How it works
Most bathrooms take three weeks because nobody planned them. Here is what actually happens, from your first phone call to the walkthrough, and what you get if the date is missed.
The three steps
Phone call, assessment, build.
Ninety minutes measuring the things that actually decide the build.
The four days
Here is the week, day by day.
This is the low-step walk-in shower. Monday to Thursday, never Tuesday to Friday, because Friday is the buffer that protects your date.
Fri, before
Everything arrives
Materials on site, unwrapped
Floor protection and zip wall
Water shut-off found and tested
Monday
Demo and rough-in
Tub out, walls stripped
Plumbing and wiring roughed
Solid blocking for every grab bar
Tuesday
Floor and waterproofing
One-piece shower floor set in mortar
Wall membrane and backer board
Electrical and exhaust fan complete
Wednesday
Tile and set
Wall and floor tile
Toilet and vanity in
Valve trim on
Thursday
Finish and hand over
Glass panel, grab bars, bench
Grout, silicone, full clean
Walkthrough with you by 4pm
Curbless takes seven working days and a full accessible bathroom eight to ten, because the drain moves and the floor structure is opened and rebuilt. You are told which one your bathroom needs at the assessment, before you commit to anything.
Monday, walls open
This photograph is the whole argument.
Two-by-six blocking, continuous across three stud bays, roughly thirty-four inches from the floor. It goes in whether or not a grab bar is specified there today.
Retrofitting blocking later means opening a finished tiled wall. Putting it in on Monday costs almost nothing.
A bar screwed into a drywall anchor is decoration. It fails under a 190-pound person going down sideways, which is precisely the load it exists for.
If we get it wrong
Three guarantees with money behind them.
| If this happens | What we do | Limit |
|---|---|---|
| Not finished by 4pm on the completion date in your contract | We pay $225 a night for hotel and meals until it is done | Five nights |
| Something fails on our workmanship within seven years | We come back and repair it at our cost | No limit |
| We open a wall and find something we should have caught at the assessment | We absorb it rather than charge you | Case by case, in writing |
The completion date is written into your contract before you sign. That is the whole point of charging for the assessment: measuring properly is what makes a date worth promising.
The question everybody asks
Where does she wash while the work is happening?
Four days is manageable. Most people have their parent stay with them Monday to Thursday, or the crew works around a downstairs powder room. Seven days usually is not, and ten certainly is not.
So if the house has one bathroom and nowhere else to wash, we will normally recommend the four-day low-step conversion even where a curbless entry would be technically better. A slightly less ideal shower she can live through beats a perfect one she can’t.
It is one of the first things checked at the assessment, and it changes the recommendation more often than anything else on the list.
