Tile in McMinnville, OR

Regularly. It is a short run down 99W and it is one of our steadiest markets outside Newberg. Estimates in McMinnville are handled the same as at home — we measure in person rather than working from a phone call.

Luxury vinyl plank with a thick wear layer, in almost every case. It takes moisture, furniture drag and heavy turnover far better than carpet or laminate, and a damaged plank can be replaced without redoing the room. If carpet is wanted in bedrooms, we would spec for density rather than plushness.

Generally not, and it is better to say so up front. We do not take on repair work for hard surface flooring, tile or countertops on projects we did not install. With a shower the reason is specific: the waterproofing is buried behind the tile, we cannot inspect it, and patching the visible part of a system that may already have failed does you no favours. If we built it, that is a different conversation.

No, and this is the most common misunderstanding about showers. Grout is a filler between tiles and it lets water through. Sealing it helps with staining and slows things down, but the thing actually keeping water out of your wall is the membrane and pan behind the tile. That is why we spend the time there rather than on the part you can see.

Longer than people expect, because the sequence has waiting in it — the waterproofing has to cure before tile goes on, and the setting mortar has to cure before grouting. Rushing any of those stages is how failures start. We will give you a realistic schedule at the estimate, including the days when nothing appears to be happening.

On the walls, easily. On a shower floor it is more constrained, because the floor has to fall to the drain and a large rigid tile cannot follow a slope in two directions without help. Smaller formats or a mosaic conform to the fall naturally, which is why you see them on shower floors so often. We will show you what works with the pan we are building.