What 1970s and 80s Construction Changes About a Kendale Lakes Bathroom Remodel
Most of Kendale Lakes went up between the early 1970s and the late 1980s, and the bathrooms in those houses are remarkably consistent: a 5x8 alcove, a tub against the end wall, one small window or none at all, an eight-foot ceiling. Finishes change from street to street. The bones do not.
The honest answer to what does the era change is not the design. It changes where the design is allowed to go. A 1978 house will accept almost any look you want — it just has firm opinions about which wall can hold a shower valve, and about what it costs you in time to argue with them.
The clearest way to show that is a job where the walls already settled it. The Kendale Lakes Spa Bath was a cramped, dark guest bathroom stuck in another era, and the brief was simple: make it feel like a five-star spa. It went to the studs and came back as full-height marble tile, a frameless glass shower, a custom vanity topped with natural stone, hex-tile flooring, layered lighting and polished fixtures. The room reads far larger and far richer than its square footage. Every one of those choices is a good choice in a house built like that one — and several of them are good because of how it was built.
What does 1970s and 80s construction change about a bathroom remodel in Kendale Lakes?
It changes where things are allowed to move. The house sits on a slab, so relocating a shower drain or toilet flange means cutting concrete. Exterior walls are block furred out about an inch, so a valve, niche or medicine cabinet cannot be buried in them. Keep fixtures where they are and a 5x8 bathroom finishes inside one week.
Source: Miami Pro Remodeling, remodeling contractor serving Miami-Dade and Broward County, Florida.
The house decides where things can go
Start under your feet. These are slab-on-grade houses: no crawlspace, no basement, nothing between the finished floor and the ground but concrete. Every drain line serving that bathroom is cast into the slab. You can see the fixtures; you cannot see the pipe, and you cannot get at it without breaking concrete and putting it back.
Now the walls. Exterior walls are concrete block, furred out with wood or metal strips and then drywalled. The cavity behind that drywall is about an inch — not the 3.5 inches of a framed stud bay. Interior partitions are conventionally framed, so they are where depth lives. In a 5x8 bathroom that usually means one or two of your four walls will accept something recessed, and the rest are effectively solid.
The footprint itself is information. The 5x8 alcove with the tub at the end wall was the standard of that era, which is why so many of these bathrooms feel like the same room. The tub wall and the plumbing wall are usually the same wall, the vanity faces it, and the toilet fills the gap between. Once you know the plumbing is concentrated on one wall, you know where your flexibility is — and where it isn't.
Why the shower valve stays where it is
A shower valve needs depth behind it. So does a recessed niche, and so does a recessed medicine cabinet. If the wall you want them on is block, there is nowhere to put them. That isn't a plumbing problem you fix by hiring a better plumber. It is a dimension problem, and there are two honest answers to it.
- Keep it on a framed wall. The valve, the niche and the recessed cabinet stay on an interior partition. Nothing about the room grows or shrinks, and the schedule holds.
- Fur the block wall out further. Build the wall thicker to create the depth you need. It works — and the room pays for it in inches. In a bathroom already measured in single feet, that is a real trade, not a rounding error.
The recessed medicine cabinet is the sleeper here. It is small, and it is the item most often specified last — usually onto the wall above the vanity, which in an alcove bathroom is frequently the exterior block wall. A surface-mount cabinet solves it. So does moving the vanity. Neither is a problem if it surfaces in week zero rather than on installation day.
Demo is the part that surprises people
Wall tile from the earlier end of that range is usually set in a thick mortar bed over metal lath, not thinset over board. It does not pop off. Tile, mortar and lath come out as one assembly, and whatever is behind it usually comes out with it. The debris is heavier and the pace is slower than anyone expects from a room that small.
Later-1980s bathrooms are more often thinset over drywall or greenboard. That is lighter demo and a worse starting point. The board behind it is not what you want under new tile in a wet area, so you spend what you saved on demo putting a better substrate back. Neither version is bad news. You just need to know which one you have before anyone writes a calendar.
| What you have | How it was built | What it changes for you |
|---|---|---|
| Exterior wall behind the tub | Concrete block, furred with wood or metal strips, drywalled | No depth for a valve, niche or recessed cabinet; furring out further costs floor inches |
| Interior partition walls | Conventional wood framing | The only place depth lives — niches, valves and recessed cabinets belong here |
| Bathroom floor | Concrete slab, no crawlspace below | Moving a shower drain or toilet flange means cutting and patching the slab |
| Early-era wall tile | Thick mortar bed over metal lath | Whole assembly comes out; heavier, dirtier demo and the backing goes with it |
| Later-80s wall tile | Thinset over drywall or greenboard | Easier removal, but the substrate is not worth tiling over — plan on replacing it |
| Bathroom doorway | Commonly 24 inches wide | Vanities and cast-iron tubs may not pass through in one piece |
| Ceiling height | Typically 8 feet | Full-height tile is a short run, so it reads as a design decision rather than an expensive one |
Reading the Spa Bath through the house
Full-height marble tile sounds like the splurge line on the estimate. In an eight-foot room it is a short run. There is not much height to cover, and the last course lands at the ceiling instead of stopping at some arbitrary height and leaving a painted band above it. That one decision is most of the reason a small bathroom stops looking small.
Frameless glass does the same work from the other direction. A framed enclosure draws a hard rectangle across a 5x8 room and cuts it in half visually; frameless lets the eye run to the far wall. Hex flooring is a small module, which keeps the floor from reading as four big tiles and a lot of cuts around the toilet. And layered lighting is not a flourish in a bathroom of this age — these rooms were typically built with one ceiling fixture and a strip over the mirror, so anything better is something you deliberately add.
The custom vanity is the quiet one. Stock cabinet widths rarely fill an alcove bathroom cleanly, and building it is also how a vanity gets into a room whose door is 24 inches. The Kendall Guest Bath nearby is another guest bathroom in the same class of house, worth a look if you want to see how differently two rooms with the same bones can finish.
What actually adds weeks
How long does a bathroom remodel take in a Kendale Lakes house?
A standard 5x8 bathroom, rebuilt in the same footprint with fixtures in their existing locations, finishes inside one week of construction. Every departure from that adds on top: a larger room, a tub-to-shower conversion, a relocated drain, a reconfigured layout, or materials with long lead times. Those add weeks rather than days, and they stack.
Source: Miami Pro Remodeling, remodeling contractor serving Miami-Dade and Broward County, Florida.
The one-week figure is not a claim about every bathroom. It describes a specific scope. New work goes back where the old work was. The toilet flange does not move. The shower drain does not move. The valve lands on the wall that already had one. Under those conditions a 5x8 bathroom in a house like this is a one-week build, and the finish level has very little to do with it — marble and a frameless enclosure do not take longer to install than builder tile and a sliding door.
Break any of those conditions and you are in a different project. Cutting the slab for a relocated drain introduces a sequence with waiting built into it, and nothing downstream starts early. Enlarging the room, converting a tub alcove into a walk-in shower, or moving the vanity onto a block wall each bring their own weeks. A primary bathroom scope is usually where several of these land at once, which is why a primary bath and a guest bath are not the same conversation even in the same house.
Scope drives cost the same way. A guest bath in this class of house generally lands in the $12K–$25K range and a primary in the $25K–$60K range and up. Where you fall inside those bands has less to do with taste than with how many of the constraints above you chose to fight.
How we'd start on yours
We walk the room and find the framed walls first. Then we fix the depth-dependent items — valve, niche, recessed cabinet — because those anchor everything after them. Material selection only means something once that is settled, since a niche you cannot build is a tile order you cannot finalize. If your house is somewhere in Kendale Lakes, we can usually describe your bathroom before seeing it; the useful part of the visit is confirming which of the era's habits your builder followed, because they varied from subdivision to subdivision.
Key Takeaways
- The cheapest decision in one of these bathrooms is leaving the drain and the flange where they are. Nothing else you choose moves the schedule as much.
- Depth is a floor-plan question, not a plumbing question. Decide where the valve, niche and medicine cabinet live before a single material is ordered.
- An eight-foot ceiling is an advantage. Full-height tile costs less height to cover here than it would in a newer house, and it is the single strongest move in a small room.
- Find out what is behind your tile before anyone quotes a start date. Mortar bed and thinset produce very different demo days.
- Measure the doorway before you fall in love with a vanity or a tub.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the stone fabricator need from us before they can template the vanity top?
A vanity cabinet that is set, level and fastened, with the sink and faucet physically on site. The fabricator templates off the real box in the real room, not off a drawing, so nobody can template before the cabinet goes in. They settle undermount position and faucet holes at that visit, which is why the top is never the first thing in and rarely the fastest.
When does frameless shower glass get measured, and why does it hold up the end of the job?
After the tile is set and grouted, because the glass company measures the finished opening rather than the framing. Walls in a house of this age are rarely plumb, and each panel is cut to the wall it actually meets, so the order cannot be placed early. Expect a stretch where the shower is tiled and usable but not enclosed, and ask for the measure to be booked the day grouting finishes.
Is the original cast-iron tub worth keeping?
Sometimes. Cast iron from that era is usually sound under a tired glaze, and refinishing leaves the heaviest object in the room exactly where it sits. The catch is color and profile: an almond or blue tub anchors your entire palette, and a low apron limits what the tile can do where wall meets tub. If it goes, plan the exit first — cast iron does not leave a 24-inch doorway gracefully, and crews usually break it up where it stands.
Can I tell whether my walls are mortar bed or thinset before demo starts?
Usually, yes. Look at a cut edge where tile meets something else: around the tub spout, behind a removed faucet escutcheon, at the edge of a medicine cabinet opening. A mortar-bed wall shows a thick gray layer behind the tile and sometimes a glint of wire lath. Thinset shows a thin bond coat over a paper or green board face. Knuckles help too — a mortar bed sounds dead and solid right across the wall.
We only have one full bathroom. How do we get through the work?
This is the strongest argument for a like-for-like scope. A one-week build is a week of arrangements; a reconfiguration is a month of them. Where a house has a second bath, we stage the work so one stays usable throughout. Where it does not, tell us at the walkthrough whether you are staying in the house — it changes the order of operations, so the water-off and toilet-out stretch is the shortest one possible rather than the most convenient one for us.
A 1970s or 80s bathroom in Kendale Lakes is not a harder remodel than a newer one. It is a more decided one — the house has already ruled on several questions you might otherwise spend weeks debating. Work with those rulings and a small guest bath is a one-week build with a five-star finish. Argue with them and the weeks you buy are weeks you chose. Tell us which walls you have been dreaming about and we will tell you which ones are framed — start at bathroom remodeling.