WORCESTER | HOLDEN | SHREWSBURY | LEOMINSTER
Tub to shower conversions, custom tile work, and full gut renovations, built to last by a company that self-performs the tile. ARM Construction remodels bathrooms across Worcester County.
Every bathroom looks good the week it is finished. What separates a bathroom that still looks good in ten years from one that is being torn out in four is entirely hidden by the time the job is done. Tile and grout are not waterproof. What keeps water out of your framing and your ceiling below is the waterproofing membrane, the shower pan, and how carefully both were built and tested before anyone set a single tile.
A failed shower pan is the most expensive common repair in a house, because by the time you see the evidence, the water has already been in the subfloor and the joists for a while. We build showers with a proper waterproofing assembly, a correctly sloped pan, and a water test before tile goes on. That is not an upgrade or an add-on line item. It is how a shower should be built, and it is the reason we self-perform our own tile work rather than subbing it to whoever is available that week.
A basic update, meaning new fixtures, a new vanity, flooring, and paint while keeping the existing layout, generally runs $8,800 to $20,000. A mid-range full remodel with a tiled shower, new tile floor, vanity, lighting, and fixtures runs $20,000 to $40,000. A high-end remodel or a full gut renovation runs $40,000 to $55,000 or more. The Massachusetts statewide average sits around $17,600, though that figure includes a lot of smaller updates and partial jobs.
What moves a bathroom from the middle of that range to the top is moving plumbing. Keeping the toilet, tub, and vanity where they already are and replacing everything in place is a fundamentally different job from relocating fixtures, which means opening the floor, reworking drain lines, and dealing with whatever the previous owner or plumber left behind. In older Worcester County homes that frequently means cast iron waste lines, galvanized supply pipes, or a vent stack that was never quite right. Tile selection is the other wide variable, since a large-format porcelain floor and a detailed mosaic shower niche are not the same labor.
This is the most requested bathroom change we see, and for most homeowners it is the right call. A walk-in shower is safer to get into, easier to clean, and makes a small bathroom feel meaningfully larger than the same room with a tub crowding one wall. In a primary bathroom, particularly for anyone planning to stay in the house long term, it is one of the better dollars you can spend.
Two things worth knowing before you commit. First, resale. If it is the only tub in the house, a share of buyers with young children will keep looking. If you have a second full bathroom with a tub, that concern goes away. Second, the drain almost always has to move, because a tub drain and a shower drain do not sit in the same place, which means opening the floor. That is routine work, but it is the reason a tub to shower conversion is a real remodel rather than a swap, and it is why the one-day bath companies advertising on television install a liner over your existing tub instead of doing it properly.
A growing share of the bathroom work we do is for homeowners who intend to stay in the house. Curbless showers with no lip to step over, wider door openings, blocking installed in the walls so grab bars can be added later without opening anything up, comfort-height toilets, and slip-resistant tile. Done thoughtfully, none of it reads as institutional. It just looks like a well-designed bathroom that happens to work for everyone.
The detail worth planning for now even if you do not need it yet is the blocking. Adding solid backing behind the drywall during a remodel costs almost nothing. Adding grab bars later to a finished wall with no backing means opening the wall and retiling. If you are remodeling a bathroom in a house you plan to be in for twenty years, that is the decision to get right on the front end. Curbless showers also need to be planned during framing, because the floor has to be recessed to make the drain work.
Bathrooms in older homes hide more than kitchens do, because the water has usually been finding its way somewhere for years before anyone noticed. Rotted subfloor around the toilet flange. Joists softened under a shower that leaked slowly for a decade. Cast iron waste lines at the end of their service life. Galvanized supply pipes narrowed by corrosion to a fraction of their original diameter. Original 1950s tile set directly into mortar over wire lath, which is genuinely difficult to remove and often means the wall comes out with it.
We expect to find some of this and we tell you what we find the same day, along with what it means for the schedule and the price. Massachusetts requires any change to the contract to be in writing and signed by both parties before the work proceeds, which is protection for you and a discipline that keeps everyone honest. What we will not do is set new tile over a subfloor that should have been replaced.
We remodel bathrooms in Worcester, Holden, Princeton, Sterling, West Boylston, and Boylston, along with Shrewsbury, Leominster, Westborough, Northborough, Southborough, and Grafton.
The housing stock shapes the work. In Princeton, Sterling, and Holden, we are often working in older homes where the bathroom was carved out of another room decades after the house was built, which means unusual framing, tight dimensions, and plumbing that took the path of least resistance. In Shrewsbury, Grafton, Northborough, and West Boylston, postwar colonials and ranches typically have one small full bath upstairs and a half bath down, and the most common project is gutting that upstairs bath and converting the tub to a tiled shower. In Worcester and Leominster, we work in older multifamily and single-family homes where the constraint is usually the supply and waste plumbing rather than the space.
Bathrooms are a tile trade and a plumbing trade sitting inside a carpentry problem. Andrew Mercurio came up in masonry, which is where tile work actually comes from, and grew ARM Construction into a full general contracting company. We self-perform the demolition, framing, waterproofing, tile, and finish work, and bring in licensed plumbers and electricians as Massachusetts requires.
Andrew has held Massachusetts Construction Supervisor License #CS-093044 since 2011, and ARM Construction & Management Inc is a registered Massachusetts Home Improvement Contractor, registration #153199. Both are active and verifiable through the Commonwealth. Our Google reviews mention attention to detail and craftsmanship more than anything else, which in a bathroom is not a soft compliment. It is the difference between grout lines that stay straight and a shower that stays dry.
What Our Customers Say
I can't say enough good things! I needed a small finish job done at the last minute, and Andrew made it happen quickly and without any stress. The craftsmanship was perfect and everything looks amazing. I'm extremely happy and would recommend him to anyone!
Andrew and his team are detail-oriented. They are skilled and helped me understand the process of renovating my kitchen. Fantastic communication & high quality service! I am so lucky to have them and recommend them to anyone! When they built my deck, it was so fast & efficient! Call Andrew, you won't regret it
Andrew replaced a garden window in my kitchen, and a sliding door. He did a meticulous job, and went above and beyond to accommodate some special requests that I had. His attention to detail and willingness to do whatever it took to make me happy didn't go unnoticed. Will definitely use him each and every time!
Here are the questions Worcester County homeowners ask us most about bathroom remodels. If yours is not here, call us at (774) 249-0221.
A basic update, meaning new fixtures, vanity, flooring, and paint with the existing layout, generally runs $8,800 to $20,000. A mid-range full remodel with a tiled shower, new tile floor, vanity, and fixtures runs $20,000 to $40,000. A high-end or gut renovation, or one that moves plumbing, runs $40,000 to $55,000 or more. The Massachusetts statewide average sits around $17,600, though that number includes a lot of smaller updates. Moving the toilet, tub, or shower is what pushes a project toward the high end, because it means opening the floor and reworking drain lines.
A full bathroom remodel typically runs two to four weeks. The schedule is driven less by the size of the room than by the number of trades that have to come through it in sequence, each waiting on the one before. Tile is the long pole, since mortar and grout need cure time between steps and rushing it is how tile fails. A basic update with no layout change can be done in one to two weeks. As with kitchens, we do not start demolition until the tile, vanity, and fixtures are on site.
For most homeowners, yes, especially in a primary bathroom. A walk-in shower is safer, easier to use, and makes a small bathroom feel considerably larger. The one caution is resale. If it is the only tub in the house, some buyers with young children will pass, so if you have a second full bath with a tub, convert away. If you do not, think it through. The conversion itself is straightforward structurally, though the drain usually has to move, which means opening the floor.
Almost always the waterproofing behind the tile rather than the tile itself. Tile and grout are not waterproof. What keeps water out of the framing is the membrane and the pan underneath, and a shower built over ordinary drywall or without a properly sloped, tested pan will fail regardless of how good the tile looks. This is the single most common expensive failure we are called to fix in older bathrooms, and it is why we build showers with a proper waterproofing assembly and a pan that gets water tested before any tile goes on.
In most cases yes. Replacing a vanity and a toilet in the same location may not require one, but moving any plumbing fixture, altering framing, or doing electrical work does, and those permits come with inspections. Massachusetts also requires that licensed plumbers and licensed electricians perform their respective work. ARM Construction pulls the permits and coordinates the inspections as part of the project.
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ARM Construction & Management Inc
131 Houghton Road
Princeton, MA 01541
(774) 249-0221
Licensed and insured in Massachusetts. MA CSL #CS-093044 | MA HIC Reg. #153199
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