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Cover Home Additions & ADU: The Fort Lauderdale Owner’s Guide
Home additions and ADU construction in Fort Lauderdale run $45,000 to $130,000 for a ground-up addition, and $90,000 to $220,000 for a full ADU, depending on square footage, foundation work, and finish level. We handle the framing, permitting, and finish work on these projects start to finish, and we carry the materials and structural components on-site so the job doesn’t stall waiting on a supplier.
Most homeowners reach out after noticing the signs something’s off: drywall cracks spreading from a corner, a floor that’s started sloping, or a roof line that doesn’t sit level anymore. Sometimes it’s a Cover addition that was built years ago and the original sill plate has rotted at the slab edge. Fort Lauderdale humidity and the salt air near the Intracoastal eat at untreated lumber faster than most people expect.
Which Cover Models This Applies To
Cover builds prefabricated additions and ADU shells that bolt onto existing structures or sit on new foundations. The panelized wall sections use steel connectors at the top and bottom plates, and the roof trusses are shop-cut to spec. When we replace or extend a Cover addition in Fort Lauderdale, we match the existing panel dimensions and connector spacing so the new section ties into the old framing without a visible seam.
The compatibility gotcha most owners don’t know: Cover’s panel connectors are spaced at 16 inches on center, but the anchor bolts are offset from the stud centers by 1.5 inches. Measure your existing anchor pattern before ordering new bottom plates, or the new wall won’t line up with the old bolt holes. For Cover-specific structural parts, OEM is worth the premium because the connector steel gauge is stamped to match the panel design. Aftermarket framing lumber and sheathing are fine, but the metal connectors should stay Cover-spec. We also work with materials from KraftMaid, Cambria, and Silestone when the project includes finishes, but the structural bones stay matched to what’s in your existing addition.
Sawyer Remodel Fort Lauderdale is an independent contractor. We’re not affiliated with Cover, but we’ve repaired and extended enough of their additions across Broward County that we know their panel layouts and permit history in Fort Lauderdale’s building department.
Styles & brands we work with
Signs Your Cover Home Additions & ADU Is Failing
- Drywall cracks at the corner of the addition’s ceiling. This usually means the roof trusses are shifting because a hurricane clip came loose or was never installed to current code. The crack widens in summer when the trusses expand in the heat.
- Doors inside the addition start sticking or won’t latch. That’s the floor framing sagging or the sill plate compressing. In Fort Lauderdale, this often traces back to a leak at the exterior band joist that wicked into the floor system and rotted it from the inside out.
- A musty smell that persists after cleaning. Water is getting behind the sheathing or the sole plate is wicking moisture from the slab. If you catch it early, you replace a section of plate. If you let it sit, the stud ends rot and the wall loses bearing.
- Visible daylight through the top plate where the addition meets the original house. The flashing failed and the seal between old and new construction has opened up. Every rain event is pushing water into that gap.
- Floor squeaks that are loud and localized, not spread across the room. A single loud spot means one joist hanger or a rim joist connection has started to pull. The squeak is the nail moving in the hole, which means the fastener has already lost its grip.
See the difference
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After
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After
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AfterReplacement Cost & What’s Included
Here’s what we quote in Fort Lauderdale right now:
- Structural repair to an existing Cover addition (sill plate, rim joist, or truss connection): $4,500 to $18,000 depending on how much framing has to come out and whether the finishes get opened up.
- Full ground-up home addition (bedroom, den, or extended living space): $45,000 to $130,000 including foundation, framing, roofing, electrical rough-in, drywall, and paint.
- Complete ADU construction (permitted, with kitchenette and bath): $90,000 to $220,000 depending on site access, utility runs, and finish package.
- Extending an existing Cover addition’s roofline or envelope: $30,000 to $80,000, which covers tying new trusses into the old roof, matching the exterior finish, and re-doing the flashing correctly.
What drives the range: how much of the old framing we can salvage, whether the slab has settled and needs leveling, what the Fort Lauderdale building department requires for wind-load upgrades on your specific zone, and whether the electrical panel has capacity for the new square footage. Every estimate we write in Fort Lauderdale includes a line-item breakdown. The number on the estimate is the number on the invoice. No change orders unless you approve them in writing first, and the work carries our 365-Day Done Right Promise: if something’s not right within a year, we come back and fix it.
DIY or Call Us?
You can safely check a few things yourself: look for daylight at the top plate, check whether doors bind, run a level across the floor. That tells you something’s moving. Diagnosing and fixing it is different. Removing a load-bearing wall or lifting a roof plane without temporary bracing can drop the structure on you. The same goes for cutting into a truss, even for a plumbing chase: a truss is an engineered member, and once you notch the bottom chord, it’s compromised.
The repair work on a failed Cover addition means opening up the framing, replacing rotted lumber while holding the structure stable, reconnecting the Simpson or Cover-spec connectors, and re-flashing everything before it gets closed back up. That’s not a weekend job. If you’re in Fort Lauderdale and the addition is showing real movement, call us at (754) 354-7423. We’ll put eyes on it, tell you what’s moving, and hand you a written price before anything gets cut.
FAQs
A properly flashed and pressure-treated framing package holds up 40 to 60 years in Fort Lauderdale’s climate, but the original Cover additions we see typically start showing moisture issues at the sill plate between year 8 and year 15 if the original flashing wasn’t detailed correctly for hurricane-driven rain. The salt air near the coast accelerates corrosion on exposed metal connectors. Call (754) 354-7423 if you want us to inspect your connection points, free estimate includes it.
Roughly 70 percent of the failed Cover additions we look at in Fort Lauderdale are repairable with targeted replacement of the rotted plate sections and re-flashing at the failure point. Rebuild only makes sense when the rot is widespread enough that we’re already opening more than half the wall or when the slab itself has failed. We’ll tell you straight either way before any work gets quoted.
A targeted structural repair runs 3 to 7 working days including drywall patch and paint. A full ground-up addition in Fort Lauderdale runs 10 to 16 weeks depending on permit turnaround and your finish selections. An ADU is usually 14 to 20 weeks. We give you a start date and a finish count, then we hit them or tell you why we can’t before it becomes your problem to ask about.
We stock the common structural pieces on our trucks and at our Fort Lauderdale yard: pressure-treated bottom plates, rim joist stock, hurricane clips, and the connector plates we use on Cover-style panelized construction. Oddball Cover-specific stamped connectors sometimes take 3 to 5 days from the supplier, which we handle during the permitting window so it doesn’t stall the job.
Written by Luca Romano, Owner & Lead Contractor, Sawyer Remodel Fort Lauderdale at Sawyer Remodel Fort Lauderdale, serving Fort Lauderdale and nearby areas.
