Home remodeling in Heathrow, FL, from a builder who's minutes away.

I'm Johnny Kaplan. Kaplan Remodeling & Construction is a licensed Florida general contractor, CGC#1540583, and we're based in Lake Mary — which puts most of Heathrow a few minutes down the road.

That's not a small thing when you're hiring somebody to open up your house. I can usually look at your kitchen the same day you call. When a cabinet delivery shows up wrong, I'm in your driveway before the truck leaves. And my crews aren't spending the first and last hour of every workday on I-4.

Heathrow isn't a city. That changes your permit.

This is the single most useful thing I can tell a Heathrow homeowner, and most contractors get it wrong on the phone.

Heathrow is an unincorporated census-designated place in Seminole County. It has a Lake Mary mailing address and a Lake Mary zip code, but it is not inside the City of Lake Mary, and it has no municipal government of its own. So your permit does not go to Lake Mary City Hall. It goes to Seminole County Development Services, in Sanford — which is convenient for exactly one person on your project, and that's me.

Seven Seminole County municipalities run their own building departments: Sanford, Lake Mary, Altamonte Springs, Casselberry, Longwood, Oviedo and Winter Springs. Everything else — Heathrow included — is the county's. Different application, fee schedule, review queue, inspectors and portal. A contractor who works mostly inside Orlando city limits figures that out on your dime.

A few specifics that actually matter:

• Electronic plan review. Seminole County runs residential plan review electronically, with permit status, fee payment and inspection scheduling online. Everything is uploaded, not walked in. Drawings have to be right the first time or you eat a review cycle.
• Notice of Commencement. Florida's construction lien law requires an NOC recorded with the Seminole County Clerk of Court on jobs over the statutory threshold, and a certified copy has to be on file with the county before your first inspection. It's your name on the document because you own the property. We prepare it, get it signed and notarized, get it recorded, and get it posted on the job site.
• Structural work needs stamped drawings. Taking out the wall between your kitchen and family room in a two-story Heathrow home usually means a beam, which means an engineer's letter in the submittal. We budget that line up front instead of discovering it in review.

We pull every permit this project requires and handle all inspections from start to finish. As a licensed Florida General Contractor, that's part of our job, not an add-on or an upsell.

And then there's the ARC

Heathrow has a second approval layer that Lake Mary's regular subdivisions mostly don't: a real, functioning architectural review process. There's the Heathrow Master Association over the whole community, and then your individual village has its own association and its own rules on top of that.

Anything that changes the exterior — a window enlarged, a door relocated, a rear addition, a new roof line, a paint color, a screen enclosure — goes through architectural review before it goes to the county. Some villages want drawings and elevations, some want a color sample, some want neighbors notified.

Here's how we handle it: we build the ARC submittal and the county permit package at the same time, from the same drawings, and file them in parallel. Sequential approvals are how a ten-week addition turns into a six-month addition. We've been through this in Heathrow enough times to know which villages move fast and which ones meet monthly.

The villages we work in

Heathrow was founded in 1985 by Jeno Paulucci and built out over roughly two decades across about 1,800 acres, with somewhere north of 1,900 homes in around thirty sub-developments. They are not interchangeable, and neither are their remodels.

Reserve at Heathrow and Reserve 2. Later-phase, larger production homes. Big volume ceilings, big kitchens that are nonetheless closed off, and the classic 2000s "media niche" that everybody now wants gone.

Heathrow Woods. Gated, custom, Markham Woods Road side, and by a wide margin our most common whole-home remodel address in the community. These are one-off houses on big lots, which means no two scopes are the same and a spreadsheet estimate is worthless.

Devon Green, Keenwicke, Heron Ridge, Wyntree, Stonebridge, Bristol Park, Muirfield Village, Kentford Gardens. The core 1990s villages. This is where the median-1998 housing stock really lives, and where most of our kitchen and bath work happens.

Brampton Cove, Carrington Park, Coventry, Lexington Green, Waters Edge, Wembley Park, Willowbrook, Turnberry, Racquet Club Villas. Smaller footprints, more attached and villa product, tighter interior envelopes — which is exactly where custom cabinetry earns its money, because stock boxes waste inches you can't spare.

Just outside the gates, we work the same corridor constantly: Alaqua and Alaqua Lakes down Markham Woods Road, Magnolia Plantation, Carisbrooke, and everything back through Lake Mary.

What we see in Heathrow homes

Heathrow's median home was built in 1998. Roughly 41% of the housing stock went up between 1990 and 1999, and another 29% between 2000 and 2009. So the typical house here is a late-90s custom or semi-custom home that is now pushing thirty years old — and thirty years is exactly when the original everything gives out at once.

The pattern is remarkably consistent:

• A formal living room and a formal dining room that nobody uses. The 1990s plan gave you two rooms up front for entertaining and one cramped breakfast nook for actual life. Reclaiming that front square footage — office, den, real dining, or just erasing a wall — is the highest-value move in most Heathrow houses.
• Dark, heavy 90s cabinetry. Raised panel, deep stain, crown that stops a foot short of a nine-foot ceiling. The boxes are often decent; the doors, the layout and the dead corner cabinet are not.
• Cultured marble and a garden tub. Big drop-in tub under a glass block window, a shower you can't turn around in, and two shallow vanities. Converting that tub bay into a real walk-in shower is the most requested bathroom remodel we do in this zip code.
• Builder-grade tray ceilings and faux finishes. Sponged paint, gold-tone fixtures, arched niches. All cosmetic, all cheap to fix, all screaming 1998.
• Polybutylene supply lines in the earliest phases. Gray flexible pipe stamped "PB2110" or "Quest," installed in Florida roughly 1978 through 1995. It degrades from the inside and most carriers won't cover the damage when it fails. If your home is from Heathrow's first decade, I check for it at the first visit.
• Slab-on-grade plumbing. No basements. Relocating a kitchen sink or a shower drain means cutting concrete. It's routine work — it just needs to be priced on day one, not day nine.

Less common here than in older Seminole County stock: popcorn ceilings. By the mid-90s most Heathrow builders had moved on. Nice surprise for once.

What we build in Heathrow

• Kitchen remodeling — the wall comes down, the island goes in, the dead corner disappears. Most of our Heathrow kitchen projects start with a homeowner who is finished cooking in a separate room from everyone they live with.
• Bathroom remodeling — primary suites, garden-tub conversions, guest baths, and pool baths that never got finished properly.
• Home additions — rear expansions, primary suites, in-law suites. Setbacks, lot coverage and ARC review all get checked before we draw.
• Garage conversions — offices and gyms mostly. Worth knowing up front: some Heathrow villages restrict converting a garage or altering a garage door elevation. We read your covenants before we quote.
• Custom cabinetry — built to the actual wall, not to the nearest three inches.
• Whole-home remodels — for owners who love the lot, the gate and the school zone, and are done with the floor plan.

Finished work is in the gallery.

From handshake to housewarming

The kitchen-table meeting. I come out, usually same day or next. You get me, not a salesman. I look at the real house — the bearing wall, the panel, the pipe, the slab — and tell you straight what's simple and what isn't.

One clear number. One fixed written price. Scope spelled out, allowances itemized, payments tied to milestones. Not a range, not a "starting at." Choose a finish above your allowance and it's a written change order before we order — the labor stays the same.

Permits are my problem. County submittal, ARC submittal, Notice of Commencement, inspections. Included in the number, not billed later.

We build. You live your life. My own crew. Dust walls, protected floors, gate access coordinated with your association, site swept every evening. Your house stays your house, even mid-project. Then a 1-year workmanship warranty plus all manufacturer warranties on materials.

Things people ask before hiring us

Same house. Different life.

If you've been living around a 1998 floor plan for years, waiting for the right contractor, let's sit down. I'll walk your house, tell you what I'd change and what I'd leave alone, and give you one clear number.

Read more about how we work. I'd be glad to earn your business.

— Johnny Kaplan, Kaplan Remodeling & Construction, Lake Mary, FL. Licensed & Insured.