We just finished a shower remodel for a customer here in Venice. The original quote was a full Kerdi system — Kerdi membrane over the walls, Kerdi pan, Kerdi drain, every seam and corner sealed with the Schluter components. The customer looked at the number and wanted a lower one. So we did what an honest contractor does: we tiered it. Kerdi shower pan and drain — because the pan is where showers fail first and that's not where you cut — with Durock and RedGard liquid membrane on the walls. Two coats, opposing directions, reinforcing fabric in the corners, flood tested before a single tile went up.
That customer got a properly waterproofed shower at a price they could say yes to. And they got told exactly what they were getting, which option was the premium build, and why the pan wasn't negotiable. That conversation — the honest one about what the money buys — is the whole difference between us and the contractors who just say "yeah, we do showers."
My name is Mike Reynolds. I'm the owner of Plumbing Detectives LLC and a licensed master plumber, license CFC1434139. I live in this market — South Venice. My tile and finish partner and I do complete bathroom remodels: demolition through finished tile, fixtures, and final walkthrough. One call. One crew. One warranty conversation. Here's everything a Venice homeowner should understand before spending a dollar on a bathroom remodel.
The Coordination Problem — Why Most Remodels Stall
Most bathroom remodels don't fail on workmanship. They fail on coordination.
The standard path: you call a plumber for the rough-in. A tile setter for the shower. A glass company for the enclosure. Maybe a GC to referee. The plumber can't trim out until the tile's done. The tile can't start until the rough-in passes inspection. The shower pan flood test needs an inspector, and nobody scheduled him. Your bathroom sits gutted for three extra weeks while four contractors point at each other's calendars — and when something leaks a year later, every one of them says it's the other guy's work.
We collapsed that whole chain. I run the plumbing — rough-in, valves, drains, permits, inspections. My tile and finish partner, who's worked alongside me for years, runs waterproofing, tile, and finish. Same project, same schedule, same standard. You make one call and get one finished bathroom. When I set a drain body, I'm setting it for the exact membrane system going over it — because the guy installing that membrane is on my crew, not a stranger from a different invoice.
What a Complete Remodel Includes — Phase by Phase
Demolition and discovery. Tile comes off, fixtures come out, and we find out what your house has been hiding. In Venice-era homes, demo day is when the real scope shows up — more on that below. We document everything we find in photos before anything gets covered back up.
Plumbing rough-in. New supply and drain lines run, valve bodies set, everything positioned for the new layout. This is Phase 1 for a reason: nothing closes up — no board, no tile — until rough-in passes inspection. I pressure-test the supply side before walls close, every time. Finding a weeping fitting now costs nothing. Finding it behind finished tile costs the tile.
Shower pan and waterproofing. The pan and drain go in, the waterproofing system goes up, and the pan gets flood tested — a required Sarasota County inspection before tile. The drain body I set during rough-in has to match the membrane system: Kerdi uses a specific bonding flange, and a mismatched drain means tearing out finished work. This is exactly the kind of detail that goes wrong when the plumber and tile setter have never met.
Tile and finish. My partner's specialty. Walls, floors, niches, curbs — built on a waterproofing system that was verified before the first tile was set, not assumed after.
Trim-out and final. I come back for the finish plumbing: shower trim, cartridge, faucets, toilet, supply lines, shutoffs at every fixture. Then the final plumbing inspection, the county signs off, and you get a finished bathroom with a paper trail — permit, inspections, documentation.
How Shower Waterproofing Actually Stacks — And What We Quoted That Venice Customer
There's a lot of confusion about Kerdi and Durock, and half of it comes from contractors talking about them like they're competing products. They're not. They're different layers of the same wall.
Durock is the substrate — the cement board the tile assembly is built on. It's the right board for a shower. It will not rot, swell, or fall apart when wet. But USG says it plainly in their own documentation: cement board is water durable, not waterproof. Water passes through it. Left bare, that water reaches your framing.
The membrane is the waterproofing — and it goes over the substrate. Two legitimate ways to do it:
Durock + liquid membrane (RedGard, Hydroban). The liquid membrane gets rolled over the cement board in two coats, opposing directions, minimum 20-mil dry thickness, with reinforcing fabric embedded at corners and transitions. Done to spec, it meets ANSI A118.10 — the industry waterproofing standard. This is a solid, code-compliant professional system, and it's what went on the walls of that Venice job.
Durock + Kerdi membrane. The premium build. Kerdi is a sheet membrane bonded over the substrate with thinset — every sheet-to-sheet seam overlapped a minimum two inches and embedded, every inside corner fitted with a prefabricated Kerdi piece, every valve and pipe penetration sealed with a purpose-built Schluter component instead of a bead of caulk. Same ANSI A118.10 standard, achieved with more labor and more precision. What that labor buys you: the entire waterproof plane is visible and inspectable before tile goes over it. Nothing is trusted. Everything is verified.
The pan is its own decision — and it's not where you save money. Shower failures start at the floor: the pan, the drain connection, the curb, the floor-to-wall transition. That's why on the tiered Venice job, the pan stayed Kerdi even when the walls went to RedGard. A Kerdi pan with its integrated drain flange is a sealed, flood-testable unit. We will tier your walls to fit your budget. We won't tier your pan.
We wrote a full technical breakdown of these systems — the standards, the failure modes, the costs. Read it here.
[ Plumbing Detectives LLC Professional Opinion ]
Bare cement board in a shower is not a waterproofing system — it's an incomplete installation by the manufacturer's own documentation, by TCNA methods, and by the Florida Building Code's deference to those methods. Before any contractor tiles your shower, ask two questions: "What ANSI A118.10 membrane are you applying over the board?" and "Are you flood testing the pan before tile?" If the answer to the first is "we use cement board" and the answer to the second is "that's not necessary" — stop the job. You're about to pay for waterproofing and receive a sieve with tile on it.
Documented Work
KERDI Waterproofing on a Venice Shower
These photos are from a real Venice job: Schluter-KERDI membrane and KERDI-BOARD installed, seams taped, thinset applied, and the shower valve and drain flanges integrated before tile. This is the inspectable waterproof plane we described above — every seam sealed, every penetration fitted with a purpose-built Schluter component, the pan flood-tested before the first tile went up.
What's Behind a Venice Bathroom Wall — The Demo Day Report
Venice's housing stock runs 1950s through 1980s, and after enough demos in this market, I can just about tell you what we'll find before the first tile comes off.
Corroded shower valves that die the moment you touch them. Old Delta 400 series, Moen 1200 cartridges, Price Pfister units — scaled solid by decades of 22.8-grain water. They were barely holding on, and pulling the trim is what finishes them. I plan for full valve body replacement on older homes rather than gambling on reusing a forty-year-old valve behind brand-new tile.
No scald protection. Most of these older single-handle valves have no pressure balancing. Someone flushes a toilet mid-shower and the cold side drops — that's how people get burned. Current code requires pressure-balancing or thermostatic valves in every new shower rough-in. Your remodel brings this up to code whether you asked for it or not, and that's a good thing.
Galvanized supply lines. Still in service in plenty of Venice homes, corroding from the inside the way galvanized always does. If your wall is already open, replacing accessible galvanized is the cheapest it will ever be. I'll show you what came out.
Cast iron drain sections under the slab. Same story as our sewer work — sixty-year-old cast iron corroding from the inside out. A bathroom remodel is when you find out, because the drain connections are exposed. If a section needs attention, better to know while the floor's already open.
No access panel behind the valve. Standard practice in old Florida tile showers: tile the valve in and walk away. Every future cartridge swap becomes a demolition project. On our remodels, valve access gets planned in, not tiled over.
Old supply lines and shutoffs that fail on removal. Braided steel lines and compression shutoffs that have been sitting untouched for twenty years routinely let go the moment a fixture comes off. Every fixture in our remodels gets new supply lines and a new quarter-turn shutoff. It's cheap insurance while everything's already apart.
Slab Foundations — What Moving a Drain Really Means Here
Nearly every home in this market is slab-on-grade. No basement. No crawl space. The drain lines run under the concrete you're standing on — which means the single biggest cost decision in your remodel is whether your new layout moves a drain.
Keep the footprint, keep the budget. If the shower stays where the shower was, the toilet flange stays put, and the vanity drain doesn't move, there's no slab work at all. This is the most economical remodel there is, and I'll always tell you when it's an option.
Move a drain, cut the slab. New layout puts the shower on the other wall? That drain relocation means saw-cutting the concrete, excavating to the line, running new pipe at correct pitch, and patching the slab. Budget roughly $500 to $1,500 for the slab cut alone, on top of the relocation labor. Moving a toilet is the expensive one — the flange, the 3-inch drain, and the venting all move with it.
And the pipe gets supported properly. Same standard as our sewer replacements: this is Florida sand, and sand shifts. New drain runs under a slab get a compacted base and verified pitch before any concrete goes back. A drain line laid on loose sand bellies within a few rainy seasons — and then your brand-new bathroom drains like an old one.
During the estimate, I'll tell you exactly which side of this line your layout falls on. No surprises after demo.
Tub-to-Shower Conversions — The Most Requested Job in This Market
Half the remodel calls in this market start the same way: "We never use the tub. We want a shower."
Makes sense here. Venice skews retired, and stepping over a tub wall gets less appealing every year. A conversion done right gives you a walk-in shower — full tile, proper glass, a real pan — in the tub's existing footprint.
What the plumbing side actually involves: the tub drain comes out and converts to a shower drain — different drain body, different location within the footprint, and the venting gets confirmed while it's open. The old tub valve gets replaced with a pressure-balanced shower valve set at the right height. If we're doing a Kerdi pan, the drain body is the Kerdi flange from day one. Keep the drain in the same general location and there's typically no slab cut — which is what keeps conversions affordable.
Then waterproofing, tile, curb or curbless entry, and glass. One crew, start to finish. And yes — a conversion requires a permit and the same pan flood test as any shower build. We pull it and schedule it.
The Permit Sequence — What Gets Inspected and When
Sarasota County and the City of Venice require a plumbing permit for any drain relocation, water line relocation, or fixture relocation. Projects over $5,000 typically also require a Notice of Commencement recorded with the county clerk before the first inspection. I pull the plumbing permit for my scope on every job — and if a GC holds a master permit, I work under it.
The sequence:
Plumbing Rough — first inspection. Drain and vent layout inspected, supply lines pressure tested. Walls stay open until this passes.
Shower Pan Flood Test — second inspection. The pan gets plugged and filled, and it holds water while it's inspected for loss. Required before tile. This is the inspection that catches a bad pan while it's still a one-day fix instead of a tear-out.
Final Plumbing — third inspection. Fixtures installed, everything operating, county signs off.
Inside City of Venice limits, permits run through the City of Venice Building Department — 941-486-2626, tracked through the eTRAKiT portal. In the unincorporated county areas around the city, it's Sarasota County Planning and Development Services, with the R.L. Anderson Administration Center on S. Tamiami Trail as the close permit center. We verify jurisdiction for your address and pull the right permit before work starts. That inspection record is yours — for insurance, for resale, for proof the work was done right.
Most "one-stop" remodelers skip this entirely or leave it to you. Ask them. Watch the answer.
Hard Water — Why Your Valve Choice Matters More Here
Venice water tests at 22.8 grains per gallon — more than three times the threshold for "hard." Every wetted component in your new bathroom lives in that water: the valve cartridge, the aerators, the fill valve, the showerhead.
What that means for a remodel: don't put a builder-grade valve behind your brand-new tile. Cartridges scale and fail years earlier here than they do most places in the country, and the valve is the one component you can't reach without opening the wall. We spec quality valves — Delta, Moen, Kohler — with replaceable cartridges, positioned with access. Spend the extra forty dollars once, at the point where it's cheap.
If you're doing a primary bath with a soaking tub or a body-spray system, we also check your hot water capacity as part of the estimate — a bigger draw sometimes means the water heater conversation happens now instead of the week after you move in and run out of hot water mid-fill.
Common Mistakes I Find in Venice Bathroom Remodels
Tile over bare cement board. The big one. No membrane, no WRB behind the board — just tile on Durock and hope. Looks perfect on day one. The framing behind it starts collecting moisture on day one too.
Liquid membrane in one thin coat. The product got bought, the box got checked, the spec got skipped. Every major manufacturer requires two coats to a minimum dry thickness. One coat is a receipt, not a waterproofing system.
No flood test. Tile installed over a pan nobody ever tested. If it leaks, you find out through the ceiling below or the smell in the wall — after the tile's paid for.
Wrong drain body for the membrane system. A standard drain under a Kerdi pan, or vice versa. The membrane can't bond to a flange it wasn't designed for. This is what happens when the plumber and the tile setter never talk.
Reused forty-year-old valves. The old scaled cartridge gets left in place to save a hundred bucks, fails within the year, and now there's a service call on a brand-new shower — with no access panel.
No permit, no inspections. The whole job done off the books. No rough inspection ever verified the venting, no flood test ever verified the pan, and when you sell the house, there's no record any of it was done right.
[ Plumbing Detectives LLC Tips ]
💡 Planning a remodel? Take photos of your existing shutoffs, valve trim, and under-sink plumbing and have them ready for the estimate. Brand and vintage of your existing valve tells me half of what I need to know about what demo day will look like.
💡 If budget is tight, keep the fixtures in their existing footprint. No slab cut, no drain relocation — the savings are real and the bathroom can still be completely transformed.
💡 Ask every contractor you're comparing the same two questions: what ANSI A118.10 membrane goes over the board, and will the pan be flood tested before tile. The answers separate the pros from the tile-and-pray crowd in under thirty seconds.
💡 Your remodel is the cheapest moment you'll ever have to replace old galvanized supply lines, add proper shutoffs at every fixture, and bring the shower valve up to scald-protection code. The wall is already open. Use it.
What This Costs — Honest Context, Not a Menu
I don't publish an itemized price list, because a bathroom remodel isn't a menu — the number depends on what's behind your walls, whether your layout moves a drain, and where you land on the finish tiers. But you shouldn't walk into an estimate blind either, so here's honest scale:
A cartridge-level valve refresh with no wall access is a few hundred dollars. A tub-to-shower conversion keeping the drain in place is a mid-range project. A full primary bath remodel with a relocated drain, slab work, full waterproofing, and tile is a five-figure project in this market — and anyone quoting it sight-unseen off a phone call is guessing with your money.
What I'll give you instead: a written estimate after I've walked the space, with the waterproofing tiers priced out so you can see exactly what the premium build buys versus the standard one — the same conversation we had with that Venice customer. You pick with full information. Call 239-388-3631 for a written estimate.
Documented Work
Delta Ara trim and rainhead — rough to finish
The same shower, start to finish: copper rough-in with the Delta Ara valve body set in the wall, then the finished trim with an 11.5-inch rainhead and hand shower. This is what the plumbing side of a remodel actually looks like — rough-in verified, walls closed, tile set, trim installed, and everything pressure-tested before the homeowner turns it on.
Why Plumbing Detectives LLC
Every plumber in this market lists "bathroom remodel" on their site. Almost all of them mean "we'll do the rough-in, good luck with the rest." Every remodeling outfit means "we'll sub the plumbing to whoever answers the phone."
We're the third thing: a licensed master plumber and a tile and finish specialist who've worked as one crew for years, doing the complete bathroom under one roof. The drain body matches the membrane because the same team installs both. The pan gets flood tested because the guy who has to warranty the plumbing is standing there when it fills. The permit gets pulled because my license is on the job.
Camera-documented sewer work, code-compliant waterproofing, real inspections, one phone number. License CFC1434139. Fully insured. Completed remodels — full baths and tub-to-shower conversions across this market — are documented on our Google Business Profile and throughout this site.
Frequently Asked Questions — Bathroom Remodeling in Venice, FL
If you've read this far, you know more about bathroom remodeling in this market than most homeowners ever get told. You know cement board isn't waterproof and what has to go over it. You know the pan is where showers fail and why we don't tier it down. You know what a slab home means for moving a drain, what's probably behind your walls if your house was built before 1985, and which three inspections a legitimate remodel passes on its way to done. If you're planning a remodel — or you just want to know what your bathroom would actually cost done right — call me at 239-388-3631. You'll get a written estimate, the waterproofing tiers priced side by side, and a straight answer before anyone swings a hammer.
Plumbing Detectives LLC | Venice, FL | License CFC1434139
239-388-3631 | plumbingdetectivesfl.com
Serving Venice, Sarasota, Nokomis, Englewood, North Port, Wellen Park, Laurel, Osprey, Bradenton, and Bradenton Beach.