Bathroom Renovation in Victoria, BC
Bathrooms are very intimate and private spaces. That's why it's so important to feel comfortable in your own bathroom. At Michael Moser Contracting we will turn your old bathroom into one with style, elegance and quality workmanship. We have been doing this for homeowners across Victoria, Saanich, Oak Bay and Esquimalt since 2017.
Whether you want to just upgrade the bath or shower, put in tile, install a new vanity or go big and redo the whole thing, we can help. We will plan, design and put together a bathroom just for you. We will make sure that everything is perfect. From the layout to the structure and waterproofing to the final details that are just as important, your bathroom will be the one you envision.
What Your Bathroom Renovation Includes
Design and layout planning. Whether your fixtures stay where they are or the whole room gets rearranged, we will work the layout out with you first.
Demolition and disposal. We remove the old fixtures, tile and drywall and haul it away.
Plumbing and electrical. New supply and drain lines, rough-in changes, proper fan venting, GFCI outlets, pot lights and heated floors, coordinated with licensed trades.
Waterproofing. Membrane systems behind the tile and in the shower pan. Nobody sees it, and it decides how long your bathroom lasts.
Tile and finishing. Floor, wall and shower tile, curbless entries, niches, benches and glass.
Vanities, counters and fixtures. Supply your own, or we can source them for you.
Final clean. We bring in a cleaner when the work is finished, so you get the room back the way it should be.
How we work
1. A free consultation in your home. We will look at the space with you, talk about what you want, and be honest about what the room allows. Older Victoria homes tend to hold surprises behind the walls, and it is better to find them now.
2. A written quote. You will get a fixed, itemized quote rather than a rough number, so you know exactly what is included.
3. Scheduling and materials. We settle on a start date and a materials list before demolition, so your project is not sitting still waiting on a vanity.
4. The build. One crew, on site consistently, and one person you can call with a question. You will know who is in your home each day and when.
5. The final walkthrough. We will go through the finished bathroom together and take care of anything on your list before we call it done.
What a Bathroom Renovation Costs in Victoria
Nobody likes asking this question and most contractor websites avoid answering it, so here is where our work usually lands. Most of the projects we take on in Greater Victoria fall into one of three ranges.
A refresh or powder room, $8,000 to $15,000. A new vanity, toilet, flooring, lighting and paint, with the plumbing staying exactly where it is and the existing shower or tub left in place. This is the right choice when the room works and simply looks dated.
A full bathroom renovation, $18,000 to $32,000. The room comes back to the studs. New waterproofing, a fully tiled shower, new fixtures, new venting, new flooring and small layout adjustments within the existing footprint. This is the range most of our clients end up in.
An ensuite or a more involved build, $35,000 and up. Custom tile work, frameless glass, heated floors, a curbless entry, a freestanding tub, relocated plumbing, or a room that is being enlarged or reconfigured. The finish level matters as much as the size here.
Three things move that number most.
Whether the plumbing has to move. Keeping the toilet, sink and shower where they are is the single biggest saving available in a bathroom renovation. Relocating any of them means opening the floor, running new supply and drain lines, and in an older home working around joists that were never intended to accommodate them.
What we find once the walls are open. Rot, failed waterproofing, old wiring and cast iron drainage all cost money to put right, and none of it can be seen from the outside. Where we can, we open the walls before quoting so this is priced in rather than discovered later.
The tile. Tile is where two bathrooms of identical size end up thousands of dollars apart. A standard subway tile in a simple pattern installs quickly. Large format porcelain, natural stone, mosaic and herringbone layouts all take considerably more labour, and labour is the larger half of a tile bill.
You will also see national averages online that look lower than the numbers above. Renovating on Vancouver Island genuinely costs more. Materials come across on the ferry, skilled trades are in short supply here, and Victoria's older housing stock takes longer to work on than newer construction on the mainland. A quote that undercuts the local market usually does it by leaving something out.
Our quote is fixed and itemized, so you can see what is included, what is not, and where your money is going. Anything discovered mid project gets priced and approved in writing before we carry on. We will give you a firm number once we have seen the space, and the consultation to get there costs you nothing.
Bathrooms in Older Victoria Homes
Many of the homes we work in around Greater Victoria were built long before modern venting and waterproofing standards existed. Character houses in Fernwood, Fairfield, James Bay, Rockland and Oak Bay were often built with one bathroom, plumbed once, and then patched by whoever came along over the following ninety years. It is some of the most rewarding work there is, and it is also where a bathroom renovation is least likely to go exactly to plan.
Here is what we tend to find in an older Victoria bathroom.
Ventilation that was never really there.
Either no exhaust fan at all, or one that vents into the attic instead of outside. In a climate as damp as ours that is how mould gets into a wall cavity. Proper ducting to the exterior is not an upgrade, it is the difference between a bathroom that stays sound and one that quietly rots.
Original waterproofing, or none.
Tile set straight onto board with no membrane behind it, and a shower pan that was never designed to last this long. It usually looks perfectly fine until the day it does not.
Plumbing at the end of its life.
Cast iron drains that have thinned from the inside, galvanized supply lines that have narrowed to a fraction of their original bore, and drain runs that were notched through joists in ways nobody would allow today.
Floors that are not flat and walls that are not square.
Old framing moves. That matters more in a bathroom than anywhere else in the house, because tile, glass shower panels and vanities all assume straight lines. We measure for glass after the framing is corrected rather than before, which is why our showers close properly.
Wiring that predates the fixtures.
No GFCI protection, no dedicated circuit for a heated floor, and occasionally something older still behind the plaster.
None of this is a reason not to renovate. It is a reason to have somebody open the walls and look before quoting, which is what we do wherever we can. It makes our quotes a little slower and a lot more accurate, and it means fewer difficult conversations once your bathroom is in pieces. Newer homes in Saanich, Gordon Head and the Westshore are usually more straightforward, and we will tell you so at the consultation.
If your bathroom is one part of a bigger plan, it is usually easier to do it all in one go. You can read about our whole home renovations, and if a kitchen renovation is also on your list, we can sequence the two so your home is only under construction once.
Big Ideas, Real Impact.
Every event we host is designed with intention, from the atmosphere we create to the way each session flows.
Adding Bathrooms Where their Wasn’t One
Not every project starts with an existing bathroom. Some of the most useful work we do is finding a new one inside a house that already exists.
An under stair closet becomes a powder room. A deep hallway cupboard becomes a two piece. An unused corner of a primary bedroom becomes the ensuite the house should have had from the beginning. Basements and suites are the other common one, particularly in Victoria where a legal secondary suite needs its own bathroom to work at all.
Adding a bathroom is a different conversation from renovating one. It means new drainage and venting rather than reusing what is there, and in an older home that can mean opening floors to reach a main stack. It is also the one type of bathroom work where your municipality matters. Older neighbourhoods in Victoria and Oak Bay sit on much older service infrastructure than a newer subdivision in Langford, and in some cases the water or sewer connection to the house needs upgrading before an additional bathroom can be added at all.
We will look at what your home can take before you spend anything on design. If it can be done, we will tell you what it involves. If it cannot be done the way you are picturing, we will tell you that too and suggest what would work instead.
Small Bathrooms in Awkward layouts
A lot of bathrooms in Greater Victoria are small. Character homes were built with one modest bathroom, and condos in the core are working with whatever the floor plan allowed. Small does not have to mean cramped, but it does mean every decision matters more.
A few things reliably make a small bathroom work harder. A wall hung vanity leaves visible floor underneath and makes the room read as larger. A curbless shower with clear glass removes the visual barrier that a tub and curtain create. Larger format tile means fewer grout lines and less visual clutter. A pocket door recovers the swing space a hinged door wastes. Recessed niches give you storage without giving up any of the floor.
None of that is expensive on its own. It is mostly a matter of deciding it early, because a niche has to be framed before the tile goes on and a pocket door has to be planned before the wall is closed. This is exactly the kind of thing we work through with you at the consultation, when changing your mind still costs nothing.
What Victoria Homeowners Are Saying About Our Bathroom Renovations
"Mike is a positive professional and a reliable contractor. We are more than satisfied with our recent bathroom renovation. Mike has a great eye for design and helped us through most of our design choices. Mike and Dylan were always on time and were always respectful of our space. The unexpected bonus of Mike bringing in a cleaner once the job was completed really says a lot about his attention to detail and wanting to satisfy his clients.
Thank you both for your hard work and dedication to making our bathroom spectacular."
— David and Shelley AimersYou can read all of our reviews on our Google Business Profile.
Bathroom Renovation Questions We get Asked
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Most single bathrooms take two to four weeks from demolition to walkthrough. A straightforward update finishes sooner, and moving plumbing or adding custom glass and tile takes longer. You get a schedule with your quote.
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Not that one. It will be out of service from demolition until the shower or tub is back in use and the fixtures are reconnected. If you have a second bathroom in the house, most of our clients find the disruption very manageable. If it is your only bathroom, we plan the sequence around that specifically, keeping the number of days it is completely unusable as low as we can and telling you which days those are before we start so you can make arrangements. We also keep the rest of your home clean and protected while we are working in one room of it.
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Yes. Where a permit is needed we handle the application and the inspections. Most same footprint bathroom renovations in Victoria do not require one, because replacing fixtures and finishes in their existing locations is generally treated as maintenance. A permit usually comes into it when plumbing is relocated, when a wall is moved or removed, or when the work touches structure. Requirements also vary between Victoria, Saanich, Oak Bay and Esquimalt, and a heritage designated home may need a heritage alteration permit as well. We will tell you at the quote stage which category your project falls into and what it means for your start date.
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Whichever you prefer. Some homeowners enjoy choosing every tile, tap and light themselves, and we are glad to install exactly what you have picked. Others would rather not spend their evenings comparing vanities, so we bring a short list of options that suit the room and the budget and you choose from those. Either way, we will tell you early if something has a long lead time, because one special order tile or a custom glass panel can hold up an otherwise finished bathroom for weeks. Anything you supply yourself we will check for fit and completeness before demolition, not on the day it is due to go in.
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We tell you the same day, show you what we found, and put the cost of the fix in writing before we carry on. Rot under a shower pan, old wiring, failed waterproofing, cast iron drains at the end of their life and framing that was never quite square all turn up fairly regularly in older Victoria homes. None of it is unusual and all of it is fixable, but it has to be dealt with while the walls are open rather than tiled over. Where we can, we open the walls before quoting so there are fewer of these conversations later on. You will never see a charge on the final invoice for work you did not agree to.
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Yes. Curbless showers, wider doorways, blocking in the walls for grab bars, comfort height toilets, hand held shower fittings, better lighting and slip resistant tile are all things we build regularly. Most of them cost very little extra when they are planned in from the beginning instead of added later. It is worth thinking about even if you do not need any of it yet, because the framing and the blocking are the parts that are difficult to change once the tile is on the wall. Tell us at the consultation that you are renovating with the next twenty years in mind and we will plan the room around it.
Recent project: basement bathroom with heated floors
Our clients had a small, poorly built bathroom in their basement and wanted the space used properly. We cleaned up the plumbing first, built a base for a new shower stall, then levelled the floor and laid underfloor heating before the tile went down. A corner stall with sliding doors made the most of a tight footprint.
You Deserve a Bathroom You Can Completely Relax In
Let us help you transform the most important room in your home. We serve Victoria, Saanich, Oak Bay, Esquimalt, View Royal and the surrounding communities, The first conversation is free.