Shower replacement in Tampa Bay.
A shower almost never fails at the tile. It fails at the layer behind it, and by the time you can see something on the surface, the problem has been there a long time. Before you spend anything, here is how to work out which one you have.
Priced by written scope, never by the hour.
Is it the grout, or is it the wall? Find out yourself in five minutes.
This matters because one of them is a maintenance job you can have done for a fraction of the other. Any company that tells you it is always a rebuild is not looking. Do these five checks before anybody quotes you.
Tap the tile with a knuckle
Walk the wall and listen. Solid tile sounds solid. A hollow or drummy note means the tile has lost its bond with what is behind it, and that is not a grout problem.
Push on the wall, low down
Near the floor and in the corners. Any give, any sponginess, any movement at all means the board behind is wet. That wall comes out, and no amount of new grout changes it.
Look at where the grout keeps cracking
Cracks scattered around are usually age. Cracks that keep coming back in the same corner, or along the joint where wall meets floor, mean something behind is moving.
Smell it after a shower
A musty smell that does not clear once the room is dry is water sitting somewhere it should not be, and that is behind the tile.
Look at the ceiling or wall below
If the shower is upstairs, go underneath and look. A stain there settles the question. If it is on a slab, look at the baseboard on the other side of the shower wall.
What is behind the tile decides the price.
Tile and grout are not waterproof. They are the finish. The waterproofing is a separate layer underneath, and whether yours exists, and whether the board behind it is still sound, is what this job actually costs.
The board behind the tile
If the wall behind the old tile is soft, wet or crumbling, it comes out. Tiling over a failed wall is the cheapest thing a company can do and the fastest thing to fail.
Whether waterproofing exists at all
Plenty of older Florida showers were built with tile straight onto board and nothing between. Adding a proper membrane is not an upgrade in that case, it is the job.
How far the tile goes
To the ceiling costs more than to the shower head, and it is the easiest place to move the number without touching quality.
The pan
Reusing a sound pan and replacing only the walls is a smaller job. If the pan is part of the failure, the pan is part of the scope.
What is included, and where it ends.
A written scope is only worth something if it says where it stops. These are the boundaries we put in writing before anyone starts.
How long the bathroom is out of use.
Demolition tells you what you are really dealing with, so the honest sequence is open it, look, and confirm the scope before the tile is ordered. After that it is board, membrane, cure, tile, grout, cure. The cure times are not negotiable and the dates are in the scope.
When we tell you not to do it
Every company on your list will say yes to this job. Here is where we say no, and why. It costs us the odd project and it saves you a great deal more than that.
The tile is sound and only the grout looks tired
If the five checks above all come back clean, re-grouting and re-sealing is the honest answer and it is a fraction of the cost. We will say so standing in a bathroom you were ready to spend real money on.
You want new tile over the old tile
It can be done. It also traps whatever is already wet, adds thickness the valve and the door were not built for, and buys you a couple of years. We would rather do it properly once.
The leak is not coming from the shower
Sometimes the stain on the ceiling below is a supply line or a vent, not the shower at all. Replacing the shower would not fix it and would look like it failed. That gets identified first.
Lifetime warranty on our workmanship.
If the work we did fails, we come back and fix it, for as long as you own the home. Not one year. Not five. As long as you live there.
A warranty is only worth what its exclusions say. Ours are above, in the same size type as the promise. Ask any other company you are talking to for theirs in writing, and check how long the tile is covered for.
Questions we actually get asked
How do I know if my shower is actually failing?
Run the five checks above: tap the tile for hollow spots, push the wall low down for give, look at where grout keeps cracking, smell the room once it is dry, and look at the ceiling or baseboard below. Any one of them coming back positive means the layer behind the tile is worth opening up.
Can you just re-grout it?
If the wall behind is sound, yes, and we will tell you that. Grout is a maintenance item. It is not the thing keeping water out of your framing, so re-grouting a wall that has already failed only hides it.
What is the waterproofing you keep mentioning?
A continuous membrane over the board, with every seam, corner and change of plane banded, so water that gets through the grout has nowhere to go but back to the drain. It disappears under the tile and you never see it again, which is exactly why it is the first thing cut when a price has to look low.
Do you photograph that stage?
Yes. The waterproofing is photographed before tile goes on, so you can see the layer you are paying for after it becomes invisible.
How often should a tiled shower need this?
A shower built with a proper membrane over sound board should not need rebuilding in your lifetime in the house. Grout and silicone are maintenance and will need attention along the way. If a tiled shower is failing in under fifteen years, something behind it was wrong from the start.
The other bathroom services
Where we work
Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Manatee and Sarasota counties. If your town is not on this list, call and ask: the answer is often yes.
A walkthrough, then a written scope with one closed price.
Never hourly, never a verbal figure, and our workmanship carries a lifetime warranty. Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Manatee and Sarasota counties.