Typical span 3–6 weeks
Bathrooms
A bathroom is a waterproofing problem wearing tile. The visible quarter-inch is chosen last; what decides whether the room is still sound in fifteen years is the assembly underneath it, and that gets specified on paper before anything comes off the wall.
Bathrooms are the smallest rooms we work in and the ones where the most can go quietly wrong. Every other room in a house is asked to keep water out. A bathroom is asked to have water thrown at it several times a day, at temperature, for decades, and to send all of it to a drain without any of it reaching the framing.
Almost all bathroom failures we are called to look at are failures of assembly, not of taste. The tile was fine. What sat behind the tile was a moisture-resistant board doing a waterproofing job it was never rated for, or a pan with no slope, or a membrane that stopped six inches short of where the shower spray actually reaches. None of that is visible at handover. All of it is visible four years later in the subfloor.
So the scope of work for a bathroom names the layers. Not “tile shower,” but the pan or tray, the slope, the membrane and where it terminates, the board, the setting bed, the drain assembly and how it is matched to the pan type. You should be able to read that list and understand what you are buying.
Bathroom Remodeling · scope
- Shower assembly specified as a system: pan, slope, membrane, board, setting bed
- Tile layout drawn so cut pieces land where they are least visible
- Ventilation sized to the room and ducted out, not into the attic
- Blocking installed for grab bars whether or not they go in now
- Supply and drain lines replaced back to sound material while open
Every item above appears as a line in your written scope of work with the specific materials named. This list is the shape of the document, not a substitute for it.
C 2.0
The shower is an assembly, not a surface
Whether the pan is a mortar bed built and sloped on site or a pre-formed tray, the same principles apply. Water has to reach the drain by gravity across the whole floor, the waterproof layer has to be continuous and carried up the walls past the height that spray reaches, and the drain assembly has to be the type that particular waterproofing method requires. Mixing a bonded-membrane method with a drain built for a different one is one of the most common defects we find, and it does not announce itself for years.
Above that assembly, the tile layout is drawn rather than improvised. Setting out from a centreline means the cut pieces land at the corners and the least visible edges instead of beside the door, and it means a full tile lands where the eye goes first. Where a niche or a bench is in the scope, its position and its own slope are on the drawing, because a niche with no fall in its base holds water forever.
Movement joints, the transition at the curb or the curbless threshold, and the sealant joints that are meant to be maintained rather than permanent all appear in the specification too. They are the difference between a shower that ages and one that fails.
C 3.0
Ventilation, and where the moisture actually goes
A bathroom fan has one job: move the humid air out of the building. Two things stop it doing that. The first is being undersized for the room. The second, and by far the more common in the houses we work in, is being ducted into an attic or a soffit rather than through the roof or wall to the outside, which simply relocates the moisture to somewhere you cannot see it.
So the fan is sized to the room, ducted with as short and straight a run as the framing allows, in rigid or smooth-wall duct rather than long crushed flexible runs, and terminated at a proper exterior cap. Where the room has no window, and where an occupancy or humidity control makes sense so the fan actually runs long enough to clear the air, that goes in the scope as well.
While the walls are open, we also replace supply and drain lines back to sound material rather than tying new work onto whatever is there. In older Vacaville, Suisun City and Napa housing that frequently means galvanised supply lines that have been narrowing internally for fifty years. Replacing them later means opening finished tile, which is the most expensive possible time to do it.
C 4.0
Small rooms, exact layout, and planning for later
In a room this size, two inches is the difference between comfortable and awkward. Clearance in front of the toilet, the space a vanity drawer needs to open past a door casing, the swing of the entry door against the shower glass, and the towel bar that ends up unreachable from the shower are all resolved on a drawing, at scale, before anything is ordered.
The moment when it costs least to make a bathroom work for the next thirty years is while the walls are already open. A curbless entry, a wider door opening, a comfort-height toilet, a hand-held shower on a slide bar, and solid blocking in the walls for grab bars are all straightforward when they are designed in and disproportionately expensive when they are retrofitted through finished tile. We install blocking as a matter of course whether or not bars are going in now, because the blocking is inexpensive and the tile is not.
On timing: for a full gut of a single bathroom, plan on the room being unusable for the whole of the work — typically three to six weeks depending on tile complexity, ventilation changes, and whether a permit inspection sits in the middle of the schedule. If it is the only bathroom in the house, tell us at the consultation. It changes how we sequence, and occasionally it changes what we recommend.
Bathrooms are frequently part of a larger scope. If more than one room is changing, the whole-home renovation page covers how the phases are arranged so a household keeps a working bathroom throughout.
Questions
Asked about bathroom remodeling
Broader questions about permits, payment stages and living on site are answered on the questions page.
Why does the shower cost more than the tile suggests?
Because the tile is the last quarter-inch of an assembly. Underneath it sits a sloped pan or a pre-formed tray, a waterproof membrane carried up the walls to the right height, a backer board rated for wet areas, a bonded setting bed, and a drain assembly matched to the pan type. Get that assembly wrong and the tile looks fine for two years and then the subfloor rots. The specification for those layers is written into your scope of work.
Can you make the bathroom easier to use as we get older?
Yes, and it costs least while the walls are already open. A curbless entry, a wider door opening, a comfort-height toilet, a hand-held shower on a slide bar, and solid blocking in the walls for grab bars are all straightforward when they are designed in. We install blocking as a matter of course whether or not bars go in now, because retrofitting blocking means opening finished tile.
How long is the bathroom out of service?
For a full gut of a single bathroom, plan on the room being unusable for the whole of the work, typically three to six weeks depending on tile complexity, ventilation changes and whether a permit inspection sits in the middle. If it is your only bathroom, say so at the consultation: it changes how we sequence and, in some cases, whether we recommend doing it in two passes.
Where we do this work
Bathroom Remodeling is carried out by Blue Mountain Construction Services Inc throughout Vacaville, Fairfield, Suisun City, Dixon, Davis, Napa, Solano County, CA. Our office is at 707 Aldridge Road, Suite B, Vacaville, CA 95688, which is why Vacaville projects have the most scheduling flexibility — and why we know which departments review what in the towns around it.
Permit requirements, plan-check turnaround and inspection scheduling all differ between a Vacaville project, a Solano County unincorporated parcel, and a job in Davis or Napa. We tell you which set of rules applies to your address at the consultation rather than after the drawings are done. See the full service area.
Blue Mountain Construction Services Inc
707 Aldridge Road, Suite B Vacaville, CA 95688- Phone
- (800) 889-2085
- info@sillee.com
- Hours
- Mon–Fri 08:00–17:00 America/Los_Angeles
- Trade
- Residential Remodelers
Talk to our team about your bathroom remodeling
Describe the rooms and the changes you are considering. We will come out, take our own measurements, and put a written scope of work in front of you before anything is priced.
Blue Mountain Construction Services Inc · 707 Aldridge Road, Suite B, Vacaville, CA 95688