Eighteen questions, answered plainly

Only bathrooms. No kitchens, no additions, no whole-home renovation. It is a narrower business than most remodelers run and it is deliberate: we see the same room, the same failure modes and the same materials every week, which is why we can quote a tub-to-shower conversion to within a day or two.

A tub-to-shower conversion is nine to thirteen working days. A full hall bathroom is twenty-two to thirty. A primary ensuite is thirty to forty-five. Those are days on site; the drawing and selection stages before that take another four to eight weeks, mostly waiting on material lead times.

Almost always, if there is a second bathroom. The room is contained at the door with a zippered barrier and the route in is protected. Water goes off for a few hours at rough-in and again at fixture fit, and we tell you which days those are at the start of the job.

Typically six to ten weeks for a start date, which usually lines up with the drawing and selection period anyway. Survey appointments are generally available within a week.

We plug the drain, fill the finished pan with an inch of water over the flange and leave it for twenty-four hours, photographing it at fill and at drain. If the waterproofing has a pinhole in it, this is when it shows, while the assembly is still open. It is the single cheapest insurance in the whole project and a surprising number of firms skip it.

No, and this is the most common misunderstanding we meet. Cement board is a stable substrate that does not fall apart when it gets wet, which is not the same thing. The waterproofing is a separate bonded membrane applied over it, to ANSI A118.10, with every corner and change of plane banded.

It depends on your joists. A level entry needs the pan recessed an inch and a half to two inches into the floor structure, which needs the joists to run the right way and be deep enough, usually with a sistered header. We answer this on the survey with the floor open where we can, never over the phone.

Because grout is rigid and corners move. Any change of plane, the tile-to-pan joint and the tile-to-tub joint all get 100 percent silicone matched to the grout colour. Grout in those joints will crack, usually within the first heating season, and then it wicks.

Not a mistake, but a commitment. Marble and limestone etch under anything acidic, including many commercial bathroom cleaners, and need sealing and a pH-neutral cleaner. If that sounds like a chore, a good marble-look porcelain gets you ninety percent of the look with none of the maintenance, and we will say so.

On its own, nothing. Ask for the published wet dynamic coefficient of friction from the technical sheet. Anything at or above 0.42 is suitable for a wet floor. Penny round and small-format mosaics clear it comfortably because of the grout area; polished large-format porcelain usually does not.

Labour and waste. A straight stack bond is our baseline. Running bond is about 1.1 times, basketweave 1.4, herringbone 1.5, and a diagonal herringbone 1.7, with waste running from 8 percent up to 18. The pattern library on our materials page lists the figure for every layout we set.

Either. If we supply it, we carry the responsibility for shade lot, caliber and quantity, which matters more than people expect. If you supply it, order from the schedule on the drawing and order it all at once from one lot.

Size it two ways and take the larger: one CFM per square foot of floor, or fifty CFM per wet fixture. Then add one CFM per foot of duct over ten feet and fifteen per elbow. A typical 70 square foot bathroom lands at around 110 CFM. Our ventilation table on the materials page works through six room sizes.

On a tile floor, yes, and we fit them on most projects. The mat sits in thinset above the tested waterproofing, on its own circuit and its own programmable thermostat. It runs for the two hours a day you want it and it is the single most commented-on thing in our handover feedback.

Because an overhead fixture lights the top of your head and casts your face into shadow. Paired sconces at around sixty to sixty-six inches light a face from both sides, which is what a bathroom mirror is for. We usually fit both and put the ceiling circuit on a dimmer.

A deposit at order, a draw at rough-in, a draw at waterproofing sign-off and the balance at handover after the snag list is cleared. Nothing is paid for work that has not happened. Exact percentages are set out in your contract; the figures shown on this demonstration site are samples.

Two years on workmanship and ten years on the waterproofing assembly as a sample position for this demonstration site. Manufacturer warranties on tile, fixtures and glass pass through to you and we register them on your behalf at handover.

We stop, photograph it, price it as a written variation and you decide before we carry on. Rot at a tub flange, a failed old membrane and undersized joists are the three we find most often, and none of them ever gets covered up and invoiced later.