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Living in one of the Village’s high-rises The Willoughby, Highland House, The Elizabeth means you’ve made a deliberate choice about how and where you want to live. The building, the walkability, the Metro steps from your door, the free shuttle. All of it reflects a certain standard. But when your bathroom still has the original tile from 1968, there’s a gap between the life you’re living and the space you’re using every day. A bathroom renovation closes that gap.
For a lot of Friendship Heights Village residents, the bathroom is also a practical concern, not just an aesthetic one. With more than a third of Village residents aged 65 or older, the question of how a bathroom functions not just how it looks matters. A curbless walk-in shower with a built-in bench and non-slip tile isn’t a luxury upgrade here. It’s the renovation that lets you stay in the community you’ve built your life around, safely and comfortably.
And if you’re thinking about resale, renovated bathrooms are consistently one of the features buyers call out in listings at The Willoughby and The Carleton. A midrange bathroom remodel recoups approximately 80% of its cost at resale in 2025 the highest return since 2007. In a market where condo values average around $660,800, that’s not a small number.
We were founded in 1973 which means we’ve been remodeling bathrooms in the DC metro area since before most of Friendship Heights Village’s residential towers were fully occupied. That’s not a trivia point. It means we’ve handled the specific challenges of mid-century construction, worked through Montgomery County’s permitting process hundreds of times, and built a reputation in this market that doesn’t disappear after a bad project.
We hold an active Maryland MHIC license (#28145) and a DC contractor license (#39937921) both directly relevant to a community that sits right on the Maryland-DC border along Wisconsin Avenue. We’re bonded and insured, which means we can provide the insurance certificates that condo associations in buildings like The Willoughby require before any contractor sets foot in the building.
This isn’t a company that showed up last year and added your zip code to a service area map. We’ve been working in Bethesda, Chevy Chase, and the communities along the Wisconsin Avenue corridor for decades. Friendship Heights Village is not a stretch for us it’s home turf.
It starts with a conversation about what you actually want not a sales pitch. What’s not working about your current bathroom? Is it the layout, the shower, the tile, the fixtures, or all of the above? That initial consultation shapes the scope, the timeline, and the written estimate you’ll receive before anything else happens.
Once the scope is confirmed, permits come next. Montgomery County’s Department of Permitting Services handles permitting for Friendship Heights Village, and any bathroom remodel that involves plumbing or electrical work requires one. We manage that process directly and Montgomery County’s Fast Track program can have a permit in hand in as little as three to five days for qualifying projects. That matters in a building where your neighbors are aware of every extra day of construction noise.
Before work begins, there’s also the building coordination piece that most contractors overlook. Elevator reservations for material delivery, compliance with your building’s permitted work hours, proper staging in common areas, and noise management are all part of how a high-rise bathroom remodel gets done without creating problems with building management or the people on your floor. We’ve navigated this environment before we come prepared, not surprised.
From there, the actual construction follows a clear sequence: demolition, waterproofing, tile installation, fixture installation, painting, and final inspection. Surface preparation is treated as seriously as the finish work, because that’s where most bathroom renovations either hold up or fall apart five years later. You’ll know what’s happening at each stage, and the job site gets cleaned up at the end of every workday.
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Bathroom remodeling in Friendship Heights Village covers a wide range of project types, and we handle all of them without farming the work out to a rotating cast of subcontractors. Whether you’re looking at a full gut renovation of a 1960s-era bathroom, a tub-to-shower conversion, a walk-in shower installation with a built-in bench and custom tile work, or a targeted update to flooring and fixtures, our licensed team handles the tile, the painting, the carpentry, and the installation from start to finish.
Walk-in shower installation is one of the most requested projects in this community, and for good reason. A curbless shower with frameless glass makes a compact condo bathroom feel significantly larger and more open and for residents who want grab bar placement, bench seating, or non-slip tile as part of the design, those features get built in from the beginning rather than added as an afterthought. Small bathroom remodeling is also a core part of what we do. Many of the Village’s mid-century units have bathrooms that were designed for pure function, not comfort and there’s a meaningful amount of improvement that can happen within the existing footprint without requiring structural changes that would complicate condo association approval.
On the waterproofing side, this is where the work either holds up or doesn’t. In a high-rise building where moisture in your bathroom can migrate through shared floors and ceilings into the unit below, professional-grade waterproofing is not optional. Our approach treats waterproofing as a core part of the build not a checkbox because the cost of getting it wrong extends well beyond your own unit.
Yes, in most cases. Montgomery County’s Department of Permitting Services requires permits for any bathroom remodeling work that involves plumbing modifications, electrical changes, or structural alterations. That covers a wide range of common projects rerouting pipes, adding or relocating fixtures, upgrading electrical outlets, or installing new lighting. Cosmetic work like replacing a vanity mirror or swapping out a faucet in the same location typically doesn’t require a permit, but anything that touches the plumbing or electrical system does.
The good news is that Montgomery County offers a Fast Track permit review program that can get qualifying projects permitted in as little as three to five days. We manage the permit application process directly, so you’re not navigating the DPS system on your own. If your project also involves plumbing that connects to the public sewer system, there may be a separate WSSC review required in addition to the DPS permit something an experienced contractor will flag upfront rather than discover mid-project.
Remodeling a bathroom in a high-rise condo building involves a layer of coordination that doesn’t exist in a single-family home renovation. Before any work begins, your contractor needs to meet your building’s specific requirements which typically include providing insurance certificates to building management, complying with permitted work hours (most Friendship Heights Village buildings allow weekday work only, generally between 8am and 5pm), reserving elevators for material delivery, and staging materials in approved common areas without blocking hallways or other residents.
Plumbing in many of the Village’s mid-century buildings runs through shared stacks, which means any plumbing modifications need to be coordinated with building management not just handled independently. A contractor who has only worked in single-family homes may not anticipate any of this, which leads to delays, neighbor complaints, or worse, a building management company that halts the job. We carry the required insurance documentation, understand how to work within these building environments, and plan the project logistics accordingly from the start.
For a small to mid-size condo bathroom, the active construction phase typically runs two to four weeks once permits are in hand and materials are staged. Add in the permitting timeline which in Montgomery County can be as short as three to five days through the Fast Track program for qualifying projects and a realistic total project window from signed contract to finished bathroom is usually four to six weeks.
Scope matters a lot. A straightforward tile refresh and fixture update moves faster than a full gut renovation that involves new plumbing layout, custom walk-in shower construction, and new flooring throughout. In a building like The Willoughby or Highland House, where work hours are restricted to weekdays and elevator access for deliveries has to be scheduled in advance, the logistics add some time compared to a single-family home project. We give you a realistic timeline upfront not an optimistic one that falls apart after demo day.
It’s actually one of the best choices you can make for a compact condo bathroom. Many of the mid-century units in Friendship Heights Village were built with standard tub-shower combos that take up a disproportionate amount of floor space and make the room feel closed off. Removing the tub and installing a curbless walk-in shower especially with frameless glass opens the visual footprint of the room significantly. The shower takes up a similar or smaller footprint, but the absence of a tub wall and a heavy curtain or framed glass door makes the space feel noticeably larger.
Beyond aesthetics, a walk-in shower with a built-in bench, grab bar placement, and non-slip tile is a practical upgrade for a community where more than 32% of residents are 65 or older. These features don’t have to look clinical they can be designed as part of a clean, modern shower that also happens to be safe and accessible. More than 60% of homebuyers now prefer a shower over a tub in the primary bathroom, so this conversion also plays well at resale in the Village’s competitive condo market.
Waterproofing is the part of a bathroom renovation that you never see once the tile goes up but it’s the part that determines whether your renovation holds up for twenty years or starts failing in three. In a standard bathroom, a waterproofing failure leads to mold, tile popping off the wall, and eventually structural damage behind the walls. The repair cost for a waterproofing failure runs between $2,000 and $12,000 depending on how far the damage has spread by the time it’s discovered.
In a high-rise condo building, the stakes are higher. Moisture that gets through a failed waterproofing membrane in your shower doesn’t just stay in your unit it can migrate through the shared floor structure into the ceiling of the unit below you. That turns a renovation problem into a neighbor problem and potentially a building management claim. Professional-grade waterproofing uses multi-layer membrane systems, not consumer-grade products, and it requires proper surface preparation before anything goes over it. This is one of the areas where cutting corners to save money on the front end reliably costs more on the back end.
This is worth asking directly before you get too far into any conversation with a contractor. Buildings in Friendship Heights Village particularly larger ones like The Willoughby, which has 815 units across 24 stories have specific requirements that contractors must meet before they’re allowed to start work. Most buildings require contractors to provide a certificate of insurance naming the building management company as an additional insured, proof of workers’ compensation coverage, and compliance with building-specific work hour restrictions and elevator reservation protocols.
A contractor who has only worked in suburban single-family homes may not have encountered these requirements before, and discovering them after you’ve signed a contract creates real delays. We’re bonded and insured, hold an active Maryland MHIC license (#28145), and have been working in the DC metro area’s urban and condo environments for decades. We can provide the documentation building management companies require, we understand how to coordinate elevator access and material staging, and we know how to run a job in a building where your neighbors are on the other side of the wall. That’s not something every contractor on a general contractor list can say.
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