Altitude/Bathrooms
Bathroom remodelingThe room you use twice a day, built like it has to last.
Bathrooms are where Altitude does most of its work. Tile, layout, waterproofing, and design, planned around how you actually use the space, and installed so the parts nobody sees hold up as long as the parts everybody does.
What a bathroom remodel involves
A bathroom is the hardest small room in a house to get right. It has water under pressure, water by gravity, heat, movement, and a tile surface that will show every decision you made underneath it. Most of the bathrooms we are called in to rebuild did not fail because someone chose the wrong tile. They failed because of what happened before the tile.
So we put our attention where it decides the outcome:
- Layout. Where the door swings, where the glass lands, how much room you actually have at the vanity, and whether the shower is sized for the way you use it.
- Waterproofing and testing. The membrane, the pan, the corners, the penetrations. All of it installed as a system and tested before anything covers it.
- Tile design and layout. Where the pattern starts, how it meets the corners and the niche, where the cuts land. This is planned on paper and confirmed with you before the first sheet goes up.
- Materials that suit the room. What the tile is going on, what the grout has to survive, and how the whole assembly is going to behave in a house at this elevation.
- Fixtures and finish. Vanities, glass, lighting, hardware, and the trim details that decide whether the room reads as finished.
Custom showers
A large share of the bathroom work is shower-centered: full custom tile showers, curbless showers with linear drains where the structure and the space allow it, and replacements for showers that were built without a proper pan or membrane and have started to fail.
Curbless is not automatically the right answer. It asks something of the floor structure and the drain line, and there are houses where the honest answer is a low-profile curb and a beautiful room. We will tell you which one you have before you have paid for a design that cannot be built.
Rebuilding a bathroom that was done wrong
Some of our calls are not upgrades. They are homeowners, often in very nice and fairly new custom homes, who are watching a shower fail and are being told it is a grout problem. It is usually not a grout problem.
When we open one of these up, we document what we find, explain what caused it, and rebuild the assembly properly so you are not paying for this room a third time. Where there is water damage, we can work with your insurance company, write the reports they require, monitor moisture, and manage the drying alongside the rebuild.
Needs to be safer, too?
Bathtub-to-walk-in-shower conversions and full ADA-style bathrooms are a large part of what we do, and they do not have to look clinical.
Accessible bathrooms →Our checklist, and yours.
Before any work starts you get a detailed scope of work. It is not a formality. It is the shared understanding of the project, the document both of us point at when a question comes up. Here is the shape of a typical bathroom scope.
Included and priced
- Protection of the surrounding home and the path to the work area
- Demolition and removal of the existing bathroom
- Documented inspection of what demolition exposes
- Waterproofing system, installed and tested before tile
- Tile layout confirmed with you before installation
- Tile installation, grouting, sealing, and finish detail
- Fixture, vanity, and glass installation
- Coordination of the plumber and any other trades
- Final clean and a walk-through with you
Called out separately, never assumed
- Structural repairs found after demolition
- Plumbing that has to be moved or replaced
- Moisture remediation and drying
- Electrical beyond replacing what is there
- Owner-supplied materials and their lead times
- Anything added after the scope is signed. By change order, in writing.
When a hidden condition or a change you ask for moves the work outside that scope, it becomes a change order: what it is, what it costs, what it does to the timeline, agreed before we do it. How that works →
Asked often enough to answer here.
If your question is not here, it is a good reason to call. Most of these get explained on the first walk-through anyway.
How long does a bathroom take?
It depends on the size of the scope, the materials, and what demolition finds. What we can tell you is that we give you an expected timeline in the scope of work, we tell you what could change it, and we tell you when something does.
The thing we will not do is start your bathroom, get it to demo, and then leave it sitting while we go start someone else's.
Do I need to know what I want before I call?
No. A lot of our clients are not sure what should be done, why it should be done, or how they would even tell whether a contractor was doing it correctly. That is exactly where the conversation is most useful.
We will look at the space, ask questions, tell you what we would do and why, and put it in writing before you commit to anything.
Can you work with my insurance company?
Yes. We have written the reports, met the documentation requirements, monitored moisture levels, managed dehumidification on water-damage projects, and coordinated the restoration alongside the adjuster's process.
Insurance work is slower and more procedural than a standard remodel. We plan for that rather than pretending it will not happen.
What if you find something behind the wall?
We tell you, with photos, the same day. Then we explain what it means for the scope, the cost, and the timeline, and what the options are. If it needs a plumber, a structural repair, or a moisture specialist, we coordinate it.
Nobody can promise a renovation with no surprises. We can promise that you will hear about them from us, early, and in plain language.
Do you do flooring?
We do the flooring that belongs to the bathroom and kitchen work we are already doing. We are not a flooring-first contractor, and we would rather point you to someone who does whole-house flooring all day than take work that is not our strength.