The cabinets in this Berkeley kitchen were stained and varnished wood, and the goal was a smooth, painted finish with no wood grain showing through. As we covered in our article on the two ways to resurface kitchen cabinets, either method starts with the same thing: sanding and preparation. Whether you use an epoxy cabinet

This floor and shower surround in Emeryville took more than it should have. The work included a tile floor, a tile tub surround, tile in a washroom, and a tile baseboard. I also installed a stud over the tub edge so the shower door would have solid framing to mount to. The client chose the

This was a basement tile shower in an early-1900s home with a gorgeous view. The owners had lived there for decades. At some point, someone had painted over the original tile, and the paint had started to delaminate in places. The peeling spots were collecting mildew and fungus, and the shower looked worse every year.

This large-format tile floor in Alameda was challenging mainly because of how much was built into it. It’s a heated floor over a DITRA-HEAT uncoupling membrane, with waterproofing at the walls, and every one of those layers adds time and material before the first tile goes down. The first surprise for most people is how

This elevated shower was in the same Alameda home as the DITRA-HEAT large format tile floor and the Italian marble shower surround. The client was a contractor himself and played more of a role in the job than I’d have liked, and a lot of it had to be figured out on the fly. The

his shower was the third feature we built in the Alameda home with the DITRA-HEAT large format tile floor and the downstairs shower with the mosaic band. This one about killed me. It’s probably the most complex thing I’ve ever done with tile, a combination of very complicated tile, materials, and conditions. It’s a large