Bathroom
Remodeling
in Los Angeles.

Because we test it before we cover it. Once the pan is waterproofed and before any decorative tile is set, it gets filled and left for 24 hours. A pan that holds water for a full day with no drop is a pan that isn't going to surprise you later.

It's a slow step and it's the cheapest insurance on the whole job. Finding a problem at that stage costs an afternoon. Finding it after the tile is set costs the bathroom.

Whichever one the job actually calls for. We're experienced in four broad approaches and choose per project: the geometry of the shower, the substrate, the drain location, and the tile you picked all push the decision one way or another.

Bonded sheet membrane, like Schluter-KERDI: a fabric-faced sheet bonded to the board with thinset, seams overlapped, corners preformed. The waterproofing sits directly under the tile, so the assembly never stays saturated, and it's the easiest to inspect because the membrane is continuous and visible right up until the tile covers it.

Bonded foam board, like WEDI and HydroBlok: the panel is both the substrate and the barrier, with seams sealed at the joints. Fewer layers to get wrong, and it builds a bench or a curb out of material that can't rot in the first place.

Liquid-applied membrane: rolled or troweled on in coats with fabric reinforcement at corners and changes of plane. Handles odd geometry and tight reveals well. Its weakness is that performance depends entirely on film thickness, and a thin spot becomes invisible the moment tile covers it.

Traditional hot mop or PVC liner over a mortar bed: how most old LA showers were built. The liner sits under a deep mud bed, so the bed is wet by design and drains through weep holes at the drain. Built correctly it's a proven assembly. Built with clogged weeps, no preslope, or a liner cut at the curb, it fails quietly for years before you see it.

What we won't do is improvise a hybrid. A membrane, its corners, its band and its drain are engineered to work together as one assembly, and splicing brands is where that assembly comes apart. Manufacturers warrant these as systems, not as parts.

Almost never the field tile. Failures cluster in five places, and every one of them is a decision made before the tile went on:

• The drain connection: wrong drain body for the membrane system, or a clamping ring never torqued down onto the liner.
• No preslope. The mud bed under a liner has to pitch to the weep holes. Flat means water sits on the liner permanently.
• The curb. It's the most-cut, most-penetrated part of the assembly, and the place a liner most often gets stapled straight through.
• Change-of-plane corners grouted instead of caulked. Grout is rigid; the corner between two walls moves. It cracks, then it wicks.
• Niches with membrane stopped at the opening instead of carried through the box, and flat sills that hold standing water.

Usually, but the answer depends on your foundation. On a raised foundation the pan gets recessed between the joists so the tile finishes flush with the room. That's carpentry, which we do ourselves, and the crawl space also makes everything under the floor easier to reach.

On a slab there's nothing to recess into. Lowering the drain means cutting and trenching concrete; the alternative is building the whole bathroom floor up so the shower can pitch into a linear drain, with the drain work itself going to the licensed plumber. Both work, they just cost different amounts of labor.

Either way the floor still has to slope to the drain, roughly a quarter inch per foot. Curbless doesn't remove the slope, it moves where the slope starts. A linear drain set against the back wall lets the whole floor pitch in one direction, which is why large-format tile and curbless entries go together well.

A lot of Los Angeles housing stock predates 1950, and those bathrooms arrive with a familiar set of conditions.

Lath and plaster. Original walls are rarely plumb, and a fair amount of drift across a wall is normal, not alarming. That's irrelevant for a painted wall and matters enormously for 24×48 porcelain, where lippage shows from across the room. Large-format tile on an old wall means furring or floating the substrate flat first: real work that no materials quote from a retailer will ever mention. Plaster demo is dirtier than drywall demo, too.

Raised foundation vs. slab. A raised foundation gives you access from below: plumbing is reachable, curbless recesses are practical, problems are visible before they're buried. A slab gives you none of that, and every plumbing change becomes concrete work. It's the first thing we look at on a walkthrough, because it drives layout and schedule more than any finish selection does.

What's behind the wall. Galvanized supply and cast iron drain lines are common in houses of that era, and opening a wall is the only honest way to learn what shape they're in. If we open a wall and find something outside our scope, you hear about it the day we find it.

As framing decisions, not tile decisions. A niche gets located before the walls close up, because it has to live in a stud bay, clear of plumbing and off the wet wall unless you want to re-route pipe. Get that wrong and you end up with a niche that's whatever width was left over, sized to nothing in particular.

The details that make a niche look built rather than added: sizing the opening to the tile module so you aren't left with a half-inch sliver at the top; sloping the sill so water runs out instead of standing in the corner; and mitering the returns at 45° instead of running metal trim, which is what we did on the Porcelanosa half bath see the project.

A bench follows the same logic. A bench is a waterproofing problem wearing a seat. It has to be sloped, fully wrapped in the same membrane system as the pan, and built out of something that won't rot, not a stud-and-plywood box with membrane draped over it.

Between 1 and 4 weeks depending on scope. Replacing tile and fixtures in an existing layout is the fast end. A full gut where we build a curbless pan and float old lath-and-plaster walls flat for large-format tile lands at the long end. Old houses also surprise you: what's behind the wall isn't knowable until the wall is open. We give you a range up front and tell you the day anything changes it.

It depends on scope and materials, so we don't publish numbers we'd have to walk back. The consultation is free and the estimate is itemized, with the scope of work spelled out. We work on a standard payment plan, and we don't offer financing.

Depends on the job. We're not a general contractor and we don't pretend otherwise. We handle the carpentry and framing a bathroom needs, plus vanities, toilets, and lighting fixtures, and rough-in plumbing and electrical go to licensed tradespeople. We do not install countertops. If your project involves moving exterior walls, structural changes, or a permitted scope beyond the bathroom, you want a GC leading it, and we're glad to do the bathroom and tile work inside someone else's project. We'd rather say that on day one than halfway through demo.

Yes. We work with clients who source their own material all the time, and we also buy from local and national retailers: past projects have used tile from Zia Tile, Bedrosians, Porcelanosa, handmade Malibu tile out of Ojai, and zellige made in Morocco. If you're sourcing yourself, talk to us before you order. Handmade and zellige tile need meaningfully more overage than machine-made porcelain, and lead times on imported material can move a schedule more than anything happening on site.

Our own team. The overwhelming majority of the work (demo, framing, waterproofing, tile, finish) is done by people who work for us and have for years, not a rotating cast assembled per job.

When a job genuinely needs another trade, it goes to people we've worked alongside for years, and rough-in plumbing and electrical go to licensed tradespeople. We don't pull an unfamiliar crew off a list to hit a date. Corey inspects every major stage and sets a good deal of the tile himself, so there's no project manager standing between you and the person doing the work.

We warranty all of our work, and many of the products we install carry multi-year or lifetime manufacturer warranties on top of that. The honest answer, though, is that leaks are prevented before the tile goes on, not warrantied afterward: the right system for the conditions, installed to the manufacturer's spec, and flood-tested before anything covers it. A warranty is a backstop. Building it correctly the first time is the actual product.

We're based in Northeast Los Angeles and generally work within about 50 miles: Highland Park, Eagle Rock, Glassell Park, Mount Washington, Atwater Village, Silver Lake, Los Feliz, and Echo Park close to home, then Pasadena, South Pasadena, Altadena, Sierra Madre, San Marino, Alhambra, Monrovia, and Arcadia to the east, and Glendale and Burbank to the north. We also head out west as far as Malibu for the right project. If you're near the edge of that radius, ask. We'd rather tell you yes or no on the phone than have you guess.