Kay Construction Group LLC

Here’s some pics of a project we recently started. This foundation will soon be a 24’x24’ detached garage with a conditioned storage area.

We’re excited to share our most recent VA accessibility remodel project. We completely opened up the kitchen and bathroom to allow for better wheelchair access and functionality for this Veteran.

If you know a disabled Veteran who qualifies for the SAH grant, please have them contact us! We will travel across Central and North Florida to help them out.

We’re very proud of our guys and the work they do! Take a look at some lovely remodels we’ve completed over the past few months.

Check out this recent remodel project our team completed. This 700 sq ft garage was converted into a Mother In Law Suite. It included a bedroom with walk-in closet, bathroom, smaller guest bedroom, and a laundry room.

We want to wish a happy 25th birthday to the driving force behind Kay Construction Group LLC. A great partner. A great person. And the best son! We are so glad to have you with us on this journey, Trey Kay. You keep opening up new doors(and windows) for this company. As well as taking us to new heights. Hope you have a great day !!!

We are proud to serve our country’s veterans by modifying their homes for accessibility. Did you know that through the VA, any disabled veteran who meets certain requirements is eligible for up to $117,000 SAH grant towards remodeling their existing home or building a new home? The goal is to help veterans live safer and more comfortably in their home. The work may include kitchen and bathroom remodeling to decks/ramps, and handicap accessible doors.

As a VA approved builder, we’ll help with all necessary paperwork and can guide the veteran through the application process.

If you know any disabled veterans in the Gainesville/Jacksonville/Tampa regions, please let them know about this amazing opportunity.

We are fortunate enough to have two accessibility remodel projects currently and would like to help as many veterans as we can.

Vote for us in the Remodeler/Contractor category of Homes and Garden section. Thank you.

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2024 Best of the 352 Vote once per day from February 26th - March 17th!

From his first tools…to his current tools! Happy National Sons Day Trey Kay!

Merry Christmas from the Kay Construction family!

It might be too late for this Christmas, but there’s always next year to give your significant other the gift of a lifetime: a brand new bathroom!

Check out this stunning bathroom transformation we completed. We are proud to be able to complete nearly every aspect of this project (excluding countertops) with our in house team. That includes design, demo, tiling, cabinetry, and much more. We’re so thankful to have such a talented group of guys.

Check out the latest bathroom remodel completed by our team. The client was very happy with this one, and even happier that it was a Christmas gift.

The client was my mother :)

It’s incredible what a fireplace & entertainment center can do for the look of a living room. Here’s a recent one completed by our team.

This fireplace is a little unique. It’s an Aquafire electric fireplace that uses LED lights and water v***r to give an incredibly realistic flame. The benefit is there’s no gas plumbing needed and no danger of flames for the little one’s. It’s not like you need the extra heat in Florida anyways.

Lovely bathroom remodel completed by our crew. Very thankful to be able to do this one for a repeat customer!

Happy National Son’s Day! Trey Kay still the best partner in the world !!! He’s been working in a shower for the past 2 consecutive National Son’s Day!!! He is officially a shower specialist!!

Another beautiful kitchen remodel completed by our team.

Take a look at our latest kitchen remodel we completed along with the help of our friends from Mica Works Cabinetry. These clients recently purchased their home and wanted to update the kitchen to something more their style. Along with new Kraftmaid cabinets, quartz countertops, and a porcelain backsplash, we updated their kitchen electrical fixtures to give it a cleaner more modern look. All outlets in the wall were moved to under cabinet strips, and the backsplashes got under cabinet lighting to make them pop. Crown moulding was also installed throughout the living and family rooms.

To top it off, we updated their outdoor kitchen with new countertops and an added sink to make grilling and filling up the dog bowls just a little bit more convenient.

Take a look at this recent bathroom remodel we completed. In addition to a new shower and custom vanity, we converted the existing tub to a closet to give these homeowners some added space that they desired. Lastly, we added grab bars to make this bathroom a little safer and easier to use.

Does your shower have a leak? Don’t worry, it might not be necessary to tear the whole thing out. This homeowner had a leaking shower pan due to a poor install by the original contractor. We were able to remove the first row of wall tile, tear out the existing pan, install a new Schluter shower base, flood test it to ensure there are no leaks, and then install tile and reinstall the shower glass to match. Luckily the homeowner had wall tile left over and we could find a floor tile to match.

Some contractors might push to replace the whole shower because they don’t want to deal with the precision needed to complete a job like this. We had to match tile thicknesses and pan/curb heights just so the glass could be reused and installed exactly how it looked beforehand. In the end, we were able to not only solve this homeowners leak, but we saved them thousands of dollars by being able to save their existing tiled walls and re-use their shower door unit.

(1st pic is before, 2nd is after if you can’t tell the difference).

Proud to announce we are The Original Frameless Shower Doors’ only certified installer for the Gainesville area. You can find some of their many styles of custom shower doors at your local Floor and Decor store.

Take a look at some recent installs we’ve completed.

Excited to share this recently completed kitchen and bath remodel. Knocking down the wall in the kitchen and adding a peninsula helped to expand this small kitchen and give it a more open feel. We also upgraded all the appliances and added a dishwasher (I’m sure the tenants will be excited for that when they move back in for the fall semester).

For the bathroom the owner wanted to keep things on a budget so we kept the existing tub and opted for removing the tile walls and replacing the vanity/toilet.

I knew there was a reason why I enjoyed my career at Lowe’s back in the ‘90’s. They show their American Pride. A place to sit and remember our Veterans who gave all.

Excited to share our most recent kitchen and bathroom renovation. Throughout the house, we tore down the outdated wallpaper/flooring/cabinetry/master bath and replaced them with a more modern style.

Have a remodel project of your own? Give us a call today!

One of the “Good Guys” left in this world.
Proud to know him and call him our friend.

Our Executive Director Bill Lazar is famous! He recently was interviewed by Affordable Housing Finance.

Pop Quiz With Bill Lazar

Meet the executive director of St. Johns Housing Partnership, who shares what his Florida-based organization is working on this year.

By Donna Kimura

Bill Lazar is executive director of St. Johns Housing Partnership, a nonprofit creating affordable housing in north Florida. This year marks the organization’s 25th anniversary.

The Partnership’s work includes a nationally recognized weatherization program, new construction, energy audits, and home repairs for the elderly, disabled, and low-income families.

Last year, Lazar received the Jean Diggs Weatherization Champion Award from the National Association for State Community Service Programs.

What’s on your agenda for 2023?
We kind of spread ourselves thin. That may not be a smart thing, but someone told me a long time ago, “diversify your activities.” That way if the rug gets pulled out from one of them, you’ve still got something else going. We’re probably going to go from building six new single-family homes to 10 or 12. We have three different scattered-site parcels that we’re going to build a duplex or triplex on, rentals that we will keep in our own portfolio. Those are the heavy lifts because we don’t receive subsidies for them. We’re basically trying to use a line of credit to build them and get them stabilized. My hope is that sooner or later we’ll find some financing mechanism to bundle some of them. Our primary business for years has been fixing substandard housing that people on a fixed income own. We’ll work on 100 to 150 homes this year depending on where the funding lines up. The big challenge this year will be the increase in property insurance for our rentals and insurance companies requiring roof replacement for low-income homeowners’ renewal policies.

St. Johns Housing Partnership is celebrating its 25th anniversary. What’s been its secret sauce?
I’ve been very fortunate to be able to hire really talented people. That’s the key to any kind of business, having the right people in the right place. We’ve also always had the attitude of don’t say no to an opportunity. The first multifamily property we bought was back in 2009, and it was a USDA property built in the 1980s. The owner was at the point he was allowed to sell. A friend of mine at Legal Aid called and said you’ve got to buy this property, Southern Villas, even though we didn’t do rental housing at the time. She said, “You have to. If you don’t, there will be 60 seniors who are going to be homeless.” It took us about a year and a half to get it. Around 2013, we were approached by Gorman & Co. who said it wanted to partner with us to rehab the property. We needed it after 30 years. It was the third application when we received the housing tax credits needed to renovate the property.

Are you looking at doing more multifamily housing projects?
We’re in the process of trying to buy three other USDA properties. Two are family properties, and the third is senior housing. Two are in the 25- to 35-unit range, so they’re kind of small for the housing credit program. The other is 60 units. The USDA properties that we work with usually have a small number of units, so they don’t seem to score competitively for housing tax credits unless there are factors. We’re looking at buying these three properties because we don’t want to lose them to the private market, and they are an incredibly valuable asset in these communities. We want to figure out how to preserve them. Somewhere down the road we’ll find funding to upgrade them.

How have hurricanes and natural disasters changed your work?
It’s constantly evolving. The catchword is resiliency. I get involved in all these community conversations and statewide discussions about affordable housing and planning for the future. We’ve got rising sea levels, warming climates. The goal of our weatherization program is to reduce the utility bill on a house, on a very limited rehab budget. People used to be able to turn the AC off at night, and now they don’t. They leave it running. Improving the building envelope and properly sizing the HVAC systems really helps. Hurricane mitigation is a real challenge. For a long time, people kept saying that was a 100-year storm, a 500-year storm. We’ve seen storms that run across the entire state. I think we all have to admit that the 100-year and 500-year analogy doesn’t work anymore. It’s every year. We have to be prepared. The hard part is figuring out what to really do and where the funding comes from to be more resilient. I think the biggest challenge that Florida is facing this year and the next couple of years is the whole crisis with insurance. Our property insurance on our rental properties just went up 300%. To pass that cost on, we would have to raise rents $180 a month per unit. That’s going to hurt our tenants.

How did you get started in affordable housing?
I started back in 1998 with a nonprofit in Jacksonville called Lutheran Social Services of Northeast Florida (LSS). They had an ad in the paper looking for someone to help make small repairs at the homes of seniors. Volunteers were visiting seniors who lived alone, and they were coming back and saying the faucet wasn’t working or there was a leak under the sink. That led the organization to create a new maintenance position. I was working in construction with a friend when I applied. It paid $7 an hour. I had a budget of $500 a house. Whatever I could do for $500 to make the house better, I would. It could be putting glass in a window that didn’t have glass, getting a door to lock, or fixing a sink, and it grew over time. I also had a background of working as a community organizer, so LSS soon had me speaking about the work we were doing to raise funds and volunteers.

Why have you stayed working in housing?
The future of this country is tied to the workforce being able to live some place. Whether it’s affordable rental or affordable homeownership, there’s so much more work that needs to be done. As much as I love the tax credit program, I think somehow we need a 1% housing program. You can borrow money to buy a house or build a house, and if it’s all at 1% and for people under 120% of the area median income, that would have a huge impact on both affordability and volume. Affordable housing will only succeed when we have government, lenders, and builders/developers each participating. Regulatory relief, lower interest rates, and volume production are the three focal points. If anyone sits out, the success rate plummets.

What do you do when you’re not working?
My wife and I have raised two kids, and they’re both on their own. My oldest son is a cinematographer. My youngest son is a traveling cardiovascular invasive tech. Right now, we have six rescue puppies at our house. A rescue group needed a place to home the puppies until they are old enough to be adopted. My wife is retired, the puppies are a part-time “job” for her all day long. At the end of my day, it’s great stress relief to help out and watch the puppies.

https://www.housingfinance.com/news/pop-quiz-with-bill-lazar_o

Here’s some door and window replacements our guys have completed within the last year or so.

Whether it’s a whole home replacement or just a single door/window, we can help. Give us a call today!

Take a look at a metal building project we recently completed. Our responsibilities included the foundation work, plumbing rough in for a future half bath, and electrical rough-in/trim out. The client plans to use the space as an art studio and eventually finish out the inside completely.

Check out our most recent bathroom renovations. We’re very proud to have a talented group of guys that take pride in their work and it shows in the final product.

Let us help you with your next remodel project. Our team can guide you all the way through the process from design to construction.

Take a look at a recent exterior renovation project of ours. This house had extensive structural rot and water damage in multiple areas. This project included removal and replacement of all damaged framing, sealing & flashing of those areas as well as installing gutters to minimize and prevent future water damage, installation of Hardie lap siding, and exterior painting.

Have an exterior renovation or just have minor rot repair, give us a call today!

We’re excited to share pics of our most recent porch enclosure project with you! These clients had another baby on the way and needed to expand their living space for the kids. In addition to enclosing the porch, we also added a nice paver patio to their backyard.

Saying goodbye to a great couple from Queen of Peace. Who also happened to be one of the first customers of Kay Construction. They continued to be great friends/customers for many years. So long Rita & Steve, you will be greatly missed.

What do you do when your aunt & uncle need help down near Tampa? You go….and bring your dad too.