A bathroom is the hardest-working room in a house and the one where shortcuts show up fastest. Water finds every gap, and it does not wait long. So while the finishes get all the attention, the parts that decide whether the job lasts are the ones that disappear before the tile goes on.
Waterproofing comes first. A tiled shower is only as good as the membrane behind the tile. Tile and grout are not waterproof — they are a wearing surface, and water passes through them. If there is no membrane, or it is lapped the wrong way, that water goes into the framing and you are back to bare studs in a few years, usually starting at the bottom corner nobody can see.
Then the pan and the slope. Water has to reach the drain from every point on the floor of the shower, which means the pan is built to fall, not laid flat and hoped over. The curb gets the same treatment, sloped inward so water runs back in rather than out onto the bathroom floor.
Rough-in is the other thing worth doing once. While the walls are open, moving the plumbing to suit the layout you actually want, and running the electrical for lighting, a fan and a proper outlet, costs a fraction of what it costs to open a finished wall later. An exhaust fan that actually vents outside — not into the attic — is the single cheapest thing you can do for the life of the room.
After all that, the tile is the enjoyable part. Setting it flat, keeping the lines true through the niche and around the valve, and cutting the edges cleanly is craft, and it is what you will look at every day. But it sits on top of decisions that were made weeks earlier.
Thinking about a bathroom? Call (323) 243-7505 and we will walk it with you.
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