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When a bathroom in a 90-year-old Chevy Chase Village home gets done properly, you notice it immediately and so does everyone else. The shower doesn’t feel like it belongs in a different era. The tile doesn’t grout-crack after one winter. The walls stay dry. That’s not a small thing when your home was built in 1938 and the original bathroom has been holding on through decades of D.C.-area humidity summers and freeze-thaw winters.
Chevy Chase Village’s housing stock is almost entirely pre-war single-family homes Colonials, Tudors, Georgian Revivals and the bathrooms inside most of them were designed long before moisture-resistant substrates, exhaust fan requirements, or multi-layer waterproofing systems were standard practice. A renovation done right here isn’t just cosmetic. It stops moisture from migrating into walls and subfloors that were never built to handle it.
Beyond the structural side, there’s the daily-life side. A walk-in shower with a curbless entry and a built-in bench isn’t a luxury feature for a lot of Village residents, it’s what makes staying in a home they love actually practical for the next 20 or 30 years. The Village even hosts its own aging-in-place program, Chevy Chase At Home, because this is a real priority for a significant portion of the community. Getting the bathroom right means getting that future right too.
We were founded in 1973 by a University of Maryland student who built a remodeling business to pay his own way through school. That origin matters because it tells you something about how we operate. We weren’t built on a franchise model or a marketing formula. We were built on showing up, doing the work, and earning the next job through the last one.
We’re headquartered in Bethesda, roughly two miles north of Chevy Chase Village along Connecticut Avenue. That proximity means we already know the housing stock in this corridor, the permitting environment in Montgomery County, and what it actually takes to work inside a pre-war home without creating new problems while solving old ones.
We hold an active Maryland MHIC license (#28145), along with licenses in DC and Virginia one of the few contractors in the area that covers all three jurisdictions. We’re also bonded and insured, and our BuildZoom score of 91 ranks us in the top 37% of over 58,000 licensed Maryland contractors. In a community of 720 homes where reputation travels fast, that kind of track record is what gets recommended by neighbors.
It starts with a conversation, not a sales pitch. Before anything gets scheduled or quoted, we walk through what you actually want, what the bathroom currently looks like, and what the home’s construction might present once the walls come open. In a pre-war Chevy Chase Village home, that last part matters. Older plumbing connections, original subfloor conditions, and decades of deferred moisture management are common findings and knowing that upfront is what keeps your project on budget and on schedule.
From there, you get a written estimate that spells out scope, materials, and timeline clearly. No vague line items. No “we’ll figure it out as we go.” Once work begins, the same crew handles tile, painting, carpentry, and any plumbing coordination all under one roof. You have one point of contact and one accountable team.
Because Chevy Chase Village is an incorporated municipality, bathroom remodels that involve plumbing or electrical work require permits through both Montgomery County’s Department of Permitting Services and, depending on scope, the Village’s own permitting authority. We handle that process. We know this two-layer system, we’ve navigated it before, and your project won’t stall because someone missed a required approval. When the job is done, the space is cleaned up and the work is ready to be inspected because it was done to pass inspection from the start.
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We handle the full scope of bathroom renovation not just the visible parts. That means floor and wall tiling, shower reconstruction, cabinet replacement, painting, and the coordination of any plumbing work that needs to happen behind the scenes. For a Chevy Chase Village home built in the 1920s or 1930s, that often means addressing what’s behind the walls before anything new goes in: aging supply lines, inadequate ventilation, and substrates that were never designed to handle the moisture load of a modern bathroom.
Walk-in shower installation is one of the most requested services in this area, and for good reason. Converting a tub-over-shower combination especially one with a high step-over threshold into a curbless walk-in shower with a built-in bench and integrated tile work changes how a bathroom functions for decades. Custom options like half walls, frameless glass, and built-in shelving are part of what we build regularly, not add-ons that require a separate specialist.
Small bathroom remodeling is also a meaningful part of our work here. Village homes weren’t built with oversized bathrooms, and making a compact space feel open and functional takes more thought than a straightforward gut-and-replace. We bring that design sensibility to every project updating for modern function while respecting the architectural character of homes that have been part of this community for nearly a century.
Yes, and the permitting process here is a bit more layered than in most Montgomery County addresses. Because Chevy Chase Village is an incorporated municipality not just a neighborhood within unincorporated county land it has its own permitting authority in addition to Montgomery County’s Department of Permitting Services. Any bathroom remodel involving plumbing or electrical work will require county-level permits at minimum, and depending on the scope of the project, the Village’s own permitting process may also apply.
This is something a lot of contractors don’t know until it slows their project down. We hold an active Maryland MHIC license and have been working in the DMV for over 50 years, which means we’re familiar with the specific permitting landscape here. We handle the permit process as part of the job pulling the required approvals, scheduling inspections, and making sure the finished work is fully compliant. For a homeowner in Chevy Chase Village, that means one less thing to manage and no compliance gaps that could surface when you go to sell or refinance.
Pricing varies based on scope, the condition of what’s behind the walls, and the materials selected and in a Village home built in the 1930s, what’s behind the walls can affect the budget more than most homeowners expect. Bathroom remodels in Chevy Chase Village have published ranges starting around $15,000 for a straightforward renovation and running to $35,000 or more for a full gut and rebuild. Walk-in shower installations typically run between $6,000 and $12,000 depending on complexity, tile selection, and whether plumbing needs to be relocated.
What’s worth understanding in this market is that the cost of doing it wrong often exceeds the cost of doing it right. Waterproofing failures alone can run $2,000 to $12,000 to repair, and that’s before you factor in mold remediation or subfloor damage in a home that’s already 80-plus years old. We provide a detailed written estimate before any work begins no vague line items, no surprises mid-project. The estimate reflects the actual scope, including anything the existing construction is likely to require.
A small bathroom remodel with permits typically takes four to six weeks from start to finish, with active construction running two to three weeks of that window. A larger or more complex renovation full gut, plumbing relocation, custom tile work can run longer. The permitting timeline in Chevy Chase Village adds some planning lead time upfront, which is why it’s worth starting the conversation before you’re in a rush.
Whether you’ll be without a bathroom during construction depends on your home’s layout. Many Village homes have more than one bathroom, which makes scheduling more flexible. For households with a single bathroom, we plan the project sequence to minimize the period when the space is fully out of commission typically the demolition and rough-in phase. We communicate clearly about what’s happening each day, so you’re not left guessing about when things will be usable again.
A tub-to-shower conversion in a pre-war Chevy Chase Village home involves more than removing the tub and setting tile. The original plumbing in homes built before the 1950s often uses supply line configurations that don’t map cleanly to a modern shower setup, so some plumbing work is typically part of the project. The subfloor and wall substrate also need to be assessed original construction didn’t include the moisture barriers that modern wet-area work requires, so those layers get added as part of a proper conversion.
Once the structural and plumbing groundwork is done, the design side takes over. Curbless entries, built-in benches, half walls, integrated shelving, and frameless glass are all options we build regularly not specialty requests that require bringing in a separate contractor. For Village homeowners who are thinking about how the bathroom functions long-term, a curbless walk-in shower is one of the most practical upgrades you can make: easier to use at any age, easier to clean, and consistently preferred by buyers in high-value markets like Chevy Chase Village.
The signs are usually subtle at first. Grout that’s darkened or crumbling, tile that sounds hollow when you tap it, a musty smell that lingers after the bathroom dries out, or paint peeling on the wall adjacent to the shower these are all indicators that moisture is moving somewhere it shouldn’t be. In a Village home built in the 1930s, the original tile installation almost certainly didn’t include a waterproofing membrane behind it, which means even a bathroom that looks intact on the surface may have been allowing moisture to migrate into the wall cavity for years.
D.C.-area summers compound this. When relative humidity regularly exceeds 70 to 80 percent and the bathroom’s ventilation is undersized which is common in homes of this era moisture accumulates faster than it can escape. Mold in remodeled bathrooms is frequently traced back to inadequate exhaust fans, not just failed tile. A professional assessment before a renovation begins can identify what’s actually happening behind the walls, which is far less expensive than discovering it mid-demo. We evaluate existing conditions as part of the project walkthrough so nothing catches you off guard.
In most cases, yes particularly if the bathroom is visibly dated or showing signs of deferred maintenance. A midrange bathroom remodel recoups approximately 80% of its cost at resale in 2025, which is the highest return the category has seen since 2007. In a market like Chevy Chase Village, where the median home sells for around $2.6 million and buyers are sophisticated enough to scrutinize every detail, a bathroom that hasn’t been updated in decades can affect both the sale price and how quickly the home moves.
That said, the math depends on what you spend and what you change. A targeted renovation updated shower, new tile, fresh fixtures delivers better return than an over-built project that outpaces the neighborhood. Buyers in Chevy Chase Village are also attuned to quality; a renovation that looks good but was done without proper waterproofing or permits can raise questions during inspection that complicate the sale. Work that’s done correctly, permitted, and inspected gives buyers confidence and gives you a clean transaction. That’s where our approach detailed scope, proper permits, professional execution directly protects the value of what you’re selling.
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