Eastside · Mercer Island
Renovating on Mercer Island.
Mercer Island houses are usually well built and badly dated, which is the best problem to have.
The structure is sound, the rooms are generous and the finishes are from a decade nobody misses. That means the money goes into what you can see and touch rather than into fixing what somebody did wrong, and it is why bathrooms here tend to be done two at a time.
Two bathrooms, done together.
A wall of stacked black tile with a freestanding tub against it, a walk-in shower lined in the same tile with a window and a recessed niche, a floating white vanity with two black sinks and two black framed mirrors, and a black hexagonal floor running under all of it. One order, one delivery, one set of tradesmen on site once.
Why two bathrooms at once costs less than two bathrooms twice
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01
One tile order
Tile is priced and shipped by the batch, and batches vary in color. Two rooms from one order match, and you pay one freight bill.
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02
One mobilization
The plumber comes once, the tiler comes once, the inspector comes once. Splitting the work in two puts every one of those costs on the invoice twice.
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03
One permit, one inspection
Mercer Island runs its own building department. One application covering both rooms is one review cycle instead of two.
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04
One period of living around it
This is the one nobody prices and everybody feels. Three weeks of dust once is not the same as three weeks twice.
Mercer Island is its own city, with its own permit desk.
Move plumbing, a wall or a circuit and the island's building department wants a permit, on its own review schedule. We pull it and it goes in the schedule you see before you sign, not in a call in week six.
Twenty minutes over the bridge there is a room with your tile in it, full size.
920 Dexter Ave N, Monday to Friday. Bring the floor plan if you have one, photographs if you do not, and a rough idea of what you want to move.