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Wellborn Bathroom Remodeling: The Fort Lauderdale Owner’s Guide
Wellborn bathroom remodeling in Fort Lauderdale typically runs $9,000 to $28,000 installed, depending on whether you’re refreshing a vanity and fixtures or gutting the room to the studs. We stock Wellborn-compatible hardware, hinges, drawer slides, and door fronts on the truck, and we install with written pricing before any work starts. Most Fort Lauderdale homeowners discover a failed Wellborn component the way you just did: a drawer that hangs, a soft-close hinge that stopped catching, a cabinet door swollen at the edge from humidity, or a vanity base showing water damage where the finish has finally given up.
Penhallow Remodeling Fort Lauderdale is an independent contractor, not affiliated with Wellborn. We work on Wellborn cabinetry because it’s built well and we know how it behaves in South Florida’s climate. When a Wellborn bathroom needs work, the question usually isn’t whether the cabinet is worth saving. It’s whether the part can be matched, repaired, or replaced without tearing out tile that’s still in good shape.
Which Wellborn Models This Applies To
Wellborn has manufactured several cabinet lines over the decades, and Fort Lauderdale homes built from the 1990s through the 2010s are most likely to have one of three: the Wellborn Estate series, the Wellborn Premier series, or the Wellborn Cabinet Essentials line sold through regional suppliers. Here’s the compatibility issue most homeowners run into: Wellborn changed its hinge boring pattern and drawer box construction in the mid-2000s across several lines. If your bathroom vanity was built before roughly 2005, the original hinges are likely face-frame mounted with a 1/2-inch overlay. After that, most Wellborn bathroom vanities switched to full-overlay concealed hinges with a 35mm cup bore. The hinge you buy at a big-box store won’t always match the bore pattern on the older frame.
To identify what you have, pull one drawer and look at the box joints. Dovetail joints and a solid maple drawer box generally mean Estate or Premier series. Stapled particleboard with a vinyl wrap usually means the Essentials line. The drawer slide length matters too: Wellborn used 18-inch slides on most bathroom vanities, but larger double-bowl vanities sometimes shipped with 21-inch slides. That three-inch difference means ordering the wrong slide and having a drawer that won’t close flush. We measure before we order, every time.
For hinges and slides, we prefer OEM Wellborn replacement parts when the line is still in production. For older series that Wellborn no longer supports, we install quality aftermarket equivalents with the same load rating and close-bias. We also stock KraftMaid-compatible hardware and parts, along with the framing and trim materials for any repair that extends beyond the cabinet itself. If your project involves Cambria or Silestone countertops, we coordinate that work in the same visit.
Styles & brands we work with
Signs Your Wellborn Bathroom Remodeling Is Failing
- The soft-close hinge stopped catching. This is the most common failure in humid bathrooms. Moisture works into the hinge’s internal damper and the grease breaks down. You’ll notice the door slams instead of slowing, or it won’t stay fully closed. On Wellborn cabinets from before the full-overlay switch, this often means replacing the hinge as a pair, because a new one next to an old one sits slightly proud.
- The drawer front is pulling away from the drawer box. We see this on vinyl-wrapped drawer fronts and on solid wood fronts that were attached with short staples and glue. In a Fort Lauderdale bathroom, the daily steam cycle loosens that glue within about eight to twelve years. The fix is re-mounting the front with proper fasteners and a moisture-resistant adhesive, not just adding more glue to the old joint.
- The vanity base is swollen, dark, or soft at the toe kick. That’s water wicking up from floor mopping, a slow supply line leak, or splash-out from the shower. The cabinet is absorbing it like a sponge. If the particleboard has turned dark and crumbly, the base panel needs to be cut out and replaced, and the plumbing checked before it rots the floor framing underneath.
- Finish is peeling or bubbling near the sink or faucet. Wellborn finishes hold up well, but no factory finish survives standing water forever. Once the topcoat separates, the wood underneath starts discoloring within weeks. We can often sand and refinish a door front rather than replacing it, if the panel hasn’t delaminated.
- The drawer slides rattle or grind when you open them. Salt air and humidity aren’t kind to ball-bearing slides, especially in bathrooms that vent poorly. A slide that grinds is usually full of fine rust or hair and dust packed into the bearing tracks. Sometimes it’s a ten-minute cleaning and re-lube. If the bearings are pitted, the slide gets replaced.
Replacement Cost & What’s Included
A full Wellborn bathroom remodel in Fort Lauderdale runs $9,000 to $28,000, with most projects landing somewhere in the middle. The biggest cost drivers are whether you’re keeping the existing layout or moving plumbing, whether the shower gets replaced or just the cabinet run, and what finish level you’re after on the cabinet fronts. A focused repair, like swapping hinges and slides on an existing Wellborn vanity and re-aligning the drawers, is a much smaller job, usually a few hundred dollars in parts and a service visit. We’ll give you a written number for either path before any work begins.
Every repair we do at Penhallow Remodeling Fort Lauderdale includes parts, labor, and cleanup in one written price. You’ll know the exact figure before we order a single hinge. The work is covered by our 365-Day Done Right Promise: if it fails inside a year, we come back and fix it at no charge. That’s in writing on every project, no fine print about service fees. Trevor Nash has been running crews in South Florida long enough to know that the guarantee is the only part of a remodel anyone remembers five years later.
See the difference
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AfterDIY or Call Us?
Here’s an honest split. You can absolutely check whether a drawer slide is loose, whether a hinge is just gunked up with hairspray and dust, and whether the cabinet doors are still square to the frame. If a drawer front is pulling away but the box is solid, you can snug it with a clamp and a couple of well-placed screws if you’re careful not to split the face frame. None of that involves risk beyond a skinned knuckle.
Where DIY goes wrong on Wellborn bathroom cabinetry is when the water damage has already moved into the cabinet box, when the hinge bores have stripped out and need to be re-drilled and plugged, or when the problem is actually plumbing, not cabinetry. A vanity in a Fort Lauderdale bathroom that’s been wicking water for two years often has mold behind the base panel and rot in the subfloor. That’s not a cabinet repair anymore. That’s a remodel. If you open the vanity and the smell hits you before you see the problem, call us at (754) 551-2922. We’ll tell you what you’re actually looking at.
FAQs
Fifteen to twenty-five years is realistic in South Florida, assuming the bathroom is vented properly and the finish stays intact. Poor ventilation shortens that to ten or twelve. The cabinet boxes usually fail before the door fronts do, and the failure point in our climate is almost always water at the base or at the plumbing cutout.
If your Wellborn vanities are nearing that range and starting to show swelling, call (754) 551-2922 for an honest read on repair versus replace. Estimates are free.
Yes, in most cases. If the box is square, the doors are intact, and the water damage is limited to the toe kick or a single panel, we can repair it for a fraction of full replacement cost. If the particleboard has swollen past about one-sixteenth of an inch or the joints are separating, the structural integrity is gone and repair stops making financial sense. We’ll show you the damage and give you both numbers, then you decide.
Two to four weeks is typical for a full bathroom remodel in Fort Lauderdale, longer if we’re moving plumbing or re-framing water-damaged sections. A cabinet-specific repair, like swapping hinges, slides, and drawer fronts on an existing Wellborn vanity, usually takes one day on site. We’ll give you a written arrival window before we show up, and the crew leaves the bathroom usable or taped off and clearly marked each night.
We stock common Wellborn-compatible hinges, slides, drawer guides, and mounting hardware on the truck for same-visit repairs. For model-specific parts, like a matched door front or a specialty hinge plate from an older Estate series, we order directly and fast-ship it. If we don’t have it, we’ll tell you on the phone before we schedule, not after we open the cabinet.
Call (754) 551-2922 and tell us the series name or send a photo of the hinge. We’ll match it from the truck or order it and come out once.
Get a Written Price Before Any Work Begins
If your Wellborn bathroom cabinetry is failing, you want to know two things: what’s wrong and what it costs to make it right. Trevor Nash will tell you both. Not a range, not a ballpark, not a number that changes once the wall is open. A written price, a defined arrival window, and a 365-day guarantee in plain language. Tell me what you need, I’ll tell you what it costs, then we’ll get it done.
Call Penhallow Remodeling Fort Lauderdale at (754) 551-2922 for your free estimate. A real person answers, day or night.
Written by Trevor Nash, Owner, Penhallow Remodeling Fort Lauderdale at Penhallow Remodeling Fort Lauderdale, serving Fort Lauderdale and nearby areas.
