Bathroom remodeling in Westford, MA

The houses this is written for

The stock here is antique houses and farmsteads on the older roads, a moderate body of post-war housing, and a very large volume of colonial development from the 1980s through the 2000s.

Removing the platform tub and the fibreglass shower

The tub platform and the one-piece shower usually sit side by side along the exterior wall. Taking both out frees a run of floor long enough for a large tiled shower with a bench and a linear drain, and often a freestanding tub too. The old drains are rarely where the new ones need to be, so the subfloor gets opened and the traps rerouted.

The floor under these rooms is typically I-joists, which cannot be notched or drilled wherever the plumber likes. We lay the new drain and supply routes against the joist plan so nothing structural is cut, and we add blocking under the shower curb and the bench. The fan is rerouted outside through an exterior wall with rigid duct, not left in the attic.

Waterproofing that outlasts the builder's version

The original shower was a fibreglass unit sealed with caulk, and the tub surround was tile over paper-faced board. Both fail at the seams. The new shower is built as a continuous system: a sloped pan with a sheet or liquid membrane, cement or foam board walls, sealed corners and penetrations, and silicone rather than grout wherever two planes meet.

Tile is set from a drawn layout so cuts land in the corners and the niche lines up with the grout joints. Large-format tile needs flat walls, so the studs get straightened and the board floated first. Frameless glass goes in after the tile has cured, measured on site rather than from the plan, so it sits square and drains properly.

The vanity, the closet and the second-floor plumbing

The laminate-topped double vanity gets replaced with a furniture-grade cabinet and a stone or quartz top, and the light bar above it gives way to sconces on a proper circuit. Where the walk-in closet backs onto the bath, owners sometimes trade a slice of it for a separate toilet compartment or a larger shower, which is a framing and door change rather than a structural one.

Because the room is on the second floor, every drain runs through the ceiling of a finished room below, usually the kitchen or the family room. If that room is also due for work, the bath plumbing goes first so the ceiling is opened once. We look at the whole house and put the second-floor plumbing ahead of the first-floor finishes.

Town water, septic and adding a bath

Most of the colonial stock is on municipal water and sewer, so adding a full bath in the basement or over the garage is a plumbing and framing question only. A basement bath needs an ejector pump if the drain sits below the sewer line, and a bath over the garage needs insulated, heated supply runs so nothing freezes in a cold ceiling.

On the outlying and older properties on septic, adding a bath does not by itself change the design flow of the system, which is based on bedrooms rather than baths. The system still has to be sound and correctly sized, so we check its record before the design is final. On a well, we test pressure and flow before specifying a multi-head shower.

Sequence and what to expect

The scope in this stock is consistent, so the schedule is reliable. We agree fixtures and tile first, then demolish, then rough in plumbing and electrical, pass the inspection, waterproof, tile, set fixtures and glass, and paint. Houses from this era do not usually contain materials that need testing before demolition, but the antique houses on the older roads can, and we test there.

Access in the developments is easy, with wide driveways and room for a dumpster. The older orchard-area properties have longer, rougher drives, and we stage materials on site rather than make repeated trips. If the primary bath is the only full bath, we phase the work so a shower is usable for most of the job. Aging-in-place details go in where they are wanted.

Questions we get asked about Westford