Bathroom remodeling in McKinney, TX

Around McKinney's historic downtown you'll find houses from the late 1800s and early 1900s, along with later homes built in between. Many older Texas houses were built on pier and beam, which means the floor is framed in wood and raised above the ground. The drain and water lines usually run through that crawlspace.

Bathrooms in those houses are often small and have been changed more than once. You might find a clawfoot tub that's been converted to a shower with a curtain ring, a pedestal sink with nowhere to put anything, and tile from two or three different decades. Wood subfloor near the tub and toilet can be soft if a slow leak went unnoticed for years.

Out in the planned communities that went up from the 1990s on, the bathroom is a different animal. It's bigger, built on a slab, and finished with builder tile and a tub and shower layout that looks a lot like the neighbors'. The usual complaints are about style and how the space is used.

On pier and beam, a plumber can often reach the drain from below, so shifting a shower or vanity a short distance is usually more practical than in a slab house. The tradeoff is the floor itself. Before new tile goes down, the subfloor has to be solid and stiff enough to keep tile from cracking, and that sometimes means adding framing or replacing sections.

On a slab, moving a drain means cutting concrete and patching it back. That's doable, but it adds time and cost, so most slab bath plans keep the toilet, tub and shower drains close to where they are and put the money into a better shower, vanity and lighting.

Either way, the shower gets a real waterproofing layer behind the tile and a floor sloped to the drain. In an older house, the fan matters even more. Many older baths had only a window for ventilation, and adding a fan that vents outside helps keep moisture out of old framing.

We start with a site visit, and in an older home that includes a look underneath when the crawlspace is reachable. You get a written, itemized estimate after that, with possible hidden conditions called out in plain terms.