Ajax Plumbing LLC / Bentonville, VA · Bathroom Remodeling
Bentonville Bathroom Remodeling Pipes first, tile second
A new vanity looks good for about a week if the drain behind it was never pitched right. Most of the bathrooms we open in Bentonville were tacked onto a farmhouse long after it was built, and the plumbing shows it. We fix what is inside the wall while the wall is open, so the new room works as well as it looks.
540-671-5417Talk to one of usHere is the order we work in. Before anybody picks out tile, we find where the drain goes and how it falls, whether the room has a working vent, and what the supply pipe is made of. In a river house or a farmhouse that grew one room at a time, at least one of those is usually off. Better to learn it with the floor up than after the grout cures.
In a farmhouse bath, the pipes behind the wall decide the layout.
What the old bath is hiding
Every remodel at this end of the county turns up some version of these. None of them are rare, and none of them are a reason to stop the job.
Drain slope nobody checked
When a bathroom got added to a farmhouse decades after the house went up, whoever ran the drain often worked around a joist instead of through it. What you end up with is a line that runs flat in one stretch and dips in another. Water still leaves, slowly, and whatever it carries settles in the low spot. With the floor open we reset the fall so waste actually travels to the stack, which is the one thing a new toilet cannot do for itself.
A vent that stops short
A drain needs air behind it. Without a proper vent, a draining tub pulls water out of the sink trap beside it, and you get that gurgle and a sewer smell nobody can place. Older add-on baths sometimes have a vent that dead-ends in the attic, or one that was never run at all. We tie the new fixtures into a real vent before the drywall goes back up.
Galvanized feeding the upstairs
Supply pipe in a lot of older Bentonville houses is galvanized steel, and after forty years of rust narrowing the inside, an upstairs shower barely trickles while the kitchen sink downstairs runs fine. Since the walls are already open, that is the moment to reroute the bath in PEX back to a sound point in the system. It is a lot less work now than tearing into finished tile later.
A bath over the crawlspace
Plenty of add-on baths sit over a shallow crawlspace instead of a basement. That puts the drain and the new supply lines right where the valley cold settles in January. We route and hang those runs so they drain properly and stay out of the worst of the draft, and we insulate whatever has to sit near an outside wall.
Grit on brand new valves
On a private well, fine sediment and minerals ride along with the water. A new shower valve or vanity cartridge collects that grit and starts to drip or stiffen sooner than it should. We flush the lines before the trim goes on, and if your well clearly sends a lot of sediment, we will say a filter ahead of the bath is worth having.
Move the toilet, or leave the stack alone?
Everybody wants the toilet somewhere else. Sometimes that is easy. Sometimes it means cutting a new path for a large drain through floor framing that two earlier owners already notched. In an old house the main stack is the anchor. Fixtures close to it drain well and vent easily. Fixtures you drag across the room need a longer run with enough fall, and in a floor with shallow joists that fall may simply not exist.
So we look before we promise anything. If the move works, we do it and the drain will be right. If it would leave a run so flat that it clogs every other month, we say so plainly and show you where the toilet can go instead. Sinks and showers have more freedom than toilets, and a good layout usually comes from working with the stack rather than fighting it.
Fixtures near the stack behave. Fixtures far from it need a reason.
Who decides what? You pick the look: the vanity, the tile, the faucet finish, the spot where you want to stand at the mirror. We decide what goes behind it, meaning pipe size, drain fall, vent routing, valve type, and how the new supply ties back in. If one of your choices runs into one of ours, you hear about it before anything gets cut, along with your options. The quote is free, and it covers the plumbing you will never see.
Want to talk it through first? Call 540-671-5417 and tell us how old the house is and where the bath sits. Our main bathroom remodeling page covers this work across the valley, and the Bentonville page lays out everything else this end of the county needs.
Remodeling down by the river
Bentonville sits along the South Fork of the Shenandoah, a straight run south of Front Royal on Route 340, fifteen or twenty minutes depending on the river traffic. That short drive matters on a remodel. Some days a fitting is wrong or a wall hides a surprise, and we can be back with the right part that afternoon instead of next week.
Most houses out here have their own well and pressure tank instead of a town main. Before we plan new fixtures, we check what pressure that tank actually delivers, because a big shower head on a tired well setup is a letdown nobody needs. If the pressure side needs attention, we handle it as part of the same job.
Pictures of finished rooms are in the gallery. When you are ready for a walk-through, set it up on the contact page or just call.
We plumb bathroom remodels in Bentonville and across Warren County, working from our shop in Front Royal.
Other work we do around Bentonville
A bathroom job often turns up something else in the house, and the rest of our Bentonville work sits close at hand.
Only swapping a faucet for now: faucet installation. Building new on the slopes off Panhandle Road or Rocky Lane: new construction plumbing. An old boiler heating the place: boiler installation. Curious what the drain under the house looks like before the new floor goes down: video camera pipe inspection.
We are a father and son with forty-five years between us, backflow certified and certified on most water heater brands, and the 24/7 line rings one of us directly. For the rest of the county, see the Warren County page.
Bathroom questions we hear in Bentonville
Can you redo the plumbing without gutting the whole bathroom?
Often, yes. If the drain falls correctly and the supply is in decent shape, we can change fixtures and valves through small openings in the wall. If the floor has to come up to fix a flat drain, we tell you that at the walk-through, before you order tile or a vanity.
Our upstairs shower barely runs. Is that the well or the pipe?
It could be either, and it is worth knowing which before a remodel. If the kitchen downstairs runs strong, the well is probably fine and old galvanized feeding the bath is closing up. If every fixture in the house is weak, we start at the pressure tank and switch.
Is PEX a good choice in an old farmhouse?
For supply lines, we think so. It bends around old framing with fewer joints, puts up with a hard freeze better than rigid pipe, and ties into existing copper or galvanized with the right transition fittings. We still support it properly and keep it off cold outside walls where we can.
Can the toilet move to the other side of the room?
Sometimes. It depends on the floor framing and whether the drain can keep enough fall over the longer run back to the stack. We look under the floor before answering. If the move would leave you with a drain that clogs often, we show you a spot that works better.
Will new faucets and valves hold up on well water?
They last longer when the lines get flushed before the trim goes on and the well is not sending heavy sediment. Grit chews up cartridges and seals over time. If yours carries a lot of it, a sediment filter ahead of the house protects every new fixture, the bath included.
What do you need from us before the walk-through?
Roughly how old the house is, where the bath sits, what is underneath it, and what you want to change. Photos of the room and the space below help a lot. From there we come out, look at the drain and the supply, and give you a free quote.
Tell us about the bathroom
Say what you want to change and how old the house is. One of us calls you back to set up a look, and the quote is free.
Rather talk it through? Call 540-671-5417, 24/7.