Skip to content
Hilltop Custom Builders
Home · Services · Bathrooms

Bathrooms

Primary suites and guest baths, where the part that decides whether the room lasts is the part you never see.

Approach

A bathroom is a waterproofing job with a room around it.

Tile is the last thing to happen and the first thing anyone looks at, which is why so much attention goes to it and so little to the substrate underneath. Every bathroom failure we are called to repair is the same failure: water found a path through a transition — a corner, a curb, a niche return, a drain flange, a shower door track — and moved into framing that nobody could see.

So we draw the waterproofing. Membrane type and coverage, pre-sloped substrate, movement joints, how the niche is formed and where its slope falls, how the linear drain meets the membrane. Then it is flood-tested and inspected before a single decorative material arrives. That sequence is not negotiable and it is not fast, and it is the difference between a bathroom at twenty years and a bathroom at seven.

Everything above the membrane is where the room becomes personal: the slab that wraps the tub deck, the vanity drawn around your plumbing rather than bought to fit, the mirror that is actually a cabinet, light that does not make anyone look ill at six in the morning.

Scope

What is included

A bathroom contract usually covers all of the below, and in a primary suite it often extends into the closet and the bedroom wall behind it.

  1. Survey, demolition and structure

    Measured survey, controlled strip-out, and the framing changes a curbless entry or a relocated fixture requires — sistered joists, dropped bays, new headers.

  2. Waterproofing

    Membrane specified and drawn for the assembly, corners and transitions detailed, pre-sloped substrate, flood-tested and inspected before tile.

  3. Plumbing and rough-in

    Supply, waste and vent set to the fixture schedule, valve heights confirmed on site with you, and linear or point drains positioned to the tile layout rather than the other way round.

  4. Tile and stone

    Slab selection and marking, book-matched walls and tub surrounds where the stone allows, layout set out on drawings so the cuts land where they should.

  5. Custom vanities and cabinetry

    Vanities, mirror cabinets, linen storage and closet joinery built to the room, with plumbing coordinated to the drawer boxes so nothing has to be cut out later.

  6. Steam, sauna and heated floors

    Sealed enclosures with sloped ceilings, generator siting and service access, dedicated circuits, and electric floor mats zoned on their own thermostat.

  7. Ventilation and moisture management

    Extraction sized for the room and ducted to outside air, humidity-sensing controls, and make-up air for a steam enclosure so the moisture leaves rather than settling in the ceiling.

  8. Lighting and accessible detailing

    Layered light at the mirror, in the shower and low for the night, plus blocking for grab bars, a bench and a 36-inch door, detailed so none of it reads as equipment.

Wet room with curbless shower and freestanding tub, glass and stone
Process

How a bathroom runs

Shorter than a kitchen and less forgiving, because the two stages that matter most happen behind the finished surface.

  1. 01

    Consultation

    We look at the room, the floor structure below it and where the drains currently run, then give a costed range.

  2. 02

    Design

    Layout, fixture schedule, tile setting-out and vanity drawings, priced as they develop.

  3. 03

    Pre-construction

    Stone marked, fixtures and glass ordered against real lead times, permits filed, waterproofing assembly specified.

  4. 04

    Build

    Strip-out, framing, rough-in, waterproofing and flood test, tile, vanities, glass, fixtures, light.

  5. 05

    Handover

    Valves and steam commissioned, glass adjusted, snags closed, and a return at eleven months when grout and glass have had a year of use.

Selected details

Select an image to enlarge. Arrow keys move between images, Escape closes.

Waterproofing, specifically

The six details that decide whether it lasts.

Any builder will tell you they waterproof. These are the specifics worth asking about, and the answers you should expect.

  1. Sheet versus liquid membrane

    Sheet membrane is consistent in thickness and can be tested immediately; liquid is easier around complex shapes but only as good as the applied film. We use sheet on flat runs and liquid at penetrations, bonded to each other.

  2. Pre-sloped substrate

    Slope belongs in the substrate, not in the mortar bed under the tile. A floor sloped only at the surface holds water inside the assembly permanently.

  3. The niche

    Most niches are cut into the waterproofing after it is installed. Ours are formed first, sloped to drain, and the membrane is returned into them before tile.

  4. The flood test

    Drain plugged, floor filled, left overnight, checked from the ceiling below. It costs a day. Skipping it is how a leak is discovered from a stain in the dining room two years later.

  5. Movement joints

    Tile expands, framing moves, and Dallas humidity swings hard between seasons. Perimeter and field joints in flexible sealant keep the field from cracking where it meets a wall.

  6. Grout and glass

    Cementitious grout is easier to work and easier to stain; epoxy resists both and is unforgiving to install. Frameless glass needs its own tolerance allowance — panels are templated after tile, never before.

Questions

Eight to fourteen weeks on site for a primary suite, six to eight for a guest bath. Waterproofing and its inspection sit in the middle of that and cannot be compressed: the membrane has to be flood-tested and the test takes the time it takes.

Usually, but it is a structural question before it is a tiling question. The floor build-up has to drop within the joist depth, which may mean sistering or re-framing a bay and moving a drain. We check it during design, not after demolition.

Almost never the tile. It is the waterproofing behind it, at the transitions — the corner, the curb, the niche, the drain flange, the door track. Those are the details we draw, and the reason we flood-test before anything decorative is fixed.

It needs a fully sealed enclosure with a sloped ceiling, a vapor-tight membrane, a generator sited where it can be serviced, a dedicated circuit and real extraction. Retrofitting one into a shower not built for it is not a fair test of the idea.

For comfort on stone in January, yes, and they are inexpensive to install while the floor is open. As a heat source they are not doing much here. Zone them separately and put them on their own thermostat.

Blocking for grab bars, a curbless entry, a 36-inch door and a bench cost almost nothing during construction and a great deal afterwards. None of it has to look clinical. We detail it as part of the design rather than as equipment.

Related work

Interior — kitchen island and range wall

Kitchens

The same coordination applied to the other room where cabinetry, stone and services all land in the same square meter.

Kitchens →→
Interior — dressing room and joinery

Interior Design

Finishes, fittings and the closet behind the suite specified alongside the build rather than chosen at the end.

Interior Design →→
Exterior — new construction, front elevation

Custom Homebuilding

If the suite is part of a larger renovation or a new house, it costs less to hold it all under one contract.

Custom Homebuilding →→

Send us the room.

A few photographs and the floor below it will tell us most of what we need. We reply within two business days. Based in Dallas/Fort Worth and available for projects outside the Metroplex.

214-901-3655
City and state. We are not limited to DFW.