Glossary
Miami remodeling terms, in plain English.
31 terms that come up in quotes, contracts, and condo paperwork across Miami-Dade, defined without the jargon that usually surrounds them.
- Alteration agreement
- The contract a condo association requires an owner to sign before renovation begins. It sets the rules of the job, work hours, elevator use, protection of common areas, and shifts responsibility for the work and its future maintenance onto the unit owner. Reading it before design starts prevents most condo remodel surprises.
- Blocking
- Solid backing fixed inside a wall, behind the finished surface, so something can be anchored to it later: a grab bar, a floating vanity, a shower bench, a heavy mirror. It costs almost nothing while the wall is open during a remodel and a great deal once the tile is on, which is why good crews put it in whether or not the fitting is going in now.
- Bonded waterproofing membrane
- A sheet or liquid-applied layer adhered directly to the shower substrate that stops water at the surface rather than letting it soak into the assembly. The current standard of care for Miami showers, where nothing behind a wall ever dries out on its own.
- Camera survey
- Running a small video camera down a drain line to see the inside of the pipe. On a pre-1975 Miami house it is the cheapest few hundred dollars in the whole project, because demolition has already exposed the branch line and the camera answers definitively whether the pipe has years left in it or is about to fail under a finished floor.
- Cast iron drain line
- The original waste piping in most Miami homes built before roughly 1975. It corrodes from the inside over decades until the walls go thin and the line cracks or collapses. A bathroom remodel is the natural moment to look at the branch serving that room, and to replace it if the camera says so, because the pipe is already exposed.
- CBS (concrete block stucco)
- The dominant construction type in South Florida: concrete masonry unit walls finished with stucco outside. It resists wind and termites, and it means bathroom plumbing cannot be rerouted through wall or floor cavities the way it can in wood-framed housing.
- Certificate of insurance (COI)
- Proof of a contractor's liability and workers compensation coverage, issued by the insurer. Condo associations almost universally require one naming the association before approving work, and the requirement is why unlicensed handyman work rarely gets through a board.
- CFM (cubic feet per minute)
- The airflow rating of an exhaust fan. Fifty CFM is the usual starting size for a small bathroom, and in this climate that is a floor rather than a goal: enclosed showers and larger rooms want more, and a humidity-sensing fan removes the question of whether anyone remembered to switch it on.
- Contingency
- The share of the budget held back for what demolition uncovers rather than spent on anything drawn. Ten percent is the usual figure on a house built after 1990 and fifteen to twenty on anything older, where deteriorated drain pipe and a pan that has been quietly wetting the substrate are the common finds. A quote that shows a contingency line is being honest about a Miami bathroom rather than padding it.
- Core drilling
- Cutting a clean circular hole through concrete, typically to route a new drain or vent through a slab. In condos it is the step most likely to require engineering review, because the slab is shared structure between units.
- Efflorescence
- The chalky white mineral residue that appears on tile, grout, or a shower curb when water moves through the assembly and evaporates at the surface. In a shower it is a symptom rather than a cosmetic issue: water is getting somewhere it should not be.
- Flood test
- Plugging a finished shower drain, filling the pan with water to just below the curb, and watching the level for a day to confirm the waterproofing holds. Standard practice on any properly run Miami shower and the cheapest insurance in the project, since a pinhole found before tile costs a day and one found after costs a rebuild.
- Furred wall
- A block wall with wood or metal strips fastened to it to create a shallow cavity for insulation, wiring, and drywall. Common in Miami bathrooms and important during a remodel, because that cavity is thin, and anything heavy, like a grab bar, must anchor through it into the block itself.
- Hot mop
- The older method of waterproofing a shower pan using layers of hot asphalt and felt beneath a mortar bed. Standard in Florida construction for decades and still legal, though sheet and liquid membranes have largely replaced it in new work. Most failed pans in 1970s and 1980s homes are hot-mopped originals at the end of their service life.
- IIC rating
- Impact Insulation Class, the measure of how well a floor assembly blocks footfall noise reaching the unit below. Many Miami condo buildings set a minimum IIC for hard flooring and require an acoustic underlayment to meet it, and bathrooms are not always exempt.
- Linear drain
- A long, narrow shower drain set against a wall or across the entry rather than a round drain in the middle of the floor. It lets the whole pan fall in one direction on a single plane, which makes curbless showers far easier to build correctly and large-format floor tile possible in a shower without awkward cuts around a center drain.
- Mortar bed (mud-set)
- A thick layer of packed sand-and-cement mortar used to form the sloped floor of a shower pan or to level a tile substrate. The traditional Florida shower floor method, still used, and the reason older pans can be rebuilt to fall correctly toward the drain rather than shimmed with thinner materials.
- Pipe lining (CIPP)
- Cured-in-place pipe, a trenchless repair method that pulls a resin-saturated liner through a deteriorated drain line and cures it into a new pipe within the old one. Used in Miami as an alternative to breaking slabs, and common in condo buildings where opening the floor is impractical.
- Punch list
- The list of small defects and unfinished details written down when you walk the finished bathroom with the contractor: a misaligned switch plate, a silicone line that needs redoing, a cabinet door out of adjustment. The final payment is normally held against it, which is what gets the list finished rather than forgotten.
- Riser
- The vertical supply or waste pipe running through a stack of condo units, serving many bathrooms at once. Risers are building property rather than unit property, so any work touching them requires management coordination and usually a scheduled water shutdown for the whole line.
- Schedule of values
- The breakdown in a quote that assigns a price to each part of the job rather than giving one number for the whole bathroom. It is what makes payments tied to completed work possible, and it is the document that answers what was included when a question comes up three weeks into the build.
- Service elevator reservation
- The scheduled window a condo building assigns for moving construction material and debris. It is a real constraint on the job schedule, not a formality, and it is a large part of why identical bathroom work costs more in a tower than in a house.
- Slab-on-grade
- A foundation where the concrete floor slab sits directly on prepared ground, with no basement or crawl space beneath. Nearly universal in Miami single-family housing, and the reason relocating a bathroom drain here means cutting and re-pouring concrete rather than working from below.
- Slab penetration
- Any new hole cut through a structural concrete floor, usually to relocate a drain. In houses it is a cost item, roughly $2,500 to $6,000 with the concrete work. In condos it is a governance question first, because the slab is shared with the unit below and many buildings restrict or prohibit it.
- Templating
- Measuring a finished surface so something can be fabricated to fit it exactly, most often glass for a shower enclosure or stone for a vanity top. Glass cannot be templated until the tile is set, because the measurements do not exist until then, and fabrication takes a week or more after that. It is why the enclosure arrives late in every schedule, and it is structural to the process rather than a sign anyone is dragging.
- Terrazzo
- The poured stone-chip flooring found throughout mid-century Miami homes, often hidden under later carpet or tile. Where it survives intact it grinds and polishes back to a durable floor that outlasts most modern materials, making it worth uncovering before demolition rather than after.
- Trim-out
- The stage near the end of a build when the visible plumbing and electrical go on: shower valve trim and head, taps, toilet, light fixtures, switches and outlet covers. The rough work behind the wall was done weeks earlier, and trim-out is when the room suddenly looks finished.
- Tunneling
- Excavating horizontally beneath a slab from outside the house to reach failed drain lines without breaking the floor. Preferred in Miami over jackhammering interior slabs when the damaged run is accessible from the perimeter, since it leaves finished floors intact.
- Wet room
- A bathroom layout where the shower, and sometimes the tub, sit inside one fully waterproofed and sloped zone behind a single glass panel rather than in a separate enclosure. It suits Miami slab construction, which takes recessed slopes cleanly, and demands generous ventilation to match.
- Wet-over-dry
- The building rule restricting where wet areas can be located relative to the unit below, meant to keep a bathroom from sitting above a neighbor's living space. Many Miami condo buildings apply some version of it, which is why moving a shower within a unit is a building question before it is a design question.
- Wet wall
- The wall carrying a bathroom's supply and drain plumbing. Keeping fixtures on the existing wet wall is the single most effective way to control cost in a Miami remodel, because the alternative means opening the slab or, in a condo, asking the board for something it may not grant.
Ready to price your bathroom project?
Call (786) 733-9560 or send the quote form, whichever suits you.