Primary suites and bathrooms

Waterproofing is the whole job

Tile is a wear surface, not a water barrier. What keeps a wet room dry is what sits behind and below it: the membrane, the slope, the drain detail and how the assembly is terminated at the door and the bench.

A shower that leaks does not usually announce itself. It shows up as a stain on a ceiling below, or as a soft patch in a wall two years later, and by then the repair includes framing.

A curbless shower is a floor decision

Losing the curb means the water has to be held and drained without one, which means recessing the floor structure or building the whole bathroom floor up to meet it.

On a slab that is a saw cut and a re-pour. On a framed floor it is joist work. Either way it belongs in the drawings rather than in a conversation on site.

Ventilation, sized for the room it is in

Older valley bathrooms frequently have a fan that was adequate for a smaller room and a shorter shower. Undersized ventilation is how humidity ends up in the paint, the trim and eventually the drywall.

The fix is a fan sized to the volume, ducted to the outside rather than into an attic, and on a control that runs it long enough to do something.

Taking space from somewhere

Most primary suite projects want more room than the original plan gave them, which means borrowing from a closet, a hallway or a bedroom. That is often a structural question and always a permit question once plumbing moves.