Bathroom Remodeling

A bathroom on the Gulf Coast is asked to do something a bathroom in a dry climate is not. For most of the year the air outside holds more moisture than the air inside, so the drying happens in the opposite direction from what a lot of tile and waterproofing advice assumes. Get that backwards and you seal moisture into a wall instead of letting it out. It is the single most common reason a bathroom that looked beautiful on handover has a soft spot behind the tile four years later.

So the waterproofing is the job and the tile is the finish. Every shower we build gets a proper pan and a bonded waterproof membrane behind the board before a single tile is set, and it gets tested before it is covered. Tile laid straight onto backer board looks identical for about two years, which is exactly why it keeps getting sold that way.

The other thing we correct constantly is the exhaust fan. In a great many houses around here the bath fan does not go outside at all, it dumps into the attic, and a Florida attic runs well past 130 degrees. That warm wet air has to condense somewhere. Every fan we install vents through the roof or the soffit to the outdoors, which is both code and common sense. We also get asked for curbless and low threshold showers more than anything else on this coast, because a great many people here intend to stay in the house they are in, and a walk in shower done properly is one of the better investments in that plan.