Bathroom Remodeling

Overview

A bathroom is the room most likely to be done badly, because almost everything that matters is hidden the moment the tile goes up. Waterproofing membrane, slope to drain, blocking behind the wall, ventilation that actually moves air outside instead of into the ceiling cavity — none of it is visible in the finished photograph, and all of it decides whether the room lasts fifteen years or fails in three.

In South Florida that matters more than almost anywhere. Humidity is relentless, older buildings hide cast-iron waste lines that are at the end of their life, and a shower pan that was installed without a proper pre-slope will find the ceiling below it eventually. We open the walls, look at what is actually there, and tell you what we find before we cover it up again.

What we look for before we quote

A bathroom quote given over the phone is a guess. On the visit we check the age and material of the waste line, whether the subfloor has previously been wet, where the joists run (which decides whether a drain can move at all), the ventilation path, and whether the wall is shared with a neighboring unit. Those five things move a bathroom budget more than the tile you choose.

Where bathrooms actually fail

Almost always at the junctions: where the pan meets the wall, where the niche meets the field tile, at the curb, and at the door threshold. Tile is waterproof; grout is not. What keeps water out of your structure is the membrane behind the tile and the way it is lapped at every change of plane. We flood-test before tiling. It takes a day and it is the cheapest insurance in the entire project.