Full bathroom remodels — Knoxville
Down to the studs, back to done.
A full remodel is the job where corners hide best — behind tile, under pans, inside walls. So that's exactly where we spend the care.
Most of the bathrooms we gut in Knoxville were built between 1955 and 1985. They've done their forty years of service. The tile's cracked along the tub edge, the drain runs slow, and somewhere under that vinyl floor there's a subfloor that's been damp more than once.
A full remodel — call it a bathroom renovation if you'd rather — clears all of it. Tub, tile, vanity, flooring — out. What goes back in is built to modern code on a properly waterproofed base: cement board and membrane in the wet areas, not the greenboard shortcut; tile set flat with leveled substrate; supply lines and shutoffs replaced while the walls are open, because that's the cheap moment to do it.
How the three weeks actually run
You get this schedule in writing with the quote. Here's the honest shape of it:
Walkthrough & quote
We measure, look for the era-specific traps, and write an itemized quote. Free, no obligation, and it doesn't grow later.
Demo & rough-in
Days 1–5. Tear-out, plumbing and electrical moves, city rough-in inspections passed before anything closes up.
Waterproof & tile
Days 6–14. Membrane, pan test, then tile — the slow, flat, level kind of tile work. This is the part you'll look at for twenty years.
Fixtures & walkthrough
Days 15–20. Vanity, glass, trim, paint. Then we walk every detail with you before the final bill — which matches the quote.
Remodel or refresh? An honest comparison
Not every bathroom needs the full treatment, and it's worth knowing the difference before you collect quotes. The two jobs get confused constantly:
| What it involves | Surface refresh / liner | Full remodel |
|---|---|---|
| Existing tub & tile | Covered over or reglazed | Removed entirely |
| Waterproofing | Whatever's already behind the wall stays | New membrane system, pan-tested |
| Hidden damage | Sealed in, unseen | Found, shown to you, fixed |
| Plumbing & shutoffs | Untouched | Replaced while walls are open |
| Typical duration | 1–3 days | About 3 weeks |
| Right for | A rental turnover, a short-term fix | A bathroom you'll live with for decades |
Both are legitimate jobs. We do the one on the right. If the one on the left is genuinely what your situation calls for, we'll say so at the walkthrough and save you the bigger spend.
What Knoxville's housing stock throws at a remodel
This is where local experience earns its keep. A Fort Sanders Victorian, a Sequoyah Hills Cape Cod and a Farragut builder-grade bath are three different jobs wearing the same name:
- Pre-war houses — cast iron drain stacks and galvanized supply lines that have narrowed with seventy years of scale. We scope the plumbing before we quote, so the answer's in the number from day one.
- Mid-century ranches — mud-set tile floors two inches thick, and the occasional surprise of a tub set before the walls went up. Demo takes longer; we plan for it.
- '80s–'90s builder baths — acrylic surrounds at the end of their life and cultured marble everywhere. Usually the cleanest guts, and the fastest schedules.
And everywhere in town: hard water. East Tennessee sits on limestone and dolomite, and KUB's water carries enough mineral to etch glass and crust fixtures. We spec scale-resistant glass coatings and quality valves as standard, because replacing a corroded mixing valve behind new tile is nobody's idea of year three.
Recent work, by the numbers that matter
| House | Scope | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| 1962 Fountain City ranch | Hall bath gut: tub out, curbless walk-in shower, hex tile floor, new vanity | 19 working days |
| 1938 Sequoyah Hills colonial | Full gut with plumbing re-route, period-appropriate tile, new subfloor | 22 working days |
| 1994 Farragut two-story | Master bath: acrylic surround out, tiled shower with bench, double vanity | 17 working days |
Ready for the walkthrough?
Straight answers
Full remodel questions
What counts as a "full" remodel?
Everything comes out — tub or shower, tile, vanity, flooring, usually down to the studs on wet walls. New waterproofing, new tile, new fixtures, plumbing and wiring brought up to code where they're touched. If you're keeping the tub and just want the surround redone, that's a smaller job and we'll quote it as one — we don't upsell a gut job where a repair does it.
How disruptive is three weeks of work?
Honest answer: you'll know we're there. We contain dust with plastic and floor protection, we clean up every evening, and we keep one working bathroom available in the house whenever the layout allows. The crew shows up at the same time every morning so the rhythm is predictable.
Do you handle the permits and inspections?
Yes, all of it. Knoxville requires separate plumbing and electrical permits when that work moves or gets added, each with rough-in and final inspections. We pull the permits, schedule the inspectors and meet them on site. It's our schedule risk, not yours — and it's built into the three weeks.
What if you find rot or bad plumbing behind the wall?
We stop, photograph it, show you and price the fix as a separate signed line — that day. What we won't do is tile over a problem to stay on schedule. Covering rot is how a remodel ends up needing a second remodel five years on.
Wondering what all this costs? We wrote a plain-English page on exactly that: what a bathroom remodel costs in Knoxville — what moves the number up, what brings it down, and how to compare bids without getting burned.