Primary bathroom remodeling on the North Shore

Many primary (master) baths we open were laid out around a tub nobody uses and a single sink two people share. The plan comes first: the door swing, whether the toilet gets its own room, a double vanity, the size of the shower and whether a freestanding tub earns its floor space. The window and the existing drain stack set real limits, and so does whatever is in the ceiling of the room below.

In Beverly we took a primary bath down to the studs and went from a single vanity to a double, with a custom tile shower, new trim and beadboard. In North Andover we reworked two second-floor baths, moving a wall so the primary shower could grow and relocating the vanities. Moves like that are easy to test in our Design Studio: we model the room, try the shower against the window, place the niche where the shampoo actually goes, and lay out the tile so cuts land where the eye won't find them. You approve renderings of the finished room before we order anything.

Tile and grout are not waterproof. What keeps water out of the framing is the layer behind them, and that is where a good bath differs from a bad one. We build showers on a waterproofing membrane system, either sheet or liquid-applied, carried continuously over the walls, the pan, the curb and the bench, bonded to a drain made for it, with every corner, niche and valve penetration detailed with the manufacturer's parts.

Before any tile goes down, we flood test the shower pan: plug the drain, fill the pan with water, mark the level and leave it. If the level holds, the pan is tight. If it doesn't, we find out with the pan open instead of through a stained ceiling two years later.

Steam showers raise the bar. They need a vapor-tight enclosure, a ceiling sloped so condensation runs to the walls instead of dripping on you, a door that seals, and a steam generator somewhere it can be serviced. Every bath also needs a quiet exhaust fan ducted all the way outside, not into the attic, where moisture becomes mold and ice dams.

A curbless shower, where the bathroom floor runs straight into the shower, is a framing job before it is a tile job. The shower floor still has to slope to the drain, so the floor under it has to drop. In a wood-framed house that means recessing the subfloor between the joists, reframing the area with joists sized for the cut, or building up the rest of the bathroom floor to meet it. You can't simply notch joists to make room.

The drain type matters too. A linear drain along the back wall or at the entry lets the floor slope in one plane, which suits large-format tile. A curbless shower also makes the bath easier to use for the long run, with no step to catch a foot. We decide whether one is practical once the floor is open or the framing is confirmed from below, before the design is locked.

Electric radiant heat earns its place in a New England bath, where a tile or stone floor is cold for half the year. The mat goes down over the subfloor or membrane, tested before and after tile, on a dedicated GFCI-protected circuit with a programmable thermostat. In Wenham we built a primary suite, bath and closet, with heated floors and marble counters.

Stone looks best when it is chosen with its care in mind. Marble etches and needs sealing. Honed finishes hide wear better than polished. Large-format porcelain needs a very flat floor and wall to avoid lippage, which can mean extra prep in an older house. Every fixture, valve, trim, drain, light and accessory goes on a fixture schedule with model numbers and finishes, so the plumber, the electrician and the tile setter are all working from the same page. Tile and fixtures that you haven't picked yet carry allowances, called out as allowances in the proposal and reconciled to your actual choices.

Light and power get the same attention. Vanity lights belong at face height on either side of the mirror, not only overhead, and everything goes on dimmers with a low night setting. We plan outlets inside vanity drawers for hair tools, power for a heated towel bar or a bidet seat, and GFCI protection wherever water is near. Those decisions are cheap on paper and expensive once the tile is up, so they go on the drawings with everything else.

Behind the plaster in a pre-war North Shore house you may find galvanized supply lines closing up with rust, cast-iron drains, and fittings from three different decades. A primary bath renovation is the time to replace them back to sound pipe and add accessible shutoffs. A big shower with a rain head and body sprays needs pressure and hot water to match, so we check pipe sizes and water heater capacity during design, not after the first cold shower.

Walls get the same thought. In older houses, blueboard and veneer plaster is often the better finish: a hard, true surface that sits better next to original plaster than drywall does. When an old bath comes out and the framing underneath has been cut, rotted or overloaded, we repair it properly, document it with photos in your project portal and handle any added cost with a written change order before the work goes ahead.