Vent fans are great for getting excess moisture and unpleasant odors out of a bathroom, especially the modern super quiet high air flow volume units! But according the the building code used in our service area, (including Tequesta, Jupiter, Palm Beach Gardens, North Palm Beach, Lake Park, Riviera Beach, Palm Beach West Palm Beach, Royal Palm Beach, Wellington, Lake Worth, Lantana, Hypoluxo, and Boynton Beach), if the bathroom has a window that can be opened, the builder is not required to install a vent fan. The thinking was that a bathroom with a window would allow the homeowner to open the window to let in fresh air. The problem is that in Florida, at least 10 months out of the year, most of us don’t want to let the “fresh air” in, as it is too hot! A vent fan can be added fairly easily.

We also can replace the old cheap noisy fans that are typical original equipment in most homes. So whether you don’t have a vent fan in the bathroom you want remodeled, or if you have one but it roars or rattles, Palm Beach Builders will be happy to replace the old with a beautiful long lasting high volume super quiet vent fan, or install a new one where none exists.

If you’d like help with your bathroom vent fan, or any other bathroom repair or remodeling project we can help.

Call us today at 561-719-8627 or click here to send us an email.  You can also check our reputation at sites like www.kudzu.com and www.angieslist.com.  The more you know about bathroom remodelers in Palm Beach County the more we are confident you will count on us.

To answer the question of how long does it take to do it right, well, it depends.

Most typical hall bathrooms will take less than two weeks from start to finish. Depending on the choice of tiles, plumbing fixtures, lighting, mirrors, cabinets, etc. We encourage the homeowner to not actually start demolition until all the parts and pieces have been selected, ordered and either in hand or at least to  the point where they have been shipped. If the project is simple, if all the materials are on hand before we start, and if we are doing less than a full “stud-to-stud” remodel, we can sometimes complete the project in about a week. (Of course if you are getting new glass doors or enclosure, the glass can not be measured for until the rest of the work is completed, so you may have to use a shower curtain for a week or so after the rest of the project is complete).

On larger, more complex projects, we try to finish the job in 2-3 weeks, as we realize that a project that stretches out for months is not beneficial to you or to us. But as you think about a time line, these are things to keep in mind:

A large project may take mulitple days to completely demolish, then a plumber and or an electrician may need to be scheduled, then we can start rebuilding your bathroom. Typically the 2nd week we complete the structural rebuild and possibly start with the tile or marble setting. By the end of the third week, we usually have your custom cabinets set. Then the granite can be “templated” or measured to precision. Traditionally one waited 2-3 more weeks for the granite, but we have been able to speed that up to usually only a little more than a week, so by the end of the 5th week, even on substantial projects, we are usually able to have the tile work, the cabinets, granite and glass work completed. Though, as you can see, the process is made up of many moving parts. If there is a hitch anywhere along the line, you might want to be prepared for a 6th week.

Having said that, we are currently in the midst of one of the more complex bathroom projects we have done in several years, and we are on schedule to have it completely finished by the end 5th week.

The variables on bigger projects make it unlikely that we can give you a date certain, but the point is, as a rule of thumb, small standard bathroom projects, will take from just under a week to about 2 weeks, and bigger projects allow 3-6 weeks. While we never drag a project out, we insist on taking the time needed to do a quality job. So if you want a rush job and are prepared to accept sloppy workmanship, please look elsewhere. We are proud to offer work that adds value to your home and quality to your life. Remember a few days can make the difference for years. If your home is between Palm Beach Gardens, Jupiter Tequesta, on  the north end, or as far south as Boynton Beach, Lantana and Lake Worth on the south, and of course all the neighborhoods in West Palm Beach, insist on skilled craftsmen, insist on Palm Beach Builders!

If you’d like help with your scheduling calculations or any other bathroom repair or remodeling project information we can help.

More often, the homeowner selects and/or purchases some or all of the following: tile, vanity, lighting, mirrors, medicine cabinets and shower doors. On occasion, we have actually had the homeowner only bring us in for the plumbing, electrical, framing and drywall. And they finish the rest.

There are many reasons to choose to have a contractor do all or part of the work. In some areas, almost all work has to be permitted to be done, and even though it is possible in some places to do an “owner-builder” permit, it is usually easier to let a contractor deal with the headaches, as he/she is usually more experienced and more qualified. Even if you are in an area where “remove and replace” type remodeling doesn’t require permitting, a contractor can save you more than he will cost you.

But you can often do some of the work yourself, either save money, or simply to have the satisfaction of having bui lt something with your own hands. As the desire to “own” part of the process is very subjective, as in the case of the very successful Palm Beach Gardens attorney who wanted to demolish his existing bathroom, because he wanted to take some of his frustrations out with a sledge hammer, or the executive U.S. Government contract worker, who was a serious woodworker for pleasure and wanted to finish his trim work. Neither saved money, compared to what they could have made working at their profession for the same amount of time. But they both got a great deal of satisfaction out of taking part of the work for themselves. In these cases, it isn’t about the money, so each case is different.

More often, we find someone who fancies themselves to be a bit handy, and wants to save a little money. This is a little easier to determine which projects are good for the homeowner to take on, and which to leave for the professionals.

An obvious choice is painting. Painting is a serious trade, like any other, but as it is usually done after all other work is complete, and because the homeowner can usually do a reasonably good job of it, with patience and a little (or a lot) of advice from your local paint store, it is a good place to look to save a few hundred dollars. While there is not really anything involved in building a house that one cannot study up on and not do a reasonably good job at, there are things that do not lend themselves to amateur craftsmen. Masonry, Framing, Plumbing, Electrical, A/C and Heating, Drywall and Tile/Marble work.

Things that a homeowner of moderate skill might tackle: replacing a light fixture, hanging a mirror or setting a surface mount medicine cabinet, installing a shower curtain, or even possibly a shower door. One might even try their hands at demolition, but it is a dirty and dangerous job, and usually involves a trip to the county landfill, where tire punctures are commonplace and the air is unpleasant, at best. The other issue with demolition is that if you are not sure what you are doing you can break things that should not be broken (i.e. water pipes, conduits, electrical wiring, boxes and fixtures, adjoining walls and ceilings, as well as chipping the tile in the hall or bedroom when removing floor tile). The thirs issue of demolition is timing. Usually a contractor is working on a pretty precise time schedule, in fact, one can often save more by asking the contractor if there is a discount for working within the contractor’s schedule, than one can save on demolition.

As an example, depending on the season, Palm Beach Builders, Inc. often offers a 10% or more discount for the project based on scheduling your project o fit into our calendar. A typical project’s total demolition cost is usually 5-8% of the total cost of the project, if you can do the demolition properly, but it will take you two to three weekends to complete it, not only does this mean your bathroom will be out of service for several weeks, instead of a few days, it could cause you to iss a greater savings because you miss the scheduling window for the disount of up to twice that much.

Bottom line, you can save money by doing part of the work yourself, btu depending on what your time is worth to you, and what your skill level, and what kind of schedule your contractor is working on, your potential savings may vary. The best thing is to discuss these option s with the contractor when he is giving you your initial proposal.

In recent weeks, I have had to do projects that were not our standard fare, which is typically entire bathroom remodeling, changing tubs to showers and replacing leaky shower pans and rebuilding the shower. One such project is a very nice home on the Island of Palm Beach. The owner contacted our offices with a recaulking job. I suggested he contact a handy man, as it seemed unlikely to justify a Certified Residential Contractor, but he explained a handy man had triggered his need to contact us. The handy man, as a favor, while doing some minor work elsewhere, decided to recaulk a black spot in the master shower. he used white caulk, and slathered it on, over the blackened grout. The original grout was a sandy colored grout, so now the homeowner had a jarring splotch of white, edged with black, in the middle of his otherwise cream colored shower!

While I was there, he also had me look at a plaster wall in a hallway that backed up to the shower. The plaster was swollen and mishapened. We agreed to clean and recaulk the shower with an appropriate shade of sanded caulk. (you can find some shades of grout matching color caulk, both sanded and unsanded at Home Improvement stores, but you will find a more complete selection at fine tile stores like D&B Tile). We also agreed to open the hall wall, and diagnose the problem, both the homeowner and I thought there might be a plumbing leak or that a nearby niche might be allowing for water penetration, or both.

When we opened the wall, we found that the people who had rebuilt the shower a few years ago had used a very poor construction method of building the niche in the shower wall. you could literally stick a finger through the gaps at the corner of the wall board! The tilesetter had covered the gaps with tile, and grouted the joints, so from the shower side, the niche looked solid and sealed. Water had been leaking through the grout, which had cracked as it was supported only by thin air! This leak had been an ongoing, many year leak, and had rotted away part of the framing for the niche.

As the homeowner wanted to do a good repair, but was not yet ready to do a complete shower rebuild, we replaced the rotten wood, and sealed the back side of the niche with fiberglass tape and lots of caulk. Then the closed up the wall and cleaned and recaulked the inside of the shower. This should keep his shower water in the shower for the next several years, though we will return annually to check and maintain the caulking, as needed. The moral to this story is that, if the niche had been built and sealed properly to begin with, it would have likely never leaked. if the leak had never occured, the black spot would quite possibly have never developed, and the homeowner would not have spent in excess of $1000.00 to save his shower and the adjoining walls and framing!

Today, I visited with a homeowner in North Palm Beach who was having an “outside the shower” leak. He had tested it himself, and made a pretty good diagnosis. Five years ago, when his home was built, the tilesetter had not bothered to caulk the shower prior to the shower enclosure people putting up the enclosure. The shower curb was caulked, but only after the shower enclosure had been installed.

Whenever the homeowner takes a shower, the water splashes onto the door, runs down, and drains out the end of the metal framing and goes thru the unsealed grout at the joint between the wall and the shower curb cap. He is now going to have to pay to remove a shower enclosure, so we can caulk that one inch strip of wall and curb behind the metal framing. Again, this time only a few hundred dollars, but still a lot of money for a problem that would never have happened if the caulking had been done properly. Whoever you end up selecting to do your bathroom remodeling project, always make sure they are licensed, have real references and very importantly, make sure they understand the critical need to properly seal all joints and corners of wet areas. A $3-$4 dollar tube of caulk, applied properly and at the right time, can save you hundreds, or ever thousands of dollars down the road.

If you’d like help with your caulking, shower leak, or any other bathroom repair or remodeling project we can help.

The problem is, you can’t just “throw a shower or tub in a closet.” To modify the plumbing of a house requires permitting, and many areas will not let you make these kind of modifications without first getting engineered drawings. If you are in a condo, you might also have to get permission to modify your unit from the condo board. Once you have paid a few thousand dollars for drawings that show the engineering for the changes you want to make, you will need to have licensed contractor who understands that interconnectedness of building structures,  your toilet will have to be removed, the slab around the toilet will have to be cut out, the waste plumbing for you toilet will have to be  cut and replaced with a sanitary “T” to allow the water from you new bathing area or bathing area and sink and toilet to be connected to your existing waste system, the slab on your home will have to be cut out to connect to the new area, This is only after it has been determined that you have enough “drop” to allow for sufficient drainage. this underground work will add thousands of dollars to the project. Then you have the work that you can see, the new walls, lights, floors, tile, plumbing fixtures, etc.

So while a typical complete bathroom remodel can start at less than $5,000.00, it is common to have twice that invested in the drawings, license, and underground work, before one starts the remodeling and finishing aspect. Adding a bathroom, or expanding from a 1/2 bath to a full bath is usually more expensive than the added value to the house.

So before you spend $15,000.00-50,000.00 (depending on the size and scope of the work) for your expansion, it is important to consider a few things:

1) Is this your longterm home? Are you committed to living there for over 10 yrs?

2) How important is it to you and your family to add or expand a bathroom?

3) Could you relocate to a home closer to your needs for less than you could modify your existing home?

NOTE: if you are going to do a major expansion project, such as add a master suite or a new living room/dining room/kitchen area, then adding a bathroom makes a good deal of sense. In fact, in some areas, increasing a home to have more bedrooms might require more bathrooms.

The overall value of the property versus the cost of the project can impact your decision, as well. If your home is a $5,000,000.00 beach front home in Palm Beach, or a $2,000,000.00 spread in Wellington, then a project that is about 1% of the total value of the home is practical, whereas if you live in a typical $100,000 – $300,000.00 home, spending over 10% of the value of your home on the upgrade might not be the best choice.

Size matters, in that for floor tile, most people prefer a larger tile, as it does minimize grout joints, which in turn makes it easier to keep clean. But on the other hand, grout lines work a little bit like treads on your tire. they reduce the likelihood that you will lose your footing on a wet bathroom or shower floor.  Two other considerations on size/shape: The smaller the area to be tiled, the odder it looks to use a larger tile. A typical hall bathroom is five feet wide, an eighteen or twenty-four inch tile means the floor is covered on two or less tiles, especially in front of the vanity. One solution is to set the tile on a diagonal pattern, which breaks up the visual, while preserving the reduction in grout lines. Note, there is an additional cost to set tile on the diagonal, both in labor and wasted tile.

The other issue is the shape of tile. Today, most floor tile is square, in twelve, thirteen, sixteen, eighteen or twenty-four inch, while wall tile is rectangular, with dimensions of eight by ten, eight by twelve, nine by thirteen, and even larger. Again size matters, in a relative sense. If you have a grand master bathroom with floor dimensions of over eight feet wide and ten feet deep, and especially if your bathroom ceilings are over eight feet high, fifteen by twenty or twelve by twenty-four inch wall tile can be beautiful. In the typical hall bathroom, tiles larger than nine by thirteen inches usually look a little overwhelming. Also keep in mind, larger tile, and the heavier square floor tile add to your labor costs if you choose to have them set on walls.

Lastly, color and finish, while a matter of personal taste, are showing certain market trends. In various areas of the country, bright colors, earth tones, natural stone looking tiles are all the leading sellers, depending, of course what part of the country you live in. South Florida tends to be a leader, because we have so much tile in our homes.

The trend has been towards a matte, stone looking finish for several years, and even though colorful glass tiles have also gained in popularity, the travertino tiles are still the favorites. And while the lighter beiges and off whites are still somewhat more popular, the darker, noches are fast becoming the best sellers in high end neighborhoods, from the various towers in CityPlace, to Palm Beach Gardens and even some of the finer homes in the old downtown parts of West Palm Beach.

So make sure you are happy with your choice before it goes on the wall, because almost anything goes, but once it is up, you are going to be looking at it for a long time!

If you’d like help with your tile choices or any other bathroom repair or remodeling project we can help.

Caulk will NOT repair a leaking shower pan, but if you have cracks in the corners, or gaps under the shower curb (step in area) or at the joint of the tub and tile around your bathtub, you can develop a water leak even if all your plumbing is in good working order.

It is a good idea to inspect your shower and tub surrounds on a regular basis, a casual glance anytime you are bathing will let you know if the walls are separating at the corners, but about once per month, or at least a couple of times per year, one should get down and look at the edge of the tub and under the inside of the curb if you have a shower.

How to Caulk/What kind of Caulk?

We use DAP® KWIK SEAL PLUS® Premium Kitchen & Bath Adhesive Caulk w/MICROBAN®, while the are other fine caulk products made by reputable companies, the handy squeeze tube, anti microbe,  and super elasticity of this product makes for satisfactory and long lasting repairs.

Traditionally, you had to buy caulk in large cardboard or hard plastic tubes and load them into a caulking gun, which, if you didn’t buy a high quality enough gun, would sometimes leave you with a trigger  failure, and no matter the quality of the gun, you always had to deal with the dripping caulk between uses. Today, caulk is still sold this way, but it is also offered in a squeeze tube, more like a toothpaste tube. you simply remove the cap, cut the tip of the tube at a sloping angle, and squeeze as you need, replacing the cap to save the remainder for a few minutes later, or a few weeks later. the cost per ounce is pretty close either way.

The second question is how do you actually apply the caulk? I have seen so many bathrooms where a homeowner or a handyman has slathered caulk, not only on the gap, but about an inch on each side of the crack, as well. Besides being terribly unattractive, this method doesn’t even properly seal the area. The surface of most tile is already sealed, some of it even has a high glaze, in either case, tile is not a suitable surface for caulk to bond to. the edge of the tile (in the grout line or at the tub lip) is porous, as is most grout. Caulk bonds nicely to the unfinished tile and to grout. the ideal method of application is to run a bead of caulk down the gap, and then remove as much of the excess caulk as you can.

Years ago, I was taught to use the end of my finger, actually the bottom of the first joint of my index finger to smooth caulk. This works fine on finished wood prior to painting, or even better on old painted wood, but when I started working with tile, I quickly realized that much of the time, an edge or joint that needs caulking, has at least one surface that is a cut piece of tile. the cut edge on tile is about as sharp as a razor blade, so not only do you cut your finger, your  caulk has a tendency to look kind of pink! Today, I always use a commercial grout sponge, these are available at your local home improvement store, for about three bucks, and can be found in the flooring department. If you forget the sponge, an old rag will do fine, dampen it and wrap the tip of your finger in it and wipe. in any event, you should have almost no caulk visible outside of the actually crack. Caulk is cheap. a water leak is not. Apply it generously, and then wipe off the excess.

If you are experiencing a leak, caulk is not the solution to a pan failure, or a tub leak, but as water will go through any opening it find, it is a good idea to make sure everything is tight before you call a bathroom specialist. If a $3.00 tube of caulk can save a $2000-$3000, shower or tub replacement, it is a good investment. If it doesn’t stop the leak, then it is the time to call us.

As a side note, Palm Beach Builders will come to your home and recaulk your bathroom, as needed, and also inspect your bathtub or shower and give you a free estimate if more work is needed. but keep in mind, while our estimates are ALWAYS FREE, for us to caulk your bathroom will run about $100.00, so if you are physically able to do it, there is no need to pay a professional to recaulk your bathing area.

If you’d like help with caulking or any other bathroom repair or remodeling project we can help.