Home remodeling in Lake Mary, FL — without the horror stories.

I'm Johnny Kaplan. Kaplan Remodeling & Construction is a licensed Florida general contractor, CGC#1540583, based in Lake Mary. Not "serving" Lake Mary from an office somewhere else. Based here.

That matters more than it sounds like it should. Most of the remodelers bidding your Lake Mary kitchen drive up from Maitland, downtown Orlando, or St. Cloud. When a crew starts an hour late and leaves early to beat I-4, your six-week project quietly becomes a nine-week project. Nobody tells you that in the sales meeting. We don't have that problem, because we don't have that drive.

I know the houses here, because they're the houses here

Lake Mary was incorporated in 1973 and then went off like a rocket. The 1990 census counted 5,708 people. By 2000 it counted 11,594 — more than double in ten years. The answer was subdivisions, built fast, one after another, from the mid-1980s through the turn of the century.

The numbers back it up. Roughly a fifth of Lake Mary's housing stock went up between 1980 and 1989, and close to another quarter between 1990 and 1999. The median Lake Mary home was built in 1997. A lot of them still have the original kitchen in them. A 1993 kitchen is thirty-three years old — that's not a style problem, that's a wear problem.

The neighborhoods we work in

"We serve all of Lake Mary" is a useless sentence. Here's what I actually mean.

Timacuan. Ron Garl laid out the golf course in 1987 and the houses filled in around it — more than 550 now, across nine named neighborhoods: Hunter's Ridge, Eagle Run, Summerlin, Signature Cove, Lake Dawson Estates, Stratton Hill, Fairway Hills, Hopewell Creek, Clubhouse Cove. Different builders, different years, but a recognizable family of floor plans. Formal living rooms nobody has sat in since 2004. Kitchens walled off from the family room by a peninsula and a soffit.

The Crossings. Over 1,250 homes including Greenwood Lakes, Sheffield and Silver Lake. Late-80s and 90s production building: smaller kitchens, hollow-core doors, garden tubs that get used roughly never. Great bones, tired finishes.

The Country Club Road side. Cardinal Oaks and Cardinal Oaks Cove, Country Club Oaks, Country Downs, Meadow Brooke, Springhurst. Bigger lots, more custom one-offs, more variation house to house — which is why you don't want a contractor quoting off a spreadsheet.

The Markham Woods corridor. Heathrow Woods, Carisbrooke, Hanover Woods, Shannon Downs, Magnolia Plantation. Half-acre to one-acre lots, custom builders, higher finish levels, and HOAs with real architectural review boards. Whole-home remodels live out here.

Lake Emma and Rinehart. Huntington Landing, Woodbridge Lakes, Chase Groves, Hills of Lake Mary, Tuscany, Manderley, Reserve at Lake Mary. Newer on average, tighter lots. Projects here skew toward opening up the kitchen, converting the garage, or adding square footage out the back.

We also work in Heathrow constantly — next exit, different permitting animal, its own page.

What we see in Lake Mary homes

After enough of these you stop being surprised. Here's the recurring list.

• Closed-off kitchens. The 80s and 90s floor plan puts a wall and a soffit between kitchen and family room. Half the time that wall is non-bearing and it opens up in a day. The other half it's carrying roof trusses — then it's a beam, an engineer's letter, and a permit. You should know which one you have before you sign anything. I tell you at the first visit.
• Honey oak everywhere. Cabinets, trim, stair rails, sometimes the floor. The default finish for fifteen straight years in this town.
• Laminate counters and 4x4 tile backsplashes, with grout that's gone gray no matter what you do to it.
• Garden tubs. Big fiberglass corner tub, tiny shower, and a homeowner who hasn't filled the tub since the kids were small. That footprint is the best square footage in the average Lake Mary master bath, and turning it into a walk-in shower is our most requested bathroom remodel in the city.
• Popcorn ceilings in the older stock. On anything built before the mid-90s, assume it's there under the paint and plan for it.
• Polybutylene supply lines. This is the one that costs people money. Gray flexible pipe, installed in Florida homes roughly 1978 to 1995, marked "PB2110" or "Quest." It degrades from the inside because of chlorine in city water, and most insurance carriers won't cover the damage when it lets go. If we've got a wall open in your 1991 kitchen anyway, that's the cheapest hour you'll ever spend on plumbing.
• Slab realities. No basements here — your drains are in the concrete. Moving a kitchen sink fifteen feet isn't impossible, it's a slab cut, and it belongs in writing before demo day.

None of that is meant to scare you. It's why my number is a number and not a range — I already know what's behind the drywall in these houses.

Permits are my problem

Lake Mary is an incorporated city, which means your permit does not go to Seminole County. It goes to the City of Lake Mary Building Division, which does its own plan review, issues its own permits, and sends its own inspectors. The county handles the unincorporated areas — Heathrow, Chuluota, the pockets along SR 46 — but inside city limits, it's the city.

A few things worth knowing:

• Lake Mary reviews under the Florida Building Code and the National Electrical Code, with fire review under the Florida Fire Prevention Code. Structural changes, electrical service work and anything that moves plumbing need real drawings.
• The city ordinance allows an "early start" permit for interior work — plans in, an architect or engineer affidavit, a non-refundable fee — which lets a crew begin interior work while the full permit finishes review, up until the first inspection. Used correctly, it takes real days off a kitchen schedule. Used carelessly, it's how people get red-tagged. We use it when it makes sense and we tell you when it doesn't.
• Florida's construction lien law requires a Notice of Commencement recorded with the Seminole County Clerk on jobs over the statutory threshold, with a certified copy in the file before the first inspection. Your name goes on it, because you own the property — but we prepare it, walk you through the signature, and make sure it gets recorded and posted.
• In Timacuan, The Crossings, Heathrow Woods, Magnolia Plantation and the gated Markham Woods communities, the HOA architectural review board is a second approval track. We submit to both in parallel, not one after the other — sequential approvals are how a six-week job becomes a four-month job.

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.

What we build in Lake Mary

• Kitchen remodeling — the big one here. Soffit gone, wall opened, island in, real cabinetry. Most of our kitchen remodeling work in Lake Mary starts with somebody saying "I just want to see the TV from the sink."
• Bathroom remodeling — master suites, hall baths, and a lot of garden-tub conversions. If you've been looking at a tub you never use, we've done that exact job on your street.
• Home additions — primary suites, family room bump-outs, in-law suites. Lot coverage and setbacks are real constraints in the newer subdivisions; we check those before we design.
• Garage conversions — offices, gyms, guest suites. Done with the right slab, egress and insulation, so it appraises as living space instead of looking like a closed-in garage.
• Custom cabinetry — because a 1994 floor plan almost never has a cabinet run that a stock box fits cleanly.
• Whole-home remodels — usually a Markham Woods or Timacuan house where the owner loves the lot and is done with the floor plan.

You can see finished work in our gallery.

From handshake to housewarming

The kitchen-table meeting. I come out. Not a salesman — me. You tell me what's bothering you, and I look at the actual house: the soffit, the panel, the pipe, the slab. I'll tell you on the spot what's easy and what isn't.

One clear number. One fixed written price, scope spelled out, allowances itemized, payment schedule laid out by milestone. Not a range. Not a "starting at." Pick a tile above your allowance and that's a simple written change order before we order anything — the labor doesn't move.

We build. You live your life. My own crew, not a rotating cast of subs I met last month. Dust walls up, floors protected, site swept at the end of the day. Your house stays your house, even mid-project. Then a 1-year workmanship warranty, plus all manufacturer warranties on materials — and you still have my cell number.

Things people ask before hiring us

Same house. Different life.

If you've been staring at that oak-and-laminate kitchen for a decade, or walking past a garden tub you've filled twice, let's sit down. No pressure, no three-hour presentation. I'll look at your house, tell you what I'd do, 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.