In a century-old Portland home, the bathroom damage that matters rarely sits where you can see it. A shower pan that weeps, or a toilet resting on a wax seal that failed long ago, can soak old-growth fir framing for years while the tile above still looks sound. Chasing that hidden water back to where it begins is our first move, because rebuilding rotted framing is what this crew is known for, not a job we hand to someone else.
Licensed and insured. Oregon CCB #262707
On anything sent before 5pm
We match or beat most written estimates
Remodels completed
Old finishes torn out, the wet walls properly sealed, and every fixture new.
The new pan goes in and glass gets hung only once the waterproofing behind it clears inspection, no matter how tight the plumbing chase is in a century-old bungalow.
A leak can sit behind plaster and lath in a century-old bungalow for years before it surfaces, and everything it reached comes out for fresh framing underneath.
Floors, walls and showers go onto a bonded waterproof skin, never set straight on plain backer board.
Vanity and toilet are set level, lighting is wired to current code, and the fan is sized to actually clear humidity in a bathroom that wasn’t built with one originally.
Same room, same window. One side is the bathroom the owners lived with. The other is the one they have now.
Drag the handle. Left, the bathroom as we found it: a tub behind a curtain, a small vanity, shelves on the wall. Right, the same room finished: a glass shower, a soaking tub under the window, a wood vanity on a herringbone floor.
Before After A bathroom never fails at the glossy face you see each morning. It fails out of sight, in the parts no one photographs: the membrane pressed flat behind the tile, a pan that sheds water to the drain instead of pooling it, corners that keep their seal, and a fan with enough pull to carry wet air out of the house. Skip any one of those on a bargain job and the room still looks sharp the day it wraps. We build every wet area to current code and run each fan duct the whole way outdoors, through a sidewall or the roof. Under Portland’s long wet season and the heavy tree canopy that shades roofs and north walls, a room dries slowly, so a fan quietly emptying into the attic is only a rot repair you have not booked yet.
Behind the tile of any shower there is a waterproofing method, and which one you got decides its lifespan far more than the color of the tile ever will. We work with bonded membranes. A sheet or a painted-on liquid gets laid across the backer and tied together into one continuous seal, every inside corner, every joint, every pipe that pokes through, and the tile is set over that. Rigid foam panels do the same thing from a different angle, since the panel is itself the barrier. What we will not install is the old trick of a cement board with a smear of mastic, which tends to let water through about fifteen years in. The money a cheap crew saves by leaving the seal thin is the exact money you spend tearing the wall out later.
The shower floor holds the other half of the job. Its base has to tip toward the drain at a steady grade, and the flush, step-in entry nearly everyone asks for now has to begin that grade below the finished floor of the rest of the room. In a house already standing, you buy that one of two ways, by notching the joists down across the bay or by hanging them lower from the start, and that is framing settled well ahead of the tile. It is the reason a curbless shower turns into real money inside an old bungalow in the close-in neighborhoods, yet barely shows on the bill when a floor is being framed brand new.
Picking the tile itself is mostly a question of how much scrubbing you want to sign up for. Oversized porcelain panels leave you almost no grout lines, which is less to clean and fewer joints that can fail, though the wall behind them has to be flat and they take longer to hang. A small mosaic underfoot grips better when it is wet but hands all those seams back to you. Marble and other natural stone look rich and drink water just the same, so a stone shower binds you to a resealing habit you cannot skip. Run epoxy grout wherever a brush and water meet, plain grout elsewhere, and a flexible sealant rather than grout at every change of plane, since a corner moves and grout parked in a corner only cracks.
On the fittings, put the dollars into the valve and let your taste handle the rest. The mixing valve buried in the wall, pressure-balanced or thermostatic, is the piece you never want to dig back out, while the handle and spout screwed to its face come off on any slow afternoon. Float the vanity off the wall and a cramped old bathroom reads larger, but solid blocking has to go into the studs first, so that is a call you lock down before the drywall closes. And next to a shower, in air this reliably damp, a cabinet built from particleboard is good for maybe five years before it swells apart.
That leaves the exhaust fan, the smallest number on the whole estimate and the one piece that keeps the room from rotting out. Match it to the size of the room, carry its duct the entire way outdoors instead of letting it die in the attic, wire it to a countdown timer or a humidity sensor, and insulate the run so condensation does not drip back down into the housing. Portland stays wet from fall clear into spring, and the mature trees that shade so many of these roofs keep walls slow to dry, so a bathroom that never dries out between showers will rot on a schedule. That one modest fan is what stands between the two outcomes.
What you are looking at is a real bathroom stopped at the stage that never turns up in a photo. The finishes have all come out, tub and tile, vanity and worn flooring carried to the curb. What is left is a run of old plank sheathing, insulation sagging loose in the bays, an open drain in the floor where the toilet once bolted down, and the toilet nudged into a corner to wait, since it is the very last fixture reset.
The framing on the right is all new. Instead of patching that wall, we replaced the framing whole, which is what studs earn once a shower has been feeding them water. Notice the capped supply stubs and the shower valve, already pinned at its final height. There is no putting that off, because the valve position sets out the whole tile layout, and both disappear the instant the backer goes up.
Nothing else in the whole job decides as much about the final cost, or the room’s lifespan, as this open stretch. With it all still in view, we hash out the questions that carry weight: how steep to pitch the pan, whether the shower sits flush to the floor, the spot for the niche, whether a weak joist needs a second one sistered to it. Once that board is up, each answer is fixed for good. That is the reason we have you stand in the open room at this stage, instead of sending a picture once it is closed back up.
We run into this often in Portland, above all under a shower that twenty or thirty years of daily use has quietly soaked. What sets us apart is the step after the discovery: structural repair is this shop’s own trade, never a job we farm out to another crew. Turn up a soft joist or a stretch of subfloor gone to pulp and we rebuild it on the spot, billed from a figure you already approved, so the remodel keeps moving instead of stalling while a second contractor gets tracked down.
The same short list turns up house after house. Some give in the floor right at the foot of the toilet is the quiet work of a wax seal that let go years back with nobody the wiser. Then comes the joist directly beneath the shower drain, gone dark and soft enough to press a thumb into. A length of rim joist is often softened where a tub overflow has wept into the wall cavity. And framing against an outside wall takes damage in any room whose fan never truly moved the air, which is common in these century-old homes under heavy shade. We open the floor wide enough to find all of it while it lies exposed, since a joist is only cheap to mend while you can still see it.
A handful of variables set the figure, and they usually fall in this order. The one that moves it most is whether we relocate anything, since putting a toilet or shower on a different wall means new drain lines run under the floor. From there it rides on how much wall and floor you tile, the tier of fixtures you choose, and what we find once the floor is open. Hold the layout as it is and refresh the surfaces, and you sit near the low end. Tear it out, shift things around, and tile to full height, and you reach the top. We break each estimate into line items, and anything we uncover gets its own line you sign off on before we proceed. Have a written bid in hand? Send it over, since in most cases we meet or beat it by 10%.
How that budget splits catches most owners off guard, because so many trades crowd into so little floor. The heaviest line by far is labor, since setting tile is slow, exacting work priced by the foot, and even a forty-square-foot room still has to host carpentry, pipe, wire, the waterproofing, the tile, the paint and the trim, one trade at a time. The tile and membrane materials come next, and their cost follows how much surface you cover rather than the room’s size, so running tile overhead dwarfs stopping it at shoulder height. The fixtures and vanity come after, fully yours to choose. Dead last is the plumbing rough, cheap while nothing shifts and steep the moment a fixture changes walls.
There is one number we refuse to shave, the waterproofing hidden behind the tile, and it is among the least expensive things on the whole page. Dropping that membrane hands you back a couple hundred dollars at signing in trade for a repair that runs into the thousands down the road, so we will not quote it that way, and we would walk from the job before building a shower we know will rot.
10%
A few clear photos help most, especially a close one of any area that feels soft underfoot or shows discoloration. Anything that reaches us ahead of 5pm earns a same-day answer.
Because a bathroom is such a compact space, the disruption stays short and contained rather than dragging across weeks. Here is how the job runs, and the parts that bite hardest if you have no second bath to fall back on.
Tile, fixtures and the vanity are ordered and in hand before demo starts, not partway through. Nothing holds a bathroom out of use more needlessly than a room torn open and left waiting on a late tile shipment. We also settle up front where the dust wall hangs and which path the crew uses in and out of the house.
Usually a day, sometimes two. The tub, the tile, the old vanity and the worn floor all come out, and the room is left as open studs over bare subfloor, with everything the walls hid now exposed.
Everything is open now, so this is when we inspect the studs, the subfloor and the old supply lines. If any of it is damaged, you get pictures the same day and a cost in writing before we close anything up.
We run new plumbing and wiring out to wherever the fixtures will land, fix backing inside the studs to carry a vanity and grab bars, and then the City of Portland Bureau of Development Services inspects it. Nothing is covered over until it clears.
Up goes the backer board, then a bonded membrane worked tight at all the corners, seams and pipe penetrations, followed by the pan, and only then the tile climbing the walls and spreading over the floor. The tiling will not be hurried, since thinset and grout harden on a timetable all their own and ignore the one we would hand them.
The last stretch is finish work: the vanity and toilet go back, the mirror and shower glass get hung, the fan is wired, and paint and trim carpentry round it off. We then review the room with you against your signed estimate. The toilet and sink work again several days before the shower is ready.
Of everything in the room, the shower is the piece that stays offline the full run, since it has to be torn out, sealed, tiled, and then left to cure before anyone steps in. Your toilet and sink come back a good deal sooner. When a home has just the one bathroom, tell us at the start, and we order the work so those two are back in service as early as we can.
Absolutely, it is among the jobs we take on most. Expect the drain moved, the entire wet zone waterproofed to today’s standard, and in most cases new tile carried up the walls. Lifting the tub also exposes the floor beneath it, and in an old Portland home that is frequently right where a long-running overflow has left the subfloor soft without anyone noticing.
A bit of play at the foot of the toilet nearly always comes down to a wax ring that gave out some time ago, with water quietly soaking the subfloor from then on. The fix on its own is straightforward, and a good deal cheaper now than after one more soggy winter widens the soft zone. Text over a close shot and we will judge how far the damage has carried.
If we end up moving plumbing lines, touching the wiring, or putting structural framing back under the floor, then a permit is in order. In Portland it is issued and inspected by the City of Portland’s Bureau of Development Services, and a wide structural span can require engineered, stamped plans. Our Oregon contractor license, CCB #262707, lets us file the paperwork and set up each inspection ourselves. Leave the fixtures sitting where they are, keep clear of structural work, and usually you need no permit at all.
In most homes, yes, but the cost rides entirely on how the floor is framed beneath you. A no-threshold base has to begin lower than the floor around it, so in a house already standing you have two routes: trim the joists down across that bay, or raise the surrounding floor up to meet the shower. Which one fits depends on the framing, and in a full basement or a reachable crawlspace we read it from below. Otherwise we cut a small opening from above to see what we have.
Think of the wall from the studs out: the backer board goes on, a bonded waterproof layer is bedded over it and sealed at every inside corner, every joint and each pipe, and the thinset and tile ride on top once that layer is whole. The waterproofing is what actually holds the water back. Cement board left bare soaks right through, no matter what a cut-rate bid promises you on the walkthrough, and dropping that layer is the single most common corner this trade cuts.
In a climate like this, where the wet lingers most of the year and tall trees keep roofs and walls shaded, the fan does more for the room than nearly anything else in it. Build it undersized, or let the duct empty into the attic instead of outside, and the space stays damp for hours once the shower is off. All that trapped moisture is what quietly rots the studs and darkens the wall behind the vanity with mold. Size it to the room, take the duct out through a sidewall or the roof, and wire it to a timer or a humidity sensor, and it adds almost nothing while the framing is still bare.
Count on weeks rather than days for a thorough gut and rebuild. A fair chunk of that time is not labor at all, but grout and thinset left to harden and the days spent waiting on the inspector. Rearranging the layout, or rebuilding framing that a leak has eaten, adds more. Your estimate lists a day count, and when a house has only this single bathroom, we stage the work to return the toilet and sink to use in the opening days of the job.
Our shop sits on SE 184th Ave in east Vancouver, a short drive across the Columbia on the I-205 bridge, so we reach a Portland bathroom quickly. Licensed in Oregon, CCB #262707, we remodel baths all over the city: the century-old Craftsman bungalows and four-squares of Hawthorne, Belmont and Richmond, the Victorians of Irvington and Laurelhurst, the older homes of Sellwood, Woodstock and Montavilla, the hillside houses up in Portland Heights, and on through St. Johns and the rest of close-in Portland.
Three of the 50 reviews on our Google profile, in the homeowners' own words.
David's work was terrific. Repaired a rotted out structural framing issue in a bathroom and replaced (and resized!) a window in the same space. He initially quoted a two day job but was able to finish in a single day. Dedicated! Will be using him again.
Joe H.Bathroom framing repair
Evergreen crew installed three skylights for us. Once we opened the ceiling there was more to do than expected and they handled it without drama. Clean work, fair price, and they cleaned up after themselves.
Foad M.Three skylights
David the owner came by for a quote and was able to get us scheduled right away. The communication was great with his team and the guys were on time and very professional. Would highly recommend.
Scott G.Kitchen nook bench
Send photos and a short description. If it arrives before 5pm you get an answer the same day.
Already have a written estimate from someone else? Send that too. We match or beat most estimates by 10%.
Built for the wet side of the river.
Licensed and insured remodeling contractor serving Vancouver, WA and the Portland metro.
Oregon CCB #262707 · WA Lic. #EVERGRS757MCEvergreen Renewal Services LLC
505 SE 184th Ave Unit 320
Vancouver, WA 98683
© 2026 Evergreen Remodeling. Oregon CCB #262707 · WA Lic. #EVERGRS757MC. Evergreen Renewal Services LLC. All rights reserved.
Same day response on anything sent before 5pm.
