Pine Island — Bokeelia, St. James City, Matlacha — is its own kind of building environment. The homes out here are older, often on stilts, frequently one-of-a-kind, and almost nothing about them is standard. A stock solution that works on a slab home in town simply will not fit. We remodeled a bathroom in a 1960s stilt home in Bokeelia: swapped an oversized sunken tub for a walk-in shower, with new tile, a new vanity, and updated finishes throughout. Partway through we found damage from a leak nobody knew about, so we dried it out and dealt with it before the new work went in. That is generally how it goes out here, and we plan for it. Island homes take longer to get to and more thought to get right, and we are glad to make the drive.
