Two bathrooms in the same Carmel Valley house, rebuilt at the same time, finished differently underfoot.
Shower-to-shower in both
Neither shower moved, which is what allowed two full bathrooms to be done in four weeks. It does not mean either was treated lightly.
Both came out to the studs. Old tile, old backer, old pan — all of it. What went back is a new waterproofing assembly with a pre-sloped pan and membrane lapped correctly through the corners and up the walls.
That is the entire argument for taking a working shower back to the framing. The tile is the visible half of a shower; the assembly behind it is the half that decides whether the framing stays dry. Retiling over what is already there is faster and leaves you with a new-looking shower built on an unknown.
Different flooring in each
One bathroom got tile. The other got engineered hardwood.
Hardwood in a bathroom is a fair thing to question, and engineered is the reason it works. An engineered plank is a hardwood wear layer over a cross-laminated core, and that core is what keeps it from moving with humidity the way a solid board does. In a bathroom that swings from dry to steamy several times a day, that stability is the whole difference.
It is also a continuity decision. When a bathroom opens off a bedroom or a hall already floored in hardwood, carrying the same floor through means the doorway stops being a threshold between two materials. Tiling it would have drawn a line at the door.
The other bathroom took tile, which is the more conventional answer and the right one where the room is used harder or opens off a tiled space.
Custom cabinets in both
Built for each room rather than ordered to approximate it. Doing two bathrooms at once makes custom cabinetry more sensible than it would be for one — the same shop drawings, the same finish, one delivery, two rooms that relate to each other rather than looking separately specified.
Tile walls
Tile on the walls in both, set out in advance so the courses land properly at the corners and the cuts fall where they are least visible.
The result
Two bathrooms rebuilt to the same standard in four weeks, each floored for the space it opens onto.
