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Unilock Kitchen Remodeling: The Miami Owner’s Guide
Unilock kitchen remodeling in Miami typically runs $16,520 to $53,100 installed, depending on the pavers you choose, the square footage, and how much structural work the space needs. We stock Unilock-compatible materials and install them through our own background-checked crew, not subcontractors. Most Miami homeowners discover their Unilock kitchen has failed when pavers start shifting underfoot, grout lines crack open, or water pools near the run of cabinets and island base.
What you’re usually seeing is not the paver itself failing. It’s the base underneath. Miami’s limestone soil, high water table, and summer rain cycles work against any paver installation from day one. When the base settles or washes out, the Unilock pavers on top flex, crack, and separate. The fix is rarely one paver. It’s lifting the affected section, rebuilding the base properly, and resetting the pavers so they stay put through the next hurricane season.
Which Unilock Models This Applies To
Unilock makes several paver lines that end up in Miami kitchens: the EnduraColor series (Richcliff, Umbriano, Town Hall), the Elegance series, and the newer Artline and Beacon Hill profiles used for indoor-outdoor kitchen transitions. Each line has different thickness tolerances and joint widths, and mixing them is where we see homeowners get into trouble. A Richcliff paver is not a drop-in replacement for a Beacon Hill paver, even if the color looks close in a photo.
If you’re trying to match a failed section, check the underside of a loose paver for the stamped product code. Unilock molds have identifying marks. Measure the thickness: most indoor kitchen applications use 60mm pavers, while outdoor patios often use 80mm. For the OEM-versus-aftermarket question: Unilock’s OEM pavers are worth the price for color-match and freeze-thaw performance, but for the base material, a quality local aggregate from a Miami supplier will perform just as well as anything branded. We source our base and bedding material from local quarries in Dade County because shipping gravel from out of state makes no sense.
Styles & brands we work with
Signs Your Unilock Kitchen Remodeling Is Failing
- Pavers rock or shift when you step on them. This means the sand bedding layer has washed out underneath, almost always from poor drainage at the base level. Miami’s heavy afternoon rains will keep making it worse.
- Water pools in low spots around your island or cabinet runs. A properly pitched paver kitchen should drain toward a floor drain or the exterior. Standing water means the original install didn’t account for Miami’s flat grade and high water table.
- Wide, uneven gaps appear between pavers. Edge restraint failure. The perimeter of a paver installation has to be held in place, or the whole field walks outward over time. In kitchen settings where cabinets sit on top, this shows up as paver separation near the toe kicks.
- Grout or polymeric sand keeps washing out of the joints. If you’re re-sanding joints every few months, the base is moving underneath. That’s not a maintenance issue, it’s a structural one.
- Cracks spider across multiple pavers, not just one. Single-paver cracks happen. Cracks that run in a line across four or five pavers mean the concrete base below has cracked and telegraphing through. That’s a tear-out, not a patch.
See the difference
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AfterReplacement Cost & What’s Included
In Miami, a Unilock kitchen paver replacement or new installation runs $16,520 to $53,100 for a typical kitchen footprint. A smaller galley-style kitchen with a simple pattern sits at the lower end. A larger kitchen with an island, multiple cabinet runs, custom edge profiles, and a full base rebuild lands at the higher end. The range comes down to three things: total square footage, whether we’re working around existing cabinetry or doing a full tear-out, and the specific Unilock line you’re matching.
Our written price includes material, labor, haul-away of the old base, and the finished install. You get that number before any work starts, in writing, and it doesn’t change unless you change the scope. Every Unilock kitchen job we do in Miami is covered by our 365-Day Done Right Promise: if something isn’t right within a year of completion, we come back and make it right at no cost. No negotiation, no dispute process.
Typical Miami pricing:
- Small kitchen Unilock install: $10,620 – $23,600
- Full kitchen remodel with Unilock flooring: $16,520 – $53,100
- Kitchen island installation with Unilock base: $3,540 – $11,800
- Countertop installation (Cambria, Silestone, Caesarstone): $2,360 – $7,670
- Backsplash installation: $945 – $2,950
DIY or Call Us?
You can safely check a few things yourself. Pull up a loose paver and look at the base underneath. If it’s wet, muddy, or has visible voids, you’ve found the problem. Check whether water is draining away from the kitchen toward a floor drain or exterior door. And look at the edge of your paver field where it meets the wall or cabinets. If you can see a gap there, the edge restraint has failed.
What you should not do is start pulling up large sections of pavers around load-bearing points, especially near an island that carries plumbing and electrical. A kitchen paver job in Miami means working around gas lines, water lines, and electrical runs that run through or under the floor. Cut the wrong line and you’ve turned a paver problem into an emergency. This is a job for a crew that knows what’s under a Miami kitchen slab. Call (850) 780-8123 and we’ll walk the space with you before anything gets touched.
FAQs
With a properly compacted base and good drainage, a Unilock kitchen floor in Miami should last 20 to 30 years before needing major work. The pavers themselves will outlast the base. What shortens that lifespan in Miami is water: if the original contractor didn’t pitch the floor for drainage or didn’t compact the base in lifts, you’ll see failure inside five to seven years. Call (850) 780-8123 and we’ll tell you honestly which category your floor falls into.
Most of the time, the damaged section can be lifted, the base rebuilt underneath, and the same pavers reset. We reuse Unilock pavers on roughly 70% of our Miami repair jobs. The pavers that are cracked or chipped get replaced with matching stock, and if the color has faded, we can usually source the same line and blend it. Full replacement only makes sense when the base failure spans the entire kitchen footprint.
A paver floor replacement in a Miami kitchen takes 3 to 7 working days, depending on the square footage and whether we’re working around existing cabinetry. A full kitchen remodel that includes new cabinets, countertops, and Unilock flooring runs 4 to 8 weeks. We quote the schedule in writing when we quote the price, and we mean both.
We stock the most common Unilock lines for Miami kitchens, including Richcliff, Umbriano, and Town Hall in the colors our clients order most. We also have access to Unilock’s full catalog through our supplier network, which means a match for discontinued or special-order colors usually arrives within a week to ten days. We also install KraftMaid cabinetry, Cambria and Silestone countertops, and the plumbing fixtures to complete the kitchen, so you’re not juggling five vendors. Call (850) 780-8123 for a free estimate and we’ll check stock for your specific line before we ever schedule the job.
Written by Isaac Pruett, Owner, Mason Remodeling Co Miami at Mason Remodeling Co Miami, serving Miami and nearby areas.
