Bathroom Remodeling

How Showers Fail

Every failed shower we have opened up failed the same way: the waterproofing behind the tile was wrong or missing. Tile and grout are a wear surface over a waterproof layer, not the layer itself.

• No membrane behind the tile. Cement board alone is not waterproofing
• No pre-slope under a mud set pan, so water reaching the liner sits in the bed permanently
• Blocked weep holes at the drain, which does the same thing
• Corner and change of plane failures, exactly where it is hardest to detail
• Niches and benches, the two most commonly botched features in a custom shower
• Grout treated as waterproofing, which no sealer changes

What We Install

• A bonded sheet or liquid applied membrane over the full enclosure with reinforced corners
• Pre-sloped pans with the slope verified before anything goes over it
• A twenty four hour flood test before a single tile is set. If it does not hold we find out then instead of eighteen months later
• Movement joints in silicone rather than grout at changes of plane
• Exhaust ducted to the exterior, never into the attic. A bath fan dumping humid air into a DFW attic is a moisture problem you are creating on purpose

Ask any bathroom contractor whether they flood test before tile.

What North Texas Does To A Bathroom

Much of the Metroplex runs hard water. It scales shower glass, clouds chrome and shortens the life of valve cartridges, so we steer people toward glass that gets treated and fixtures we can still get parts for in ten years. A beautiful shower with an obsolete cartridge is a demolition job later.

Slab construction shapes the layout conversation. Moving a toilet flange or a shower drain means cutting the slab, and that is a real line item rather than a small change. Keeping drains where they are and moving only the walls saves most of that money.

Bath fans matter more here than people think. Attic temperatures climb hard in July, and a fan dumping wet air into that space condenses on the decking. Ours duct through the roof or the wall, with the termination flashed.