Remodeling a Florida Condo kitchen Past the Board.

Two Approvals, Not One

A Florida condo kitchen remodel has to clear two independent gates: the building permit from your city or county, and the association approval from your condo board. The permit answers whether the work meets the Florida Building Code; the board answers whether you are allowed to touch what you are touching at all. A project can be code-compliant and still be denied by the board, and the board’s review usually has to happen first.

This is the single biggest difference between renovating a single-family house and renovating a unit in a tower. In a house, you own the slab, the walls, and the pipes in them. In a condominium, you own a defined volume of space, and a surprising amount of what runs through your kitchen wall belongs to everyone. The governing rules sit in your recorded declaration and in the Florida Condominium Act, Fla. Stat. ch. 718.

Why the order matters

Most associations require written board approval before a unit owner pulls a permit or starts demolition. Starting work first — even permitted work — can trigger a stop-work demand, fines under the declaration, and a requirement to restore the unit. Sequencing the approvals correctly is the difference between a six-week project and a six-month dispute.

What each gate actually reviews

The permit office reviews structure, electrical, plumbing, and mechanical against the code. The board reviews impact on common elements, noise and dust rules, contractor insurance, work hours, elevator and freight-loading logistics, and whether your scope alters anything shared. The two reviews overlap least where it matters most: the pipes.

What the board cares about that the permit office does not

Several board concerns never appear on a code plan review, and missing them stalls more condo projects than any code item:

• Common-element impact — whether your scope touches a riser, stack, shaft, or load path.
• Logistics — elevator padding, freight-loading windows, and approved work hours for dust and noise.
• Contractor paperwork — a current license plus liability and workers’-compensation insurance naming the association.

Clearing these before you apply for the permit is what keeps the two tracks from colliding mid-project.

Do You Need Board Approval to Remodel

Yes — in nearly every Florida condominium, a kitchen remodel needs the board’s written consent, and the requirement is statutory, not just a house rule. Fla. Stat. §718.111(11)(g) contemplates a unit owner performing reconstruction with the prior written consent of the board of administration, and most declarations add an architectural review step on top.

Cosmetic versus alteration

Boards draw a line between a cosmetic refresh and a true alteration. Swapping cabinet doors, countertops, a sink, or a backsplash in the same footprint is usually waved through with a short notice. The moment you move a wall, relocate a fixture, change the floor assembly over an occupied unit, or tie into anything shared, you are into formal review.

Cosmetic refresh

Like-for-like cabinets, counters, sink, faucet, paint, and backsplash in the existing layout. Light board notice; rarely contested.

Material alteration of common elements

Any change to the shared structure or systems — the riser, the stack, a load path, the exterior envelope. Under §718.113(2)(a), if the declaration is silent, this needs the approval of 75 percent of the total voting interests before work begins.

That 75-percent threshold is the reason almost no condo kitchen remodel ever tries to relocate a stack: clearing a building-wide supermajority vote for one owner’s kitchen is not realistic. The faster path is to design so that no common element is touched at all.

Unit Boundaries vs Common Elements

The whole condo remodel turns on one definition: where your unit ends and the common elements begin. Your unit boundaries are set by the declaration — typically the unfinished interior surfaces of the perimeter walls, floor, and ceiling. Almost everything that serves more than your unit, even when it runs inside your wall, is a common element owned in common by all owners.

What you control

Inside the boundary you generally control the finishes and the branch utilities that serve only you: cabinets, countertops, the sink and faucet, your branch supply and waste lines after they leave the shared main, your kitchen circuits past the panel, and the wall and floor surfaces. This is the sandbox a smart condo design stays inside.

What the association controls

Outside the boundary — or shared even when physically inside your wall — the association controls the load-bearing structure, the vertical plumbing risers and drain stacks, shared vent piping, any grease-duct or trash chase, the building envelope, and corridor-side systems. Touching any of these converts a private remodel into a material alteration of common property.

Read your declaration’s boundary clause before you draw a single line on a plan; it is the document that decides which column each part of your kitchen falls into, and it overrides any general assumption.

What a Riser Is, and Why It Is Untouchable

A riser is a vertical pipe that carries water or waste up and down the building, serving the stacked units on every floor. The fresh-water riser feeds your unit and the ones above and below; the waste stack collects drainage from all of them. Because each one serves the whole vertical column, it is a textbook common element — and altering it would affect every neighbor on the line.

Why one owner cannot relocate it

Moving a riser or stack would require cutting into the shared system, re-routing it through other owners’ ceilings or walls, and re-engineering drainage slope for the whole column. Fla. Stat. §718.113(3) forbids a unit owner from doing anything that adversely affects the safety or soundness of the common elements — which is exactly what cutting a live stack does.

Where your branch is allowed to meet it

You can connect your kitchen’s branch waste and supply to the existing riser and stack at the point the building already provides. What you cannot do is demand that connection point move three feet to suit an island. Keeping the connection where it is keeps your project a private remodel rather than a building-wide alteration.

Can You Move Plumbing in a High-Rise

Within tight limits, yes — you can reposition your own branch lines a short distance inside the unit, but you cannot move the riser or stack they tie into, and on a high floor you have no slab to bury new pipe in. That combination is why condo kitchens almost always keep the sink and dishwasher within a few feet of their original wall.

The slab-and-ceiling problem

In a single-family Florida home on a slab-on-grade, a plumber can trench the slab to relocate a drain. In a stacked condo, the floor of your unit is the structural ceiling of the unit below; you cannot bury drain pipe in it, and you cannot drop pipe into your neighbor’s ceiling. Any horizontal run has to fit within your own floor or soffit build-up while still holding drainage slope, which severely limits how far a fixture can travel.

The honest planning rule is to treat fixture locations as nearly fixed and design the cabinetry, storage, and work triangle around them. A condo kitchen that respects the existing rough-in is approvable; one that fights it usually is not.

Condo Vent-Hood Rules

The Florida Building Code wants kitchen exhaust to terminate outdoors, but most high-rise units have no path to an exterior wall or a dedicated exhaust shaft — so the practical answer is a recirculating hood. A recirculating (ductless) hood filters grease and odor through a charcoal element and returns the air to the room rather than ducting it outside.

What the code expects

Under the Florida Building Code, Residential M1503, a ducted domestic range hood must discharge to the outdoors, and a hood moving more than 400 CFM triggers a makeup-air requirement (M1503.6). A condo unit that has no exterior duct route simply cannot satisfy the ducted path — and cutting a new penetration through the building envelope is a material alteration of a common element, not an owner decision.

Why recirculating is the default

Because ducting is usually off the table, recirculating hoods dominate condo kitchens. The trade-off is real: a recirculating hood does not meet the ASHRAE 62.2 definition of local exhaust, since recirculation is not exhaust — it removes grease and odor but not heat or moisture from the home. In a humid Florida unit, that makes the building’s overall ventilation and the AC system carry the moisture load.

• Ducted to a building shaft. Best capture, but only if the developer provided a dedicated kitchen exhaust shaft for your stack — many towers did not.
• Ducted through an exterior wall. Strongest performance, but a new envelope penetration is a common-element alteration the board controls.
• Recirculating (ductless). The common default: no penetration, board-friendly, but odor-and-grease only, not true exhaust.

If your association already documents how your stack handles kitchen exhaust, follow it exactly; where it is silent, a recirculating hood paired with strong whole-unit ventilation is the path that keeps the project inside your boundary. Our deeper look at the 400-CFM makeup-air rule explains why a ducted upgrade has knock-on requirements even in a house.

Designing the Approvable Condo Remodel

The condo kitchen that sails through both gates is the one that changes everything the owner controls and nothing the association does. That means new cabinets, counters, sink, faucet, lighting, and finishes — all on the existing fixture locations — with a recirculating hood and no structural or shared-system work.

The like-for-like principle

A like-for-like layout keeps the sink, range, and water connections where the building already put them, so no common element is disturbed and the permit stays in the lightest category. It is the same principle that keeps a Florida kitchen permit-free when no utility moves, and it is what makes a board review a formality. Compact-kitchen tactics like a peninsula instead of a plumbed island fit naturally inside it, as covered in our small kitchen remodeling work and these Florida kitchen permit triggers.

The contractor and insurance step

Boards almost always require your contractor’s license and liability and workers’-compensation insurance on file before approval, plus a certificate of insurance naming the association. A licensed remodeler who works in towers will already carry this and will build the elevator-padding, freight-loading, and work-hour rules into the schedule.

The submittal package

A clean board submittal speeds everything. When the package proves nothing shared is touched, approval is routine — and the same restraint keeps your sink swap a quick kitchen sink installation rather than a plumbing-relocation project.

What a board-ready package contains

A submittal that answers the board’s questions in advance rarely comes back with conditions:

1. Scope letter stating the work is interior, like-for-like, and touches no common element.
2. Simple plan showing the sink, range, and water connections staying in place.
3. Hood type identified — recirculating, with no new envelope penetration.
4. Contractor license plus a certificate of insurance naming the association.
5. Work schedule with elevator-padding, freight-loading, and approved hours.

For the structural cousin of this question — floors over occupied units — South Florida’s condo flooring sound rules follow the same approve-before-you-build logic.