Custom Bathrooms

Scope is the first thing to settle, because a primary bathroom and a hall bathroom are different projects. A primary suite remodel usually involves a larger shower, a separate tub or the removal of one, a double vanity, better lighting, and sometimes borrowing space from a closet or a wall. A secondary or hall bath is smaller, serves kids or guests, and needs to be durable and simple: a tub-shower combination that cleans easily, a single vanity with real storage, and a floor that survives wet feet. Trying to give a hall bath primary-suite finishes tends to waste money, while giving a primary suite hall-bath fixtures leaves owners disappointed with the room they use twice a day.

Houston homes built from the 1970s through the early 2000s often have a primary bath with a garden tub taking up the corner, a small stall shower, and a vanity with a single row of drawers. The most common request we hear is to remove the tub, build a large walk-in shower where it sat, and rework the vanity for storage. That is a layout change, not a refresh, and it changes drain locations. We walk through the room with you, measure what can move, and price the full scope and a lighter version side by side in the free itemized quote so the decision is made with numbers in front of you.

Most owners doing a primary bath today want a bigger shower and do not miss the tub. Removing it frees a large footprint, and a curbless or low-curb shower in that space makes the room feel open. The trade-off is the future: a home with no tub anywhere can be a resale question for families with small children, so we usually recommend keeping a tub in at least one bathroom in the house. Where the primary bath is large enough, a freestanding tub next to a walk-in shower gives both. Where it is not, the tub goes and the hall bath keeps its tub-shower combination for the household.

Shower design decides the plumbing scope. A curbless entry needs the floor recessed or built up so the slope runs to the drain without a step, and on a slab foundation that means cutting the slab or raising the surrounding floor. A linear drain along one wall allows a single-slope floor and large-format tile. Multiple heads, a rain head, or body sprays each need a supply line and valve, and the water heater needs to keep up with them. Glass is measured after tile is finished. These choices are made on paper before demolition, because moving a drain after the slab is patched is an expensive change.

Tile and grout are not waterproof. Water gets through them, and what happens next depends on the system behind them. In a Houston bathroom that runs hot and humid every day, the wet areas need a proper waterproofing membrane on the walls and floor, sealed at every corner, seam, and penetration, with the shower pan sloped to the drain under the tile as well as on top of it. Cement board or a foam board designed for wet areas replaces the moisture-resistant drywall that many older baths were built with. We flood-test shower pans before tile goes down. That is the step that decides whether the room is still dry in ten years.

Tile choices follow from that. Large-format porcelain on the floor means fewer grout lines and easier cleaning, and it needs a flat substrate. Natural stone is beautiful but porous, and it needs sealing and gentler cleaners, which is worth knowing before choosing it for a shower used every day. Niches, benches, and half walls are built and waterproofed as part of the same system rather than added later. Grout is chosen for stain resistance in wet areas. Movement joints go where the plane changes, because a shower corner grouted rigid will crack as the house moves on Houston's clay soil through the seasons.

Most Houston houses sit on a concrete slab, and the bathroom drains run under it. Moving a toilet, shower, or tub means cutting the slab, rerouting the drain with proper fall, and patching the concrete before the floor goes back. That is routine work, but it has to be planned, and it is the reason a layout change costs more than a refresh. On older pier-and-beam homes there is crawl space access and the job is simpler. Either way, we look at the existing drain lines during the site visit, and on older houses we recommend a camera inspection so a cast-iron line near the end of its life is replaced while the floor is open.

Supply lines are the other half. Older galvanized or original copper is often worth replacing back to the main while the walls are open, since doing it later means opening finished tile. New shower valves are set to the tile thickness so the trim sits flush. A larger shower with multiple outlets may need a bigger supply line or a recirculating loop so hot water arrives quickly. If the water heater is older or undersized for the new fixtures, we tell you before the quote is signed rather than after the first cold shower. All of that rough work is inspected before it is covered up.

A bathroom in this climate produces steam into air that is already saturated much of the year, and the house's air conditioning is the only thing drying it. A proper exhaust fan, ducted outside rather than into the attic, sized for the room, and run on a timer or humidity sensor, does more for the life of the finishes than any paint or grout choice. Many older Houston baths have a fan that vents into the attic or none at all, and the result is peeling paint, swollen door trim, and mildew in the corners of the shower. We treat the fan as part of the mechanical scope, not an accessory.

The rest of the room follows the same logic. Paint is a moisture-resistant formula. Vanities are built from materials that do not swell when the floor gets wet, and the toe kick and back are sealed. Windows in the shower, common in older Houston homes, get either replaced with a wet-rated unit and properly flashed or removed and the wall closed. Where a bathroom shares a wall with a closet, we check that the closet side stays dry. These details are quiet, and they are what separate a bathroom that still looks new after years of daily use from one that needs recaulking every season.

Bathroom work goes fast at the start and slow at the end. Demolition takes a day or two. Plumbing and electrical rough-in follow, with inspections where the permit calls for them. Then the room is closed up with waterproofing and substrate, and tile setting begins, which is the longest single phase because floors, walls, niches, and the shower pan each need to set before the next step. Glass is measured after tile and takes time to fabricate. Vanities, tops, mirrors, fixtures, and paint finish the room. Because the sequence has waits built in, we order tile, fixtures, and the vanity before demolition and do not start until the long items are confirmed.

For a house with one bathroom, we plan the schedule so a working toilet and shower are out of service for as short a stretch as possible, and we tell you exactly which days those are. With more than one bathroom, the household usually shifts to the other while the work runs. Permits apply when plumbing or electrical move: City of Houston inside city limits, county offices in unincorporated Harris, Fort Bend, and Montgomery County, and the suburb's own office in cities that run their own. The free itemized quote lists demolition, rough-in, waterproofing, tile, fixtures, and glass as separate lines so you can adjust the scope before anything is ordered.