My office is on Camino Real, and some mornings my first drive is the shortest one I make — across town to a measure on a street where I can tell you the decade the houses went up before I get out of the truck. That is what home base means. Boca Raton is not a town we travel to. It is the town we run out of.
I’m Joe. I run Onel Construction LLC, and this is how remodeling actually moves in Boca Raton: two tracks running at the same time on almost every job, and a housing stock that all hits the same age at once.
Track one: the city
Every permitted job here starts on a computer, not at a counter. The City of Boca Raton Building Permits and Inspections division sits at 200 NW 2nd Avenue — (561) 393-7930 — but the work runs through the city’s two-part online system. Boca eHub is where we apply for the permit, pay fees, check status, and schedule inspections. Boca ePlans, also called ProjectDox, is where the plan files go up for review, where comments come back, and where the approved files come down once the permit issues.
Two systems, one job. A perfect upload in ePlans with a missed step in eHub is still a stalled permit. I pull every permit in Onel’s name and work both sides of that system — because the inspection rhythm that follows sets the crew’s whole week. In Boca, that rhythm is orderly when your paperwork is orderly. The city rewards a clean package.
One detail matters before anybody files: Palm Beach County is not in the High-Velocity Hurricane Zone — that zone covers Broward and Miami-Dade only. Exterior products here are approved under Florida Product Approval and must meet the design pressure for your address, with the approval for the exact product in the application every time.
Track two: the association
Here is the track out-of-town contractors miss, and it costs their homeowners weeks. Boca West alone is roughly 1,400 acres of villages — garden condos, townhomes, villas — most built in the 1970s and 1980s. Add Boca Pointe, Boca Falls, Boca Isles, and Mission Bay: on a Boca job, the city is only the first yes. The association is the second.
Boca’s permit package includes an HOA affidavit for homes in those communities, and many also run their own architectural review: roof color and profile, window style, work hours, elevator reservations, where the dumpster can sit.
The mistake is running the tracks one after the other instead of together. We sequence association approval alongside the city permit, so a board’s calendar never becomes a surprise mid-job — the same planning that goes into a Boca Raton kitchen remodel before the first cabinet is ordered. Kitchens with Onel are Starting at $8,000.
The housing-stock mystery: why everything is due at once
Drive Boca with a contractor’s eye and a mystery shows up: why do so many kitchens, bathrooms, roofs, and windows come due in the same neighborhoods in the same few years?
One number answers it: the median Boca Raton home was built in 1983. Half this city’s stock went up in one big wave — Boca Del Mar from the early 1970s, Boca West through that same era, Mission Bay in the early 1990s, Boca Falls right behind it. Houses built together age together.
So a Boca West bathroom is very often working on an original shower pan, valves, and waterproofing now 35 to 45 years old. A tile roof from that wave can look handsome from the street while the underlayment underneath — the layer that actually waterproofs the deck — is at the end of its life. The tile sheds the water; the underlayment keeps it out, and it does not last as long as the tile.
That is why the measure matters more than the showroom here. On a Boca Raton bathroom remodel, the first conversation is not tile color. It is the pan, the valves, and what is under the floor — new finishes over a failed base waste the whole investment. Bathrooms with Onel are Starting at $9,999, and the written estimate names which situation your house is in before you choose a finish.
Then there is the other Boca, a hundred years deep. In Old Floresta, 29 Addison Mizner-designed homes were announced in October 1925 — rough stucco, wrought iron, barrel tile, arched openings built to 1920s sizes no catalog carries. Old Floresta became Boca’s first historic district in 1990, and work there runs on respect for what is standing: measure every opening on its own, protect the character, price the match before anything is ordered. A Boca Raton impact window job there and one in a Boca West condo share a permit office and almost nothing else — impact windows with Onel are Starting at $1,800 installed, priced per opening after the measure.
What home base buys you
I know which track your job runs on before I price it, and which decade your street was built in — and when a reviewer asks a question, they are asking a contractor whose office is minutes away on Camino Real and whose name is on the permit.
Documented, rated work can also pay you back: upgraded openings can save up to $1,400 a year on insurance — your carrier decides. My Safe Florida Home offers grants of up to $10,000 — the program decides. Financing runs as low as 4.49% APR with approved credit, with payments from $120/month on smaller jobs.
Thinking about a remodel in Boca Raton?
Text a photo of the room, roof, or windows to (561) 462-9293. Tell me your community and the year your home was built, and I will map both tracks for your job — city and association — and what your decade of stock usually hides. $1,000 off on projects of $10,000 or more.
— Joe, Onel Construction LLC, License CGC1511492
Insurance savings vary by carrier, policy, and home — figures shown are ‘up to’ amounts, not guarantees. Grant eligibility, amounts, and funding availability are determined by the program and may change. Financing subject to lender approval; rates and payments vary by credit profile. All financing examples assume approved credit through our financing partner.
