This small stand-up shower in El Sobrante looked like a simple job. It was more challenging than it looked. A home in transition The family had been through a tragedy involving a child, and it was time to move on. The owner was remodeling the whole house ahead of a sale and co-managing much of
Not every tile job is a full remodel. This San Francisco bath surround needed a repair: a section of subway tile brought back to match the rest of the wall. It was a relatively small job, but repairs have their own challenges, because the goal is for no one to be able to tell where
Tile Bath Surround, San Francisco, CA, February, 2022 Read More »
This Oakland guest shower is a good example of how much design you can get from simple materials. The homeowners wanted a clean, modern shower without a big budget, and the answer was a pre-formed shower pan, a cement backer surround, and ordinary subway tile, laid in an unusual way. A vertical grid Subway tile
Grid Pattern Guest Shower, Oakland, CA, November, 2021 Read More »
This was a lesson. And the lesson is: avoid white natural stone unless you pair it with a very light grout. Even then, dirt will settle into the stone and give it a dirty look over time. This Oakland Hills master bath floor was about 160 square feet, with a fair number of angles, in
Pebble Stone Master Bath, Oakland Hills, July 2021 Read More »
This was a multi-million-dollar Oakland Hills home, probably built in the 1950s. Building materials were better then, but the house had settled, and there wasn’t a right angle, a flat wall, or a plumb surface in the bathroom. The easy part Demolition went quickly. The old tile came off the walls without much fight. Behind
This Emeryville kitchen was getting a new backsplash, and the first step was taking out the old one. The existing backsplash was tile, which had to be demolished. Removing old tile from drywall almost always takes some of the wall’s paper face with it, so once the tile was off, the wall was patched and
