RSB Empire → Construction → Bathroom Remodeling
Sheet A-106.2 · Bell Engineering & Construction
Full bathroom remodels across Palm Beach County — showers, tubs, vanities, tile, and waterproofing done right the first time. A bathroom fails from the inside out; we build the part you can't see to the same standard as the part you can.
Scope of Work
The Local Problem
Most of the bathrooms we gut in Palm Beach County are original to concrete-block-and-stucco houses built between the 1950s and the 1980s. The pattern repeats from Lake Worth to Jupiter: a five-by-eight room with a steel tub, mud-set tile up to shoulder height, a single small window doing the job a fan should be doing, and drain lines that run under the slab. The bones are usually fine. What has aged out is the waterproofing, the ventilation, and the plumbing you cannot see — which is exactly the part a low bid leaves alone.
Humidity is the reason the stakes are higher here than in a dry climate. A bathroom in Loxahatchee spends most of the year making warm, wet air inside a house that is fighting to stay dry. Every mistake behind the tile gets fed moisture year-round instead of a few months a year, so a marginal shower pan that might last a decade up north starts weeping here in two or three. When we open a failed shower, the story is nearly always the same: the tile was fine and the system behind it was never a system.
Under the floor there is a second South Florida reality. Homes built before the mid-1970s commonly have cast-iron drain lines cast into or below the slab, and cast iron rots from the inside out. If your remodel moves a drain, the slab is already open — that is the moment to look at the line and replace what deserves replacing, rather than jackhammering a brand-new floor in five years. And if the house predates 1978, the demolition disturbs painted surfaces covered by the EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting rule. We are an EPA Lead-Safe Certified Firm (#NAT-F122701-2), so the containment and cleanup are how we work, not an upsell.
The Part You Can’t See
Here is the sentence that should decide who builds your bathroom: tile and grout are not waterproof. They are a wearing surface. Water passes through grout every single shower, and what stops it from reaching your framing, your slab, and your neighbor's ceiling is a membrane system underneath. Get that right and the bathroom lasts thirty years. Get it wrong and no amount of beautiful tile saves you.
Cost Factors
Two bathrooms of identical size can differ by a factor of three, and it is rarely the vanity that explains it. Roughly in order of impact, here is what moves an estimate — so you can decide where your money buys the most bathroom:
We do not publish bathroom prices, because a number without a scope is marketing. What we do is walk the room, price the version you asked for and the version we would build, and hand you both on paper. Call (561) 779-3213 for a free estimate.
Sequence
A bathroom is the most trade-dense room in a house — plumbing, electrical, mechanical, waterproofing, tile, glass, and finish carpentry inside forty square feet. Remodels go sideways for two reasons: late selections and trades out of order. Both are the contractor's problem to solve, and here is the order we work in:
The owner — a licensed general contractor and a RESNET® Florida Class 1 Energy Rater — inspects every job. That is the whole differentiator: the only Palm Beach County contractor who is also a certified energy engineer, standing in your bathroom. While the walls and ceiling are open we specify the air-sealing, exhaust, and insulation details that keep humidity out of the assembly for the next twenty years; see how these upgrades can also lower your energy bills.
Questions, Answered
Waterproofing. Tile is decoration over a membrane system — if that system is wrong, the prettiest bathroom rots from behind the walls. We build the shower pan and waterproofing to spec and photograph it before tile goes on.
Yes — tub-to-shower conversions are one of our most requested projects, including curbless and grab-bar-ready designs for aging in place.
A standard full remodel typically runs 2–4 weeks on site once materials arrive. We protect the rest of the house and leave the site clean every day.
Less material, yes — but the trades (plumbing, waterproofing, electrical) are the same regardless of size. We'll give you real numbers in a free estimate.
Usually, yes. As a rule of thumb, moving or adding a drain or supply line, relocating the toilet, adding or altering circuits, installing or re-ducting an exhaust fan, and any structural change all require a permit from your authority having jurisdiction — Palm Beach County Building Division or your municipality, depending on your address. A like-for-like vanity swap, new paint, or a mirror generally does not. Because the trigger varies by city, we confirm the requirement before we write the scope, and we pull and close every permit the job needs.
One complete system, installed the way its manufacturer published it — either a traditional pan liner meeting the ASTM standards the Florida Building Code references (ASTM D4068 or D4551) over a proper pre-slope, or a bonded sheet-applied membrane meeting ANSI A118.10 with matching corners, seams, and drain flange. What we will not do is mix halves of two systems, which is the single most common cause of a shower that leaks two years after it looked perfect. The pan gets a water test and a photograph before any tile is set, and those photos go to you with the closeout package.
Usually yes, and it is one of the best upgrades in a Florida house — no curb to step over, and the room reads much larger. On a slab it means either recessing the pour in the shower footprint or building the whole bathroom floor up slightly to gain the fall, plus a linear drain and waterproofing that continues past the opening into the bathroom floor. The floor still needs real slope to the drain — roughly a quarter inch per foot — so the design has to earn that fall somewhere. We will tell you in the walk-through whether your slab allows it and what it takes.
Not automatically, but they deserve a look. A great many Palm Beach County homes built before the mid-1970s have cast-iron drain lines under the slab, and cast iron corrodes from the inside out — the pipe can look fine and still be down to a fraction of its original bore. If we are already opening the floor to move a drain, that is the cheapest hour you will ever spend on plumbing: we can scope the line and replace the section while it is exposed rather than jackhammer a finished bathroom in five years. If the lines are sound, we say so and leave them alone.
Florida's mechanical code sets the floor at 50 CFM for an intermittent bathroom exhaust fan, or 20 CFM if it runs continuously, and recent code editions require the exhaust to be controlled automatically so it operates when relative humidity in the room climbs past about 60 percent. Meeting the number on the box is not the same as moving the air, though: a fan is only as good as its duct, so we run short, smooth, correctly sized duct to the outside of the building — never into the attic, which is how you grow mold in the roof instead of the bathroom. As a certified energy rater the owner also seals the fan housing to the ceiling plane, because an unsealed bath fan is a hole between your conditioned house and a 130-degree attic.
Yes, and it is a large share of what we build. The pieces that matter are a curbless or low-threshold entry, solid blocking behind the tile wherever a grab bar might ever go (a grab bar screwed into tile and drywall is worse than none at all), a comfort-height toilet, a bench or fold-down seat, a hand shower on a slide bar, a pressure-balancing or thermostatic valve so the water cannot spike, lever handles, non-slip floor tile, and light where an older eye actually needs it. The smart move is to install the blocking and the valve now even if you want the bars later — they cost almost nothing while the wall is open.
Porcelain is the workhorse — dense, low absorption, and indifferent to humidity. Large-format porcelain means fewer grout joints to clean, but it demands a genuinely flat substrate, so plan on the wall or floor prep it takes rather than fighting lippage later. Mosaic and small hexagon tile give you the most slip resistance and the easiest slope on a shower floor, at the cost of more grout. Natural stone is beautiful and high-maintenance here: marble wants sealing and shows etching from ordinary cleaners. Whatever you pick, we will tell you the maintenance truth before you buy it, not after.
It can be. Bathroom demolition disturbs painted walls, trim, and window casings, which is exactly the work the EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting rule covers in pre-1978 housing. We are an EPA Lead-Safe Certified Firm (#NAT-F122701-2), so containment, the required work practices, and the cleanup verification are built into how we run the job — not an upcharge you have to think to ask for. In a bathroom, where the room is small and the dust has nowhere to go, that discipline matters more than most people realize.
In a condominium, almost always. Bathrooms sit on shared plumbing risers and on the structural slab, so boards typically want a submittal, a certificate of insurance naming the association, and sometimes an engineer's letter before anything is opened up — and many buildings restrict work hours, elevator use, and water shut-offs to specific windows. Plenty of buildings also require a sound-isolation underlayment under new tile. We run BeacCorp Property Management, so we have read these packets from the board's side of the table and we know what gets approved on the first pass instead of the third.
It will if you fix the cause rather than the stain. Mold in a Florida bathroom comes from three places: water getting behind tile through a failed waterproofing system, moist air that never leaves the room because the fan is undersized or ducted into the attic, and a house-wide humidity problem an oversized air conditioner never runs long enough to solve. A remodel is your chance at all three at once — a correct membrane, a properly ducted humidity-controlled fan, and an honest look at the HVAC. The owner is a RESNET® Florida Class 1 Energy Rater, so that third piece gets diagnosed rather than guessed at; see how these upgrades can also lower your energy bills.
Yes. Bell Engineering and Construction Corporation is a Florida Certified General Contractor (CGC1528750) and Certified Roofing Contractor (CCC1332751), insured, an EPA Lead-Safe Certified Firm (#NAT-F122701-2), and a BBB A+ Accredited Business. Every job carries a written one-year workmanship warranty, and the owner — a licensed GC who is also a certified energy rater — inspects every job himself. A handyman cannot pull the plumbing, electrical, or structural permits a real bathroom remodel needs. A licensed general contractor can, and does.
Free estimate, 24-hour response, and a licensed contractor who answers his own phone.
The other wet room. Worth bundling with a bathroom while the plumber, electrician, and tile crew are already on site.
Whole-home renovations and additions when the bathroom is one piece of a larger plan.
Contained interior tear-outs, hauled and cleaned — including lead-safe practices in pre-1978 homes.
Exhaust, air sealing, and insulation specified by a RESNET® Florida Class 1 Energy Rater while the walls are open.
The other half of aging in place: getting to the door. Ramps built to a usable slope, landed flush with the threshold.
Restrooms, counters and casework in a business that stays open — see the Prime Storage interior remodel, done with the leasing counter still in service.