The waterproofing is the job. The tile is what you see.
Nearly every failed bathroom we are called to inspect failed in the same place: the joint between the pan and the wall. The tile was fine. The tile is always fine.
$35k-$78kChicago range
€16k-€42kLisboa range
5-8 wkOn site
$2,400Survey, before any of it
Service 03 of 07. Priced from your survey, never from an average.
Why this is one job and not several
Because water finds the one detail nobody checked, and it does it eighteen months after the tiler has been paid. A tested pan and a correct fall cost about six per cent of the job and stop the other ninety-four being redone.
What is included
- Strip-out to substrate and disposal
- Stack and supply alterations, pressure tested
- Tanking with a witnessed flood test before tiling
- Tiling, sanitaryware, screens and sealing
- Extract ventilation, lighting and heated floor where specified
What is not
- Moving the room to another part of the building
- Sanitaryware above the stated allowance
- Communal riser work in an apartment building
- Making good in rooms below after a pre-existing leak
What you see is the last six per cent
Everything that makes these two rooms last is underneath: membrane, fall, a tested pan and a stack that was replaced while the wall was open.
Four things move this number more than any finish you will choose.
What decides the price
01
The existing stack
A cast-iron stack in a pre-war building is often the real project. Replacing it while the wall is open costs a fraction of doing it later.
02
Falls and drainage
A wet room needs a fall of 1:60 to 1:80 across the whole floor. Achieving it usually means lowering the deck, which is a structural question in a timber floor.
03
Tanking system
Sheet membrane, liquid membrane and a bonded tray each suit a different substrate. We specify against what the survey found, and we test before tiling.
04
Ventilation
An extract that does not reach outside air is a mould machine. Duct route and make-up air are designed, not assumed.
One we finished, flood test and all.
A recent one, in full
A bathroom in a walk-up that the owners had been told smelled because of the flat below. It did not: the stack was corroded through at two joints and had been weeping into the wall for years. The tiling was never the project. We replaced the stack to the riser, pressure tested it, tanked the room and flood-tested before a tile was set.
Read the Alfama Walk-Up file — €54,300 · 8 weeks · two weeks late · 2026.
Four things, mostly about what is behind the tiles.
What we need from you first
01
The age of the building, as closely as you know it
Pre-1950 usually means cast iron or lead somewhere in the run, and that changes both the price and the sequence.
02
Whether it is the only bathroom in the home
If it is, we programme a working WC through the middle of the job. That is a real line in the price and we would rather you saw it than discovered it.
03
What is directly below the room
A bathroom over a kitchen is tanked to a different standard than one over a hallway.
04
Bath or shower, decided
It is the one layout question that changes the drainage, and changing your mind after first fix is the most expensive small decision in the job.
We flood-test before a single tile is set.
You are welcome to be there when we do it. It is the least photogenic hour of the project and the one that decides whether the room is still sound in 2040.