Discover the build.

A 1930s house, most of it taken to the ground, replaced by a reinforced concrete shell engineered for wind and lifted out of the flood plain. This is that build, told in chapters — what was here, what came down, what went up, and what it is all aiming at. Nothing staged. Nothing borrowed from another job.

01The structure

Block, steel, and a poured tie beam.

This is the part nobody sees once the stucco goes on, so it is the part worth photographing. Concrete block laid course by course, vertical rebar cells poured solid, and a continuous concrete tie beam cast around the entire top of the wall to lock the whole shell together. Every window and door is bucked out in lumber and braced while the concrete cures. It is built hurricane-proof and elevated against flood — the two things Miami eventually asks every house to prove.

CMU shell with poured, reinforced cells
Continuous concrete tie beam around the top of the wall
Hurricane-rated and elevated against flood
Openings bucked and braced before cure

The concrete-block shell at dusk, seen from the front corner — the poured tie beam capping the walls, a wide opening shored with vertical lumber posts and diagonal bracing, rebar standing out of the slab, and the site fenced off behind wrought iron. — Front corner — the shored opening under the poured tie beam.

Straight-on view of the block wall from the street, behind chain-link fencing and green privacy screen — the tie beam runs the full width, plywood forms are still strapped at the corners, and three bucked openings frame the scaffolding stacked inside. — The street elevation, still behind the fence line.

The shell from the opposite corner at dusk, with a mortar mixer and buckets in the foreground, temporary wood truss bracing propped against the wall, and the retained 2017 portion of the house visible at the left. — Mixing on site — the retained portion at left.

Wide dusk view across the whole site — the full block shell with its tie beam, bucked window and door openings, ladders and shoring inside, stacked lumber and block on the ground, and the neighboring barrel-tile roofs behind. — The whole shell, end of a working day.

02The vision

What all of this is aiming at.

These are the finished-design visions the whole build is measured against — the street presence and the room you walk into first. They are renders, not photographs: the house does not look like this yet. Everything in the chapters above exists so that one day it will, and so that it still holds up a century from now.

Elevated, hurricane-rated street presence
One continuous interior, not a set of boxes
Built to a 100-year standard

Render of the finished streetfront — white stucco, warm wood slat screening, and travertine under Miami light. — Vision · Render

Render of the finished living space — walnut millwork, a brass chandelier, and a vaulted ceiling in warm light. — Vision · Render

The journal fills in as the build reaches each stage. Structure first, systems next, finishes last — the same order the house is actually built in.

CPR Remodeling Group