Cutting an Eichler Slab Without Hitting the Heating
Mountain View has roughly 250 Eichlers with hot water tubing cast into the floor slab. How the tubing gets located before any concrete is cut, and why.
Service
Full Bathroom Remodel in Mountain View
The room taken back to studs and rebuilt, typically eight to twelve weeks of construction once materials land.
A full bathroom remodel strips the room to framing and rebuilds it: new supply and drain lines where they are reachable, new wiring to current code, new waterproofing, new tile, new vanity, new fixtures, new light and ventilation. In Mountain View most full bathroom remodeling projects land between $30,000 and $65,000, and the spread inside that range has less to do with tile choice than people expect. What moves the number here is the floor. Most of the city's postwar tract housing sits on a concrete slab, so a layout change that would cost a few hundred dollars in a house with a crawl space instead means saw-cutting the slab, trenching, re-plumbing and re-pouring. Construction runs eight to twelve weeks on a standard bathroom, on top of the design and permit window that comes before it.
What the scope covers
- Demolition to studs and subfloor, with debris hauled off the property
- Supply lines replaced where galvanized pipe is still in service, common in pre-1965 houses
- Branch circuits, GFCI protection and lighting brought to the current California Electrical Code
- Sheet or liquid waterproofing membrane over the shower, flood-tested before tile goes down
- Tile set to TCNA methods with movement joints where the standard calls for them
- Vanity, counter, mirror, glass and fixture installation
- Exhaust ventilation ducted to outside air, sized to the room
- City permit pulled by the contractor and inspections coordinated as part of standard scope
- A fixed written price agreed before demolition, with change orders in writing
Get a free quote for this work
A local remodeler walks the room with you, checks what is behind the wall and under the floor, and follows up with a written price broken down by scope.
Full Remodel questions
The things homeowners ask most often before committing to full remodel work.
+ What does a full bathroom remodel cost in Mountain View?
Most full bathroom remodels in Mountain View run $30,000 to $65,000. A straightforward hall bathroom keeping the existing layout, with mid-grade porcelain and a semi-custom vanity, tends to land at $30,000 to $45,000. Moving fixtures, upgrading to a curbless shower and specifying stone or large-format porcelain pushes it to $45,000 to $65,000. Bay Area labor is the reason these numbers look high against national figures: labor typically absorbs half the budget here, against roughly a third nationally.
+ How long does a full bathroom remodel take?
Construction runs eight to twelve weeks for a standard gut remodel in this market. What surprises people is the front half: design decisions, permit review and material lead times usually add six to ten weeks before demolition starts. Custom vanities run six to ten weeks out, imported tile four to six. Ordering the long-lead items the week the design is settled, rather than the week demolition finishes, is the single biggest schedule lever on the project.
+ Does this work need a City of Mountain View permit?
Yes, for anything past cosmetic. Replacing a vanity or repainting does not trigger a permit, but moving or replacing plumbing, altering wiring, changing the shower enclosure or opening walls does. The contractor applies, meets the inspector at rough-in and again at final, and closes the permit out. That closed permit is what a buyer’s agent looks for later, so it is worth having even when nobody is watching.
+ Why does moving the toilet or shower cost so much here?
Because of the slab. A large share of Mountain View housing was built in the 1950s and 1960s on a concrete slab-on-grade foundation, which means the drain lines are cast into the structural floor. Relocating a fixture means cutting the concrete, breaking out a trench, re-running drain pipe at the correct fall, then patching and curing before anything else can happen. Budget roughly $1,500 to $4,000 per fixture moved, plus several days of schedule. In a house with a raised foundation the plumber works from the crawl space and the same change is a fraction of that.
+ What is the largest deposit a contractor can ask for in California?
On a home improvement contract, $1,000 or 10 percent of the contract price, whichever is less, and finance charges are excluded from that calculation. It is set by Business and Professions Code section 7159.5, and it applies no matter how big the project is: a $60,000 bathroom still caps the deposit at $1,000. Payments after that track the work completed. The rule surprises homeowners moving here from states with no cap at all.
Full Remodel across the valley
The same work runs across the north Santa Clara Valley and the lower Peninsula. Each area page covers the housing stock and the permit process for that specific city.
- Full Remodel in Mountain View
- Full Remodel in Palo Alto
- Full Remodel in Los Altos
- Full Remodel in Los Altos Hills
- Full Remodel in Sunnyvale
- Full Remodel in Cupertino
- Full Remodel in Santa Clara
- Full Remodel in Menlo Park
- Full Remodel in Atherton
- Full Remodel in Saratoga
- Full Remodel in Campbell
- Full Remodel in Redwood City
Further reading
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Does a Bathroom Remodel Pay for Itself in Mountain View?
Cost recovery data, what a dated bathroom does to a listing in a two-million-dollar market, and why resale is usually the wrong reason to do the work at all.
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California Contract Rules That Surprise Newcomers
A $1,000 deposit cap whatever the project costs, a written contract above $500, and a lien that can attach even after you have paid the contractor in full.
Other scopes worth pricing
Where a house has two bathrooms due for work, doing both under one permit and one mobilisation is usually cheaper than two separate projects a year apart, and it is worth asking for both prices at the same walkthrough.
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Primary Bathroom Remodel
Larger suite work: separate shower and tub, double vanity, the projects where design time earns its keep
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Walk-In Shower Conversion
Pulling an unused tub or a tired fiberglass enclosure and building a properly waterproofed tile shower
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Small Bathroom and Powder Room Remodel
Hall baths and powder rooms in the 35 to 55 square foot range, where every layout decision shows
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Eichler and Mid-Century Bathrooms
Post-and-beam houses with radiant slabs and no attic, where a standard bathroom scope does not apply
Start your bathroom project
Call (650) 966-5276, or send the details through the form and a local remodeler prices the job up. The quote is free either way.