Bathroom renovations in Alta Vista and the older core

This is where bathroom renovation gets genuinely complicated, and where quotes should be highest. Alta Vista, Elmvale Acres, Carlington and the pre-war streets of the Glebe, Old Ottawa South and Westboro carry housing from the 1920s through the 1960s, and the bathrooms in them were built to a standard that no longer applies.

What a demolition typically finds: a 1.5 metre steel tub set into a mortar bed, which comes out in pieces rather than lifting; cast iron drainage and galvanised steel supply piping, the latter narrowed by decades of internal corrosion and worth replacing while the wall is open; a single ungrounded receptacle with no ground-fault protection; no exhaust fan at all, only an openable window, which was code-compliant when built; and, in anything pre-1960, lead-based paint on the trim and plaster rather than drywall behind the tile.

Two structural points specific to this stock. Floor joists in pre-1940 houses are often true dimension lumber at irregular spacing, so a heavy freestanding tub or a large format tile floor needs the framing checked rather than assumed. And many of these houses sit on the sensitive marine clay that underlies much of Ottawa, which moves seasonally (NRC, Geotechnical properties of Leda clay in the Ottawa area), so an uncoupling membrane under floor tile is worth its modest cost here more than anywhere. Budget a real contingency. On a 1935 house, ten per cent is optimistic and fifteen to twenty is realistic.