to the addition checklist.
Ask us directlyThe new roof framing is connected to the walls with hurricane straps or clips, and the sheathing nailing is inspected. Where the two roofs meet, flashing and underlayment have to overlap correctly. A good tie-in is recorded on a wind mitigation inspection, which many insurers use when pricing windstorm coverage.
It can. In a mapped flood zone, the local floodplain office compares the work to the house's value. If the work crosses the substantial-improvement threshold, the whole building may need to meet current flood rules, including floor elevation. We check the flood map before design, not after.
Almost always. The permit set needs a current boundary survey showing the house, setbacks, easements and often the finished floor elevation. An older survey may not show a pool, shed or fence added later. The survey is also what confirms the addition fits the lot at all.
That is set at the design stage. We measure the existing slab or framed floor and plan the new foundation so the two meet level, or with a deliberate step. Matching heights also matters for flooring, doorway thresholds and, in flood zones, the required minimum elevation.
We build a temporary weather wall inside or outside the opening, so the house stays closed while the old wall comes out. Work is scheduled in sections, and openings are covered every evening. During the rainy season we watch the forecast and avoid opening the wall on days with storms expected.
In Miami-Dade and Broward, windows and doors need High-Velocity Hurricane Zone product approvals, which means impact glass or approved shutters. Elsewhere in South Florida the Florida Building Code still sets wind-load requirements by location. Impact windows have long lead times, so we order them early.
We locate these before design. A septic tank usually cannot be built over, and adding a bedroom or bathroom may require the health department to review the system. Water, sewer, gas and power lines can often be rerouted, but that adds work and permits, so it is better to find them early.
Yes. Your homeowner policy may need updating for the larger home, and some insurers require notice of major work. Some owners also add builder's risk coverage for the construction period. Ask your agent what they require, in writing, before the work begins, and we will provide any contractor documents they request.
Proudly serving homeowners across Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach
104 municipalities across three counties — and we hold the licence to build in all of them. Not sure about your address? Ask us.
Where to go next, depending on which part you are pinning down.
When the answer is not more space but a better plan for the space you have — frequently cheaper, and occasionally the honest recommendation.
Its age and roughly what you need the addition to do are the useful parts. If you have a survey or any original drawings, attach them — they save real time.
If your lot will not carry it, or the existing structure would need more work than the addition is worth, or re-planning the space you have would serve you better, we will say so on the first call.
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Your details are with the Elbaz Construction team and we will come back to you, usually the same or next working day. If it is urgent, call (754) 236-0675.
Zoning and the existing structure decide what an addition can be long before anyone draws a room. Start with a conversation — no obligation, and no brochure.
