Most of the trouble in a Washougal bathroom hides behind the tile and under the floor, not where you can point at it. A shower pan that leaks, or a toilet on a wax ring that gave up years ago, feeds water into the subfloor and framing long before anything shows on top. In the older homes downtown, and along the Washougal River where the ground stays damp, that is what we find once the floor comes up. Wood rot repair is this crew’s specialty, so a soaked joist is the job we do best.
Licensed and insured. WA Lic. #EVERGRS757MC
On anything sent before 5pm
We match or beat most written estimates
Remodels completed
Framing stripped bare, the wet walls waterproofed, fresh fixtures throughout.
The tub comes out and waterproofing goes in first, with the pan and glass following only after that inspection clears.
Every piece of framing and subfloor the leak softened gets cut back to solid wood, not patched over, built to handle river-mouth wind and rain.
A bonded waterproof skin goes on first, under all of it, so tile never sits on bare board.
Toilet and fixtures go in level, the vanity gets set clear of the door’s swing, and the exhaust fan is upsized for river air moisture.
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 does not fail at the shiny surface you look at every morning. It fails from the back, in the parts you never see: a waterproof layer pressed flat to the wall, a shower floor that drains instead of holding water, corners that stay sealed, and a fan that truly pushes wet air out of the house. A cheap remodel skips every one of those and still looks sharp on day one. We build the wet areas to current code and run every fan duct clear outside through a wall or the roof, because Washougal air stays damp through the wet months, from October into June, and a fan dumping that moisture into your attic is just a rot repair you have not booked yet.
Every tiled shower stands on one of three methods, and that choice, not the tile on the face of it, sets how many years you get before water reaches the framing. The one we build is a bonded membrane, sheet or liquid, laid over backer board and sealed into a single unbroken skin at every corner, seam and pipe, with the tile set on top. A rigid foam system reaches the same end differently, by making the board itself the barrier. The third route, plain cement board and a smear of mastic, is the one that lets water through somewhere around year fifteen, and we will not build it. The layer a cheap bid leaves out is the only thing between your shower and the subfloor.
The shower floor carries the other half of the waterproofing. Water has to fall steadily toward the drain, and the curbless, step-free entry so many people ask for now has to start that fall below the level of the surrounding floor. In a home that is already built, reaching that means either notching the joists down across that bay or framing them lower, and that is carpentry decided well before any tile gets set. It is why a flush entry runs into real money in an older downtown Washougal home and costs next to nothing when the floor is being framed from scratch.
The tile itself is mostly about how much upkeep you want. Large porcelain panels give you few grout lines, so less scrubbing and fewer seams that can fail, though they need a truly flat wall behind them and cost more to hang. A mosaic floor grips better under wet feet but hands you back all those joints to keep clean. Stone looks rich and drinks water, so a marble shower commits you to a sealing routine you cannot let slip. Use epoxy grout wherever water and a brush meet, standard grout elsewhere, and a flexible sealant rather than grout in every inside corner, since those joints shift and grout only cracks.
On the fittings, put your money in the valve and let taste decide the rest. The mixing valve, pressure-balanced or thermostatic, is the piece sealed inside the wall, and going back in for it later is the headache to avoid, while the handle and spout bolted to its face come off any morning you like. A wall-hung vanity opens up a small room, but it needs solid blocking set in the studs first, so that gets settled before the drywall goes up. And next to a shower in air this damp, a particleboard cabinet is a five-year part at best.
Last is the exhaust fan, the smallest figure on the estimate and the one part that keeps the whole room sound. Size it for the room, carry its duct the whole way outdoors instead of letting it empty into the attic, wire it to a countdown switch or a humidity sensor, and wrap the duct so it does not drip condensation back into the housing. Washougal stays damp most of the year, so a bathroom that never dries out between showers rots on a schedule, and that one fan is what separates the two outcomes.
This is a real bathroom caught at the stage most people photograph right past. Every finish is gone, and the tile, the tub, the vanity and the old flooring have all been hauled out. What is left is a wall of old plank sheathing, loose batts of insulation sitting between the studs, a drain stub standing open where the toilet used to bolt down, and the toilet itself pushed into a corner to wait, since it is the last fixture back in.
Over on the right, that framing is brand new. The wall there is a full rebuild rather than a patch, which is what studs have earned once a shower has run water into them year after year. The supply lines sit capped, and the shower valve is already locked at its final height. That step cannot wait, because the valve fixes where every tile falls, and both of them vanish the second the backer board goes up.
No part of the job sets more of the final bill, or the room’s lifespan, than this one. With the walls still open, every question worth settling gets settled: how hard the pan drains, whether the entry sits flush to the floor, where the niche goes, whether a tired joist gets a new one bolted alongside. Once the board covers it, the call is made for good. That is why we walk you through the room at this point, rather than sending a photo along once it is all closed up.
We run into it plenty in Washougal, above all under showers that have been in daily use for twenty years or more. What sets us apart is what comes next: rebuilding rotted framing is our own trade, never a job we farm out. Find a punky joist or a soft run of subfloor and it gets put back right, at a price you already saw on the estimate, so the schedule keeps moving instead of stalling while a second contractor is chased down.
The same short list turns up house after house. A soft spot in the floor just in front of the toilet marks where a wax seal failed quietly long ago. A joist under the shower drain goes dark and spongy. A stretch of rim joist has gone punky where a tub overflow has been seeping into the wall cavity, which we see often in the damper riverside homes along the Washougal River. And framing against an exterior wall suffers wherever the fan never pulled much air. We open things up wide enough to catch all of it while the floor is up, because that is the only time a joist repair stays cheap.
A handful of things move the number, roughly in this order. First, does anything move? Sending a toilet or shower to a new spot means running new drain lines. Then the square footage of tile on the walls and floor, the grade of fixtures you land on, and whatever shows up once the floor is open. Keep everything where it sits and just refresh the surfaces, and you are near the low end. Gut it, move things around, and run tile to the ceiling, and you are at the top. Every estimate is itemized, and if the floor turns up damage, that repair is a separate line you approve before we touch it. Already holding a written bid from someone else? We match or beat most of them by 10%.
Where the money actually goes catches most owners off guard, because a bathroom packs a surprising number of trades into a few square feet. Labor is far and away the biggest share: tile setting is slow, precise work charged by the square foot, and a room of maybe forty square feet still has to take on framing, plumbing, electrical, membrane, tile, paint and finish carpentry, each in its turn. Tile and waterproofing come next, and both track the area you cover rather than the size of the room, which is why tile to the ceiling costs so much more than tile to shoulder height. Fixtures and the vanity follow, entirely your call. The plumbing rough-in lands last, cheap when nothing shifts and dear the moment a toilet or shower changes address.
The one line we will not cut is the waterproofing behind the tile, which is also one of the cheapest items on the whole page. Skip that membrane and you save a couple hundred dollars today against a repair that runs into the thousands down the road, so we will not quote it that way, and we would rather walk from the job than put a shower in the ground like that.
10%
Photos go a long way, above all a close one of anywhere the floor feels soft or a stain has spread. Anything in before 5pm, we answer that day.
Because a bathroom is such a small room, the mess stays contained and the whole thing wraps up fast instead of dragging out. Here is the sequence the work follows, and the points that pinch hardest when it is the only bathroom you have.
Tile, fixtures and the vanity all get ordered and delivered before we start demo. A bathroom sitting idle while a backordered box of tile catches up is the most avoidable delay in this trade. We also agree on where the dust barrier hangs and the path the crew takes to reach the room.
Figure on a single day, maybe two. The vanity, tub, flooring and wall tile all come out, leaving bare framing and subfloor and a clear view of everything the walls were hiding.
With the old plumbing, the subfloor and the framing all exposed, we look everything over. Find rot or wear and you will have photos the same day and a price before we close anything back up.
New supply lines and wiring run to where the fixtures will sit, blocking is set for the vanity and any grab bars, and then the City of Washougal Building Division inspects from City Hall on C Street. Nothing gets closed up until that passes.
Backer board goes up first, then the membrane with every corner and pipe sealed tight, then the pan, then tile up the walls and out across the floor. Tiling is the slow part, and nobody can hurry it, because thinset and grout harden on their own time, not on any we hand them.
The finish work comes last. We hang the mirror and shower trim, drop in the vanity and toilet, wire the fan, and handle the paint and trim carpentry. Then we go through the room with you, line by line against the estimate you approved. The toilet and sink are usable a few days before the shower is ready.
The shower is out for the length of the job, since it has to be demoed, waterproofed, tiled, and then left to cure. The toilet and the sink come back much sooner in the run. If this is the only bathroom in the house, tell us before we start and we order the work so those two are back in service first.
We do these all the time around Washougal. Expect the drain reworked, the entire wet zone waterproofed, and in most cases new tile run up the walls. It is also your chance to fix what the tub kept out of sight, which in the older homes downtown is often a soft stretch of subfloor an overflow has been feeding for years.
A floor that gives at the foot of the toilet nearly always means the wax ring failed some time back and water has been soaking the subfloor ever since. It is routine work to put right, and far cheaper now than after another wet Washougal winter. Send a photo of the spot and we will gauge how far it has spread.
If we are moving plumbing, touching the wiring, or repairing structural framing under the floor, then yes, and in town that permit goes through the City of Washougal Building Division at City Hall on C Street, not the county. We are a registered Washington contractor, WA Lic. #EVERGRS757MC, so we pull it and schedule the inspections ourselves. Swap fixtures in the same spots with no structural work and you usually will not need one.
In most homes, yes, but the cost rides entirely on what sits under the floor. A curbless entry needs its base set lower than the floor around it, so in a house that is already built you are looking at one of two moves: notching the joists down across that span, or building the surrounding floor up to match. Which one makes sense depends on your framing, and we will know after a look from the crawlspace or a small opening cut from above.
Starting from the studs and working out: backer board first, then a bonded waterproof membrane sealed down at every corner, joint and pipe, and only after that the thinset and tile. The membrane is the part that actually keeps water out. Backer board on its own soaks through like anything else, whatever a cheap bid tells you on the walkthrough, and leaving that membrane out is the corner we see cut most.
In Washougal, with the air damp most of the year, the fan does more for the room than almost anything else. Undersize it, or vent its duct into the attic rather than outside, and the room stays wet for hours after the water shuts off. That trapped moisture is exactly what rots framing and grows mold behind the vanity. Sizing it right, ducting it out through a wall or the roof, and putting it on a timer or a humidity sensor costs almost nothing while the walls are still open.
Plan on weeks rather than days for a clean gut and rebuild, and know that a lot of that stretch is grout and thinset curing and waiting on the inspector, not a crew standing idle. Changing the layout or repairing rotted framing pushes it out further. Your estimate comes with a day count on it, and when the house has only the one bathroom, we sequence the work so the toilet and sink come back early.
Our shop is on SE 184th Ave in east Vancouver, a straight run east on SR-14 to Washougal with no bridge to cross, so we reach a Washougal bathroom quickly. We remodel baths all over town, the old mill-town homes around Main Street and the historic district, the newer places on the hills north of town and out toward Fern Prairie, the riverside homes up the Washougal River valley, and on through the rest of east Clark County.
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.
