A studio that only knows one room
Five people, one workshop, and a deliberately narrow business. We are not learning your bathroom on your budget, because we have already built four hundred of them.
Why bathrooms, and nothing else
Ottoline Varga trained as an architectural technologist and spent nine years detailing wet rooms for a commercial fit-out contractor, where a leak is measured in floors rather than in ceiling stains. What struck her about domestic work was how little of that detailing made it into a house: no drawing, no wet-film gauge, no flood test, and a shower built by whoever was free that week.
Meridian started in 2011 as a two-person operation doing tub-to-shower conversions in Washington Park. The decision to stay bathroom-only was made in the first year and has been tested since by every client who asked whether we would also do the kitchen. The answer has always been no, and it is the reason we can quote a conversion to within a day or two and hold to it.
What that narrowness buys you
Four hundred and twelve bathrooms means we have already met your house. We know what a 1921 Denver Square hides under its mortar bed, why the fan in a 1988 Littleton split-level is staining the ceiling, and what a Cherry Creek building's rules will do to the delivery schedule. None of that is expertise you can buy; it is just repetition.
It also means the whole team is in the same room. There is no division doing extensions, no crew that floats between trades. The person who waterproofs your shower is the person who waterproofed the one before it, and the setter who lays your herringbone has laid several hundred.
How we work
Show the part nobody sees
Wet-film readings, coverage photographs, flood-test timestamps and heat-mat resistance readings all go in your file. If it is not written down it did not happen.
Draw it before you buy it
A 1:20 setting-out drawing is the cheapest part of a bathroom and it prevents the most expensive mistakes. Nothing gets ordered until you have approved one.
Say the awkward thing early
Curbless may not be possible. Marble will etch. The stone is eleven weeks. We would rather have that conversation at the survey than in week four.
Stay narrow on purpose
Bathrooms only. Not kitchens, not additions, not whole-home renovation. It is the same room every week, which is why we get faster and not sloppier.
The people
Ottoline Varga
Founder and lead designer
Trained as an architectural technologist, spent nine years detailing wet rooms for a commercial fit-out contractor, and started Meridian in 2011 because nobody was applying that level of detailing to a domestic bathroom.
NKBA member · 14 years on bathrooms only
Desmond Achterberg
Lead tile setter
Sets every complex floor in the studio and has never handed over a herringbone that did not close. Ran the tile package on the Cherry Creek ensuite and the Park Hill restoration.
CTEF Certified Tile Installer #0000 (sample)
Nadia Berenguer
Waterproofing and site lead
Runs the membrane and flood-test stage on every project and keeps the photographic file. Schluter and Laticrete system certified, which is why we can work in either family.
Schluter and Laticrete system certified
Rufus Ikande
Cabinetmaker
Builds every vanity and storage wall in the Santa Fe Drive workshop, scribed to the opening after the walls are corrected. Responsible for the offset wastes that let the top drawer close.
Bench-trained joiner, 18 years
Coralie Nwachukwu
Project coordinator
Holds the programme, the lead times and the inspection bookings, and is the person who tells you which two days the water will be off. Every client has her number.
Runs 6 to 8 concurrent projects
Team names, portraits and credentials are sample content for this demonstration site.
In numbers
- 412bathrooms since 2011sample
- 11 daysmedian tub-to-shower conversionsample
- 24 hrflood test on every shower
- 4.9from 214 verified reviewssample
Trade certifications and licensing
- CTEF Certified Tile InstallerTwo setters certified, #0000 and #0000 (sample)
- Colorado licensed and insuredLic. #GC-000000 · $2M general liability (sample)
- Schluter and Laticrete trainedSystem-certified for both waterproofing families
- NKBA member studioNational Kitchen & Bath Association, Rocky Mountain chapter
- EPA Lead-Safe certified firmRequired on Denver housing stock built before 1978
- Flood-tested, every shower24 hours, photographed at fill and at drain
Come and see the workshop
Santa Fe Drive, Bay 4. Saturdays by appointment, and there is usually a vanity on the bench.
Bathrooms only · Licensed and insured in Colorado · 4.9 from 214 reviews (sample)