Bathroom Remodeling in Dearborn, MI

A remodel is a bigger job than swapping a floor. We are moving plumbing, changing what the room does, and putting it back together in a way you will use every morning for the next twenty years. Most Dearborn bathrooms we open were laid out before anybody thought about storage. The brick bungalows in the east end usually give us one bathroom upstairs, about five feet by eight feet, with a tub under a small window and a door that swings into the vanity. The colonials and ranches on the west side often have a second bath off the hall that nobody has touched since the house was new. We hear the same complaints in both. The tub is a chore to step over. The vanity eats the floor and still holds nothing. The fan is loud and moves no air, so the mirror stays fogged and the paint peels above the shower. There is one outlet, and it sits where nobody would choose to put it. We start by walking the room with you and asking what actually bothers you day after day. Is it the morning traffic jam with two people and one sink? Is it a parent who cannot step over a tub wall anymore? Those answers matter more than any picture, because they tell us what the room has to do for the people living there. Then we look at what the house will allow. Where the drain sits, which way the joists run, whether the wall behind the tub carries weight, and how far the vent has to travel to reach the outside. Those four answers shape most of the plan. Moving a toilet three feet sounds simple until we open the floor and find the drain running the wrong way under a joist. We would rather learn that in the first hour than in the second week. Once the walls are open we take pictures, show you what is back there, and price the surprises before we bury them again. Old supply lines that have closed up with rust. A fan duct that dumps warm wet air into the attic. A subfloor gone soft around the toilet. In a house built in 1938 those are normal, not a disaster. They just have to get handled while the room is open, because nobody wants to break new tile a year from now to reach a pipe.

We run a remodel in a fixed order, and the order is what keeps a job from dragging on. Day one is protection and demolition. Floors and stairs get covered, a dust wall goes up at the door, and the old room comes out to the studs. Dust control is not a nicety in a house where somebody is still cooking dinner and sleeping down the hall. We haul the debris out the same day rather than parking it in your driveway for a week. Then the trades go in the order the work demands. Plumbing gets roughed in first, because every pipe has to land before a wall closes. That is when a tub becomes a shower, a drain moves, or the shower valve finally sits at a height a tall person can reach. If the goal is a low step or no step at all, this is the stage where the floor framing gets dropped to make it happen. Wiring follows. You end up with light over the mirror instead of behind your head, a fan sized for the room and vented all the way outside, and an outlet by the sink where you actually use it. If the work calls for an inspection, we build the schedule around it instead of racing ahead and hoping. After the rough work passes we insulate the outside walls while they are open. A Dearborn bathroom on the north side of the house is cold every January, and this is the only chance to fix that. Then comes the part most crews rush. Backer board on the wet walls, a waterproof coat over every seam and corner, a sloped bed under the shower floor, and a flood test on the pan before one tile is set. That test costs a day and it answers the only question that really matters. Tile goes on next, laid out around the wall you see when the door opens, so the cut pieces land behind the door and the full tiles land in your line of sight. Grout goes in after the mortar has truly cured, not the next morning. Then the vanity, the top, the toilet, the trim, the glass, and the paint. We finish with a punch list that we walk with you, room lights on, so you can point at anything that bugs you while we are still standing there. Most full bathrooms take two to three weeks in the house. A good share of that is drying and curing time we will not cut short.

• We take the room down to the framing on day one, so bad pipe, thin wiring, and soft subfloor all get handled while the walls are still apart and the fix is cheap.
• The shower pan holds water overnight before any tile goes on. A slow leak costs us a day to find now and costs you a wall later.
• You get a real schedule at the start. It shows the loud days, the quiet days, the day the water is off, and the day you can use the room again.
• One crew runs the job from demolition through the punch list, so nothing falls into the gap between trades and no one points at the other guy when something is missed.
• We insulate the outside wall and add a niche while the studs are open, which is why our finished bathrooms feel warm in January and hold your bottles off the tub edge.

Dearborn houses have habits, and we know them because we work in them every week. Homes off Michigan Avenue and Schaefer often still run their original supply lines, so we plan for pipe work instead of acting shocked when we find it. Plaster does not come apart the way drywall does, and the dust travels through a whole house, which is why containment goes up before the first swing of a hammer. Upstairs bathrooms sit on long joist spans that flex when somebody walks past the door, and rigid tile cracks along that flex, so we stiffen the deck and add a membrane under the floor tile. Our water is hard. Glass doors and grout pick up a film quickly here, so we steer people toward finishes and fixtures that wipe clean in ten seconds instead of ones that need a project every Saturday. Winter counts as well. A remodel that runs through February means we are managing heat in an open room and keeping mortar, paint, and caulk above the temperature they need to set. We plan for that instead of blaming it later when a joint fails. Storage is the other thing we push on, because almost nobody asks for enough of it. A recessed niche in the shower wall costs very little while the wall is open and saves you from a shelf full of bottles on the tub edge. A taller vanity, a drawer bank instead of one deep cabinet, and a bar in the right place change how the room feels far more than the tile pattern does. What you also get here is one crew and one number to call. The person who measured your room is on the job while it happens, so you are never guessing who shows up tomorrow. When we find something bad behind a wall, we show you the picture and we lay out real choices with the cost of each. If a smaller scope makes more sense for your house, we tell you that too. Plenty of bathrooms in this city just need a tub pulled for a shower, better light, a working fan, and a floor that is finally flat. That is honest work and we are glad to do it. We would rather build the right size job for you now and be the crew you call for the kitchen next year. We also work around the way people live here. Most of the homes we remodel have one full bathroom, and the family still has to get out the door on time. So we set up a sink you can use. We keep the water on when the work allows. And we clear the path back to the hallway at the end of every day.

Is your bathroom worn out, or just wrong for the way your family lives now? Call us and tell us what the room does to you. A cold floor, a tub nobody can step over, a fan that has never cleared the mirror, or a layout that made sense in 1950 and makes none today. We will come out and measure the space. We look at the drain, the joists, and the wall behind the tub. Then we tell you straight what the house allows and what the work will take. You get a plan and a real start date. And you get one crew that shows up and finishes the job.