Lawrence Park Kitchen & Main Floor

The client called about a kitchen refresh. We opened the ceiling on the first day, as we do on every project, and found two years of slow leakage from a failed shower pan on the floor above. Two joists had lost section. Nothing about the kitchen the owners wanted was possible until that was corrected.

Moisture mapping came first, then a documented cause-of-loss report before any pricing. That sequence is not a courtesy — it is the only way a fixed estimate can stay fixed. Pricing a kitchen over a wet structure means repricing it later.

We sistered the affected joists, rebuilt the shower pan above to a proper sloped mortar bed with a bonded membrane, and dried the structure to a verified moisture reading before closing anything up. The restoration portion ran $18,400 of the total. It is the part of this project nobody will ever see again.

Only then did we build the kitchen. The partition to the dining room came out, the opening was reframed with a flush header for a clean drywall return, and the layout was reconfigured around a working island. Custom millwork in painted MDF with integrated appliance panels. Quartz counters with a full-height backsplash. Engineered hardwood running unbroken through the kitchen, dining room and powder room.

Permits were prepared and filed by us, and the inspections scheduled around the trade sequence rather than the other way round. Eleven weeks on site, one project lead, and a punch list closed in writing before the keys went back.