About
One room, done properly: custom fabrication, waterproofing detailed as structure, and scope written down before anything is demolished.
Nanaimo Custom Bathrooms is a renovation company built around a single room. Bathrooms concentrate more trades into less space than anywhere else in a house, they carry the tightest tolerances, and they are the one place where a shortcut can stay invisible for years and then cost a full rebuild to correct.
Narrowing the focus is what makes that level of detail practical. What follows is how the work is approached.
Nearly every bathroom described as "an awkward layout" is really a stock-size problem. Vanities come in fixed widths, so four inches of wall get wasted. Shower bases come in fixed footprints, so the door swings into the towel rail. Niches land where the studs fell rather than where a bottle needs to sit.
Fabricating to measure removes that constraint. Vanities, cabinetry, benches, niches and shelving are made to the dimensions the room actually has — in a compact bathroom, the difference between usable storage and none. It also lets the layout be drawn around how the space is used rather than around a catalogue.
Tile and grout are a wearing surface, not a waterproof layer. Treating them as one is the most common reason a shower ends up being rebuilt rather than refreshed.
The layer that matters is underneath, and it only works if it is continuous — through inside and outside corners, over the curb, around the niche, behind a bench, and tied into the floor assembly. Vapour control has to suit the wall it sits in rather than be applied by habit, and ventilation is part of the same system: a fan sized for the room and ducted outside, not into an attic.
Vancouver Island asks more of all of it. The wet season is long and mild, humidity stays high, and bathrooms rarely dry out between uses. None of that work is visible at the end, which is why it is worth being careful about.
Quotes are itemised: most renovation disputes begin as an assumption nobody wrote down. That scope goes into a written contract before work begins.
Older houses hold surprises, and this region has plenty of older houses. Where something behind a wall changes what the work involves, the change is priced and agreed before it is carried out rather than tallied at the end. That describes how the paperwork is handled, not a prediction of the final figure — which nobody can honestly make before the wall is open.
Bathroom work touches plumbing, electrical, framing, ventilation and sometimes the building envelope, each carrying requirements under the BC Building Code. The work is built to that code.
Where the scope requires a permit — moving plumbing, altering framing, changing the electrical layout, or creating a bathroom where there was not one — the permit is coordinated as part of the job. Nanaimo Custom Bathrooms is licensed and insured and carries WorkSafeBC coverage.
The service area runs from Ladysmith and Chemainus in the south, through Nanaimo, Cedar, South Wellington, Cassidy, Lantzville and Nanoose Bay, up to Parksville and Qualicum Beach.
That range covers a particular set of buildings: pre-war and post-war housing in Nanaimo's older neighbourhoods, strata towers downtown where the building's alteration process sets the schedule, rural properties on well and septic to the south, and retirement-era homes to the north where accessible layouts are the ordinary request rather than the specialty one.
Bathrooms are the focus. Other renovation work is available on request.
What shapes the work
Vanities, niches, benches and shower layouts made to the dimensions you actually have, rather than fitting the room around off-the-shelf units.
On the coast, a bathroom fails from the inside out. Waterproofing is detailed before anything decorative goes on top of it.
Older Nanaimo homes, strata buildings with their own approval processes, and the aging-in-place demand across Parksville and Qualicum.
Scope written down before work starts, and changes priced before they happen rather than added at the end.
What the drainage allows, what the framing allows and what the building allows are usually the three answers that shape everything else.