DIY Home Improvement in Palm Beach County: The Seven Projects, and Who Has to Say Yes First

Doing the work yourself is one of the most practical ways to make a home more comfortable to live in and more presentable when it comes time to sell. Cabinet hardware, screens, a bathroom refresh, paint, storage, the front door, the floors. How much of any of that a homeowner can take on without a contractor depends on the scope of the particular job and on what turns up once the work starts.

What trips people up here is not the skill and it is not the budget. It is permission.

In Palm Beach County, several of the seven projects below appear on the county's published list of items not requiring a permit, one of them is exempt only once every twelve months, and at least two of them can be stopped by an architectural review committee before you buy the materials. The same job — replacing a front door — can be a straightforward swap on one street and an approval process on the next, and nothing about the door tells you which one you are on.

So this is the same seven-project list, rebuilt for the county we actually work in: what the project is, who has to approve it, and what it looks like in the file afterwards.

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Why the Same Project Is Simple on One Street and Complicated on the Next

Every improvement you make to a Palm Beach County home runs past two parties who can say no before you start, and then leaves something behind in a third place that nobody can approve in advance. They ask different questions, they answer on different timelines, and the one that matters most is the one nobody thinks about until years later.

The first is the building department — and the first thing to establish is which building department. Palm Beach County's Building Division issues permits for unincorporated Palm Beach County, which includes unincorporated communities such as the Acreage. If your address sits inside a municipality, that city or village runs its own building department, its own portal and its own review times. A mailing address is not the same thing as a jurisdiction: a letter addressed to West Palm Beach, the county seat, does not by itself establish that the city's building department is the office that governs the property, and the postal boundary and the municipal boundary are drawn by different bodies for different purposes. Two homeowners a few miles apart can be looking at the same kitchen and getting different answers, because they are asking different offices.

The second is the association, where there is one. An association's architectural review authority is real, but it is not unlimited, and Florida law has narrowed it in a direction that helps anyone doing interior work.

Then there is the record, which is not a third approver. A permit — pulled, inspected, closed — leaves a line in the county's public permit history. So does a permit that was pulled and never closed. The record does not grant or deny anything; it is what the first two approvals leave behind. It is also the part of your improvement work a buyer's side can still read years later, and the only one of the three you cannot go back and apply for.

Start from the project you are actually planning. If it is hardware, paint, screens, storage or a like-for-like fixture swap, you are likely in permit-exempt territory and the association question is the only live one. If it is the front door, the floors in an attached home, or anything that moves a fixture, a wall or a wire, read the permit question closely before you buy anything. And if you are doing this because a sale is coming, skip ahead to how improvement work reads at closing — the sequence matters more than the shopping list.

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1. Change Cabinetry Hardware

Swapping knobs and pulls is the shortest project on this list. Kitchens, bathrooms, laundry, closets — new hardware changes the read of a room without touching a single cabinet box.

• Match the material to what is already in the room rather than to a catalogue: brass, brushed nickel, stainless, glass or stone all work, and keeping to one or two finishes in a single sightline is what keeps the result looking deliberate.
• The tool list is a cordless drill, a tape measure and a scrap of cardboard cut as a drilling template. Measure the existing hole spacing before you order — centre-to-centre spacing on an older cabinet may not be a size still sold.

Two Approvals and a Record. The department has no interest in this. Palm Beach County's published guidance treats even a full kitchen cabinet replacement as exempt on one- and two-family dwellings when it is an exact replacement with no change in the configuration of the electrical or plumbing, so hardware sits well inside the line. Nothing enters the record.

The association question is where this got easier. Under the Florida homeowners' association statute as it appears in the 2025 Florida Statutes, section 720.3035(1)(b) provides that an association or its architectural committee may not adopt or enforce a covenant, rule or guideline that places requirements on the interior of a structure that is not visible from the parcel's frontage, an adjacent parcel, an adjacent common area or a community golf course. Your cabinet hardware is interior and it is not visible from the street. That provision arrived with the 2024 amendments to Chapter 720, so material written before then can still describe a broader review power than the statute now supports — which is worth knowing if you are in one of the Royal Palm Beach communities with an active architectural committee and a binder of guidelines that predates the change. Condominiums are a different regime, governed by Chapter 718 and by their own declaration rather than by Chapter 720, so a condominium owner should read the declaration rather than rely on this.

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2. Replace Torn Window and Patio Screens

Screens here deal with sun, salt air on the eastern side of the county, pets, and the branch that comes down in an August storm. Rescreening is a genuine beginner project.

• What you need: replacement screening on a roll, rubber spline in the correct diameter, and a spline roller. Take a short piece of the old spline to the store — spline of the wrong diameter will not hold the screen flat.
• On a pool cage or screen enclosure, work panel by panel and keep tension even. A panel pulled tight against a slack neighbour is what puts a wave in the whole wall.

Two Approvals and a Record. Palm Beach County's Building Division publishes a short list of items not requiring a permit. The version posted on the county's Planning, Zoning & Building site at the time of writing is marked Revision January 2014 and applies to unincorporated Palm Beach County; it lists rescreening a screen room as exempt up to $1,000 in value, and repair of a window within its existing frame as exempt where the value of the work is under $1,000. Those are dollar thresholds, not project categories — a full enclosure rescreen can pass that number, and the exemption stops where the number does. The same list carries an instruction worth repeating: exempted work still has to be built to code.

Structural repair to the enclosure itself — a bent or corroded upright, a failed connection at the beam — is not rescreening, and it is not on the exempt list. That is where a homeowner project should hand off.

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3. Upgrade Your Bathroom

Small work goes a long way in a bathroom. It is also the room where the exemption line is drawn most precisely, and the precision is worth understanding before you start.

• Replacing a faucet, a showerhead, a sink or a toilet is standard homeowner work.
• Re-caulking the tub, the shower pan and the tile perimeter is the least glamorous item on this page and one of the easiest to keep current. Cut the old bead out completely rather than laying new silicone over it.
• Accessories — towel bars, a new mirror, a shower curtain — carry more of the room's impression than the fixtures do.

Two Approvals and a Record. On that same county list, a faucet replacement is exempt where it does not involve removing drywall, a sink is exempt as an exact replacement in the same location only, and a water closet is exempt when replaced in the same location. Read the qualifiers rather than the nouns. Moving the toilet three feet is not a toilet replacement. Opening the wall to get at a supply line is not a faucet swap. The exemptions are drawn around work that does not disturb the rough plumbing, and the moment it does, this is a different project.

The one that catches people is the water heater. The county's exempt list covers repairing or replacing the heating elements. Replacing the unit is not on the list.

Interior bathroom finishes are not visible from the frontage, so in a Chapter 720 community the architectural committee generally has nothing to reach here — again with the caveat that a condominium is governed by its own declaration and a different chapter of the statutes.

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4. Paint It Up

Paint is inexpensive, and in this climate it does protective work on exterior surfaces as well as cosmetic work inside.

• Read the product data before you buy. Exterior lines differ in their stated performance ratings and warranty terms, and on south- and west-facing walls those published ratings are a more useful basis for the decision than the price or how the sample reads on day one.
• Interior colour is genuinely yours to choose — accent walls, deep tones, soft neutrals. Trim, doors and cabinetry in a contrasting sheen is an inexpensive way to make a builder-grade room look considered.
• Prep decides the result. Pressure-wash exterior stucco, let it dry properly, and prime any bare patch. Before painting over chalked or damp stucco, check the surface-preparation instructions for the specific product you have bought.

Two Approvals and a Record. Painting appears on the county's exempt list with no qualifier attached. The department is not the constraint here. The association is.

Exterior colour is exactly the kind of external-appearance standard Chapter 720 lets an association control — but section 720.3035(1)(a) permits that authority only to the extent it is specifically stated, or reasonably inferred, in the declaration of covenants or in published guidelines the declaration authorises, and it requires the association to apply and enforce those standards reasonably and equitably on all parcel owners. If a committee turns your colour down, section 720.3035(4)(a) requires written notice stating with specificity the rule or covenant relied on and the specific part of your proposal that does not conform. In practical terms: ask for the approved palette in writing before you buy, and if you are denied, you are entitled to be told which written standard you failed.

There is a third layer in one part of the county. In Lake Worth Beach, a property inside a designated historic district or an individually designated landmark needs a Certificate of Appropriateness for exterior alterations, and the city's published guidance states the COA is required before exterior work begins and before a building permit can be issued. That is a different question from whether the work needs a permit, and a different office answers it. Anyone with a bungalow in one of those districts should confirm the property's status on the city's historic districts map before choosing a colour, not after.

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5. Expand Storage Space

Storage is the improvement you notice every day and never see in a photograph. It is also where generic advice can stop matching the house you actually own.

Most storage advice assumes a basement to finish, a staircase to build under, or a knee wall to open up. If your home is single-storey and slab-on-grade, none of those exist, and the space has to come from somewhere else: garage wall height above the door track, closet interiors built with a single rod and a single shelf, the two feet of dead air above a laundry pair, pantry shelves deep enough to lose things in.

• Wall-mounted rail systems in the garage carry more, adjust later, and keep everything up off the slab.
• A second rod in a reach-in closet is a twenty-minute job that adds more usable hanging space than most built-ins.
• Freestanding and modular units move with you and leave nothing behind to explain. That matters more than it sounds like it does — see the next paragraph.

Two Approvals and a Record. Shelving, freestanding units and closet organisers are finish work and are not what the permit system is aimed at. Built-in storage crosses the line the moment it adds or moves an outlet or a light, alters a wall, or encloses space — and enclosing part of a garage is a larger change than it looks, because it can alter what the house is recorded as. If the project involves electrical, or a wall, ask the department before you build rather than after.

Two notes for larger parcels. In Wellington, a detached shed or outbuilding is its own permitting question, with size thresholds and setback requirements attached, and the village's own building department answers it rather than the county. On an unincorporated Acreage lot, the same shed is a county Building Division question, and the county's rules on accessory structures rather than a village's are the ones that apply. Nothing in this section covers either case.

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6. Improve Your Front Door

The front door is the first thing anyone sees. It is also the item on this list carrying the most narrowly drawn exemption on the county's list.

Two Approvals and a Record. On the county's exempt list, replacement of an exterior door — overhead doors excluded — is exempt from a permit only within the existing jamb, and only once in a twelve-month period, on one- and two-family dwellings. Both qualifiers do work. If the jamb is rotted, out of square, or the wrong size for the slab you want, you are no longer replacing a door within an existing jamb; you are altering an opening in an exterior wall, and that is permit territory with product approval and wind-load requirements attached. Where a Boynton Beach house still has its original jamb, the condition of that jamb is what decides which of the two projects you are actually doing — and you cannot tell until the trim comes off.

• If the door is sound but tired, paint or stain and new hardware get you most of the way at a fraction of the cost, and they raise none of the questions above.
• If you are replacing the slab, keep the paperwork. Product approval documentation for an exterior door is difficult to reconstruct after the fact, so file it with the property records at the time of installation.

The association layer here runs differently from every other item on this list, and it runs in the owner's favour. Section 720.3035(6) requires a homeowners' association board or its architectural committee to adopt hurricane protection specifications, and provides that the board may not deny an application for the installation, enhancement or replacement of hurricane protection that conforms to those adopted specifications — while still allowing the association to require adherence to an existing unified building scheme for external appearance. The statute's own definition of hurricane protection at 720.3035(6)(c) names impact-resistant windows and doors. So a decorative front door and an impact-rated front door are not the same application to the same committee. That framework arrived with the 2024 amendments; material about association approval of storm protection written before then may not reflect it.

A separate point that has nothing to do with either approval: a large glass panel in an entry door changes what is visible from outside and what is reachable from outside. Decide that on its own merits rather than from the elevation drawing.

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7. Revive Your Flooring

Worn flooring can make a well-kept house read as neglected, and replacing it is within reach for a patient homeowner.

• Peel-and-stick and click-lock luxury vinyl are the practical DIY options.
• If your house sits on a concrete slab, slab moisture is the local variable generic flooring advice leaves out. A slab can pass moisture upward into a floor covering long after the surface reads dry. Test the slab before you commit to an adhesive-down product.
• Bamboo and other renewable materials are legitimate choices, but check the manufacturer's humidity range against a house running at South Florida indoor conditions, including any stretch when the air conditioning is off.

Two Approvals and a Record. The county's exempt list names ceramic tile — remove and replace — with one parenthetical: not on fire-rated assemblies. That parenthetical is the whole story for attached housing. In a condominium or townhouse, the floor assembly can form part of a rated separation between units, and the analysis is not the analysis for a detached house. An owner replacing floors in a Boca Raton condominium or townhome should treat this as an association-and-department question first and a shopping question second. Note also that the exempt list enumerates ceramic tile rather than floor coverings generally, so confirm your specific material and scope with the department rather than assuming the parallel.

A declaration may separately impose a sound-transmission requirement on hard-surface flooring above the ground floor — an underlayment specification and a written approval, where it applies. That is a declaration question, not a code question, and the association answers it.

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Where DIY Goes Wrong Here

In the transactions we handle, the problems these projects create tend to come from sequencing and paperwork rather than from the quality of the work.

Doing the work first and asking afterwards. An association denial after installation is a materially worse position than a denial before it, because the remedy is removal. The written-approval request costs an email.

Treating "no permit required" as "no rules apply." The county's own exempt list says the exempted work still has to meet code. An exemption is a statement about paperwork, not about standards.

Assuming the county list applies to your address. It applies to unincorporated Palm Beach County. Inside a municipality, that municipality's building department sets the answer, and a village runs one as completely as a city does — a Royal Palm Beach address is answered by the village's building department, not by the county list, notwithstanding that the village sits surrounded by unincorporated county land on more than one side. And a household moving up the corridor should note that Port St. Lucie is not merely a different city but a different county, with a different building department and its own local amendments — the answers you learned in Palm Beach County do not travel with you.

Pulling a permit and never closing it. An open or expired permit sits in the public permit record. It does not resolve itself and it does not become less visible with time.

Renovating to sell under an owner-builder permit without reading the exemption. This one deserves its own paragraph. Florida Statutes section 489.103(7) lets an owner act as their own contractor on a one- or two-family residence they own, providing direct on-site supervision themselves of all work not performed by licensed contractors. The exemption is conditioned on the residence being for the owner's own occupancy or use and not offered for sale or lease, and the statute provides that proof of a sale or lease within one year after completion creates a presumption that the work was undertaken for sale or lease — which is a violation of the exemption. The permitting agency is also required to give the applicant a disclosure statement to sign. If the plan is "pull the permit myself, then list in the spring," that is the exact fact pattern this provision addresses. It is a legal question with real consequences and it sits outside what a real estate professional can advise on: read the disclosure statement the permitting office hands you, and if the timing is close, ask a Florida attorney before you sign it rather than after.

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The Kull Group Observation: The Best Room in the House

One pattern from our listing appointments in Palm Beach County is worth naming here, because it is now something we ask about directly.

On a walkthrough, the owner shows us the room they are proudest of. Sometimes it is a bathroom that was gutted and reconfigured, sometimes a garage that became a home office, sometimes a wall that came out. It looks good. It is genuinely better than what was there. And in the cases we are describing, when the property's permit history is pulled before pricing, there is nothing recorded against it.

We call this one the best room in the house, because that is what the owner is showing us. Hardware and paint do not raise the permit question. Work that moves a wall, a fixture or a wire is what the permit system is aimed at — and that is the same kind of work that produces a room worth walking a visitor into first.

The consequence is not that the improvement was a mistake. It is that a Florida seller has a duty, under long-standing Florida case law, to disclose known facts that materially affect the value of the property and are not readily observable by the buyer — and whether a particular piece of unpermitted work meets that threshold is a legal question for the seller's attorney, not for us. What we can speak to is procedural: resolved on your own calendar, it is a permitting matter; raised inside a buyer's inspection period, it becomes part of the negotiation.

The practical version, and the reason we ask early: pull your own permit history before you plan the improvements, not before you list. It is a public record and you can check it yourself.

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What This Means for Buyers and Sellers in South Florida

If you are staying put, the permission question is mostly an association question, and the 2024 changes to Chapter 720 moved interior work further out of the committee's reach than it was before. Do the interior projects. Ask before the exterior ones.

If you are preparing to sell, two things matter more than the improvement list. The first is sequence: verify the permit history, then decide the projects, then do them — in that order, because what the history says can change which projects are worth doing at all. The second is that preparation and pricing are separate levers, and one does not rescue the other. Improvement work makes a home present better; it does not make an asking price work. If the plan on the table is to finish the projects and then find out what the market will pay, it is worth reading what testing the market actually costs a seller before committing to that order of operations.

If you have just bought, pull the permit history on the home you now own before you start changing it. Anything open belongs to you now.

If you are buying, ask what the improvement work was and whether it was permitted. Not as an accusation — as a question with a documented answer, on a record you can check yourself.

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Before You Start: A Short Verification Routine

Four steps, in this order:

1. Establish which department governs your address. Unincorporated Palm Beach County, or a specific city or village. This determines every other answer on this page.
2. Ask that department whether your specific scope needs a permit. Describe the work, not the category. "Replacing a faucet" and "replacing a faucet, which means opening the wall" are different projects.
3. Ask the association for the written standard, in writing, before you buy materials. If you are denied, section 720.3035(4)(a) entitles you to be told which specific rule or covenant you failed.
4. Pull the property's permit history and confirm nothing is sitting open from before your ownership.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a permit to replace my front door in Palm Beach County?

In unincorporated Palm Beach County, the Building Division's published list of items not requiring a permit — the version posted at the time of writing, marked Revision January 2014 — treats replacement of an exterior door other than an overhead door as exempt when it is done within the existing jamb, once in a twelve-month period, on a one- or two-family dwelling. If the jamb is being replaced or the opening resized, the exemption does not apply. If your address is inside a city or village, that municipality's building department sets the answer rather than the county's list. Confirm your specific scope with the department that governs your address before you order the door.

Can my HOA tell me what colour to paint my kitchen?

Under the Florida homeowners' association statute as it appears in the 2025 Florida Statutes, section 720.3035(1)(b) provides that an association or its architectural committee may not adopt or enforce a covenant, rule or guideline placing requirements on the interior of a structure that is not visible from the parcel's frontage, an adjacent parcel, an adjacent common area or a community golf course. A kitchen wall is interior and generally is not visible from any of those. Exterior colour is a different question, and there an association can control appearance to the extent its declaration or authorised published guidelines say so. Condominiums are governed by Chapter 718 and by their own declaration, so a condominium owner should read the declaration rather than rely on the Chapter 720 rule.

What happens at closing if I did work without a permit?

Unpermitted work shows up as a gap between what the house physically contains and what the county's public permit record shows. Whether and when that gap is raised in a particular transaction depends on the buyer, the inspector and the lender involved. Whether it has to be disclosed is a legal question — Florida sellers have a duty under long-standing case law to disclose known facts materially affecting value that are not readily observable, and how that applies to a specific piece of work is a question for a Florida attorney. From the transaction side, the practical point is timing: resolved while you still control the calendar, it is a permitting matter; raised inside a buyer's inspection period, it becomes part of the negotiation. That is why we ask about improvement history at the listing appointment rather than after an offer.

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Where This Leaves You

All seven projects are still worth doing. What changes when you do them here is the order of the questions: which department, which association, and what the record will say afterwards. Answer those three first and the work itself is the easy part.

If you are trying to work out which of these is worth your time before a sale, that conversation is a specific one and it is not a sales call. Bring the address, the association name if there is one, a list of what has already been done to the house, and roughly when you would want to be on the market. The permit history is a public record, and going through what it shows alongside what you are planning is where that conversation starts. Sometimes the answer is that the house is ready and the money is better kept.