Bathroom Remodeling in Van Nuys
We are in Van Nuys — our office is at 16120 Sherman Way, so when we say a crew can be at your house in minutes, that’s not a marketing line, it’s the address. Green Design and Build is a licensed general contractor, CSLB #1110975, bonded and insured, and every bathroom remodel we build here is design-build: drawings, permit, and construction from one company, one contract.
Being local to Van Nuys isn’t just about drive time. LADBS keeps a Van Nuys office on Van Nuys Blvd, so permitting for a Van Nuys address isn’t routed through a distant downtown queue — plan check happens close to the neighborhood. A free site visit takes about two hours, you get a written proposal within 48 hours, and we reply to every inquiry within one business day. You have drawings and a written scope before demolition starts, so you’re signing off on a design you can see.
Bathrooms we have built nearby
We haven’t finished a bathroom remodel inside Van Nuys itself yet, and we’re not going to pretend otherwise. Here’s work nearby that shows what a Van Nuys remodel would get from us:
- Primary Bathroom Remodel in Inglewood — a full rebuild from the framing out: new plumbing, complete waterproofing, marble-look and black tile, freestanding tub, frameless glass, double vanity. This is close to what a second-bathroom addition or full reconfiguration looks like in a Van Nuys tract house with room to expand.
- Hall Bathroom Remodel in Ontario — a full hall-bathroom rebuild, which is exactly the job type we see most often in Van Nuys, where a single hall bathroom has served three bedrooms since the 1940s or 50s.
- Bathroom Remodel in West Hollywood — a small bathroom converted into a shower room with a navy shaker vanity and tiled walk-in shower, relevant for the smaller original bathrooms in Van Nuys’s post-war stucco houses.
See more at our projects page and design ideas: bathroom.
What Van Nuys houses need
Van Nuys is dominated by 1940s–50s tract houses, and the layout problem shows up over and over: one original bathroom built to serve three bedrooms. That was normal when these houses went up; it’s the complaint we hear most from homeowners in these post-war tracts. The two jobs that come up most are a hall-bath remodel that reworks the layout to actually function for a family, and adding a second bathroom — often carved out of an oversized bedroom, a garage conversion, or unused space off a hallway.
Foundations are a mix in Van Nuys — you’ll find both slab and raised foundations depending on the block and the builder. It matters for cost: relocating a toilet or shower drain on a slab means cutting concrete, while a raised foundation lets a crew access and move those lines from underneath without breaking up the floor. We check this during the site visit before we scope moving anything.
A specific issue that comes up constantly in these post-war stucco houses: galvanized steel supply pipe. It corrodes from the inside, restricts water pressure over decades, and by now most of it is well past its intended service life. Any time we open a wall for a bathroom remodel in one of these houses, we replace the galvanized supply lines in that run rather than leaving 70-plus-year-old pipe in place and connecting new fixtures to it.
Lake Balboa and the streets closer to the Sherman Oaks border tend to have larger lots than the rest of Van Nuys, which sometimes means more room to actually expand a bathroom’s footprint rather than working strictly within four existing walls — worth flagging if your lot falls in that stretch.
Permits in Van Nuys
Van Nuys is part of the City of Los Angeles, so permits go through LADBS. The advantage here is proximity: the LADBS Van Nuys office on Van Nuys Blvd handles plan check for this area, which means shorter trips and more direct contact than a project on the far side of the city might get. LADBS requires a permit for plumbing and electrical work even when the bathroom’s footprint isn’t changing — moving a drain, adding a circuit for a new exhaust fan, relocating a light fixture all require it. We manage the full LADBS process as part of your contract.
What a bathroom remodel costs in Van Nuys
| Scope | Typical cost |
|---|---|
| Basic refresh, same layout (new flooring, tile, vanity, toilet, faucets, lighting, mirror, paint) | $8,000–$18,000 |
| Mid-range remodel (some layout change, tub-to-shower conversion, relocated vanity, moved plumbing, frameless glass, new exhaust fan) | $18,000–$40,000 |
| High-end renovation (full reconfiguration, custom vanity, large-format or natural stone tile, curbless shower, heated floor, premium fixtures) | $40,000–$80,000+ |
These are typical Los Angeles budgeting estimates, not a price list or a quote. Your project can come in lower or higher depending on the house, the scope and the finishes; the only real number is a written proposal after a site visit.
In Van Nuys, the most common scope is mid-range: a hall-bath reconfiguration that includes a tub-to-shower conversion and moved plumbing to fix a layout that never worked well for the household size. Adding a second bathroom usually lands in the mid-to-high range depending on whether we’re tying into existing plumbing runs or extending new ones. Straightforward refreshes without layout changes are less common here than the layout-fix jobs, simply because so many of these houses have the one-bathroom problem to solve. See what a bathroom remodel costs and tub-to-shower conversion cost.
How long it takes
A same-layout refresh takes about 2–3 weeks of construction. A mid-range remodel — the hall-bath reconfiguration and tub-to-shower jobs these houses usually need — runs 3–5 weeks. A high-end renovation or a second-bathroom addition runs 5–8 weeks. Before construction, plan on 1–4 weeks for design and LADBS permitting; a custom vanity takes about three weeks to manufacture, which we order early so it’s ready when construction reaches that stage.
Questions we get asked
We only have one bathroom for three bedrooms — what are our options?
The two most common fixes are reworking the existing hall bathroom’s layout to add storage and a better shower, or adding a second bathroom elsewhere in the house — a converted garage, an oversized bedroom, or unused hallway space. Which makes sense depends on your floor plan and budget; we’ll walk both options during the site visit.
Is my house on a slab or a raised foundation, and does it matter?
It matters if you’re moving plumbing. A raised foundation lets us relocate a drain line from the crawlspace underneath; a slab means cutting concrete to move the same line. Many Van Nuys tract houses are one or the other — we confirm which during the site visit before finalizing the layout plan.
My water pressure is bad — is that related to the remodel?
Possibly. A lot of Van Nuys houses from the 1940s–50s still have original galvanized steel supply pipe, which corrodes and restricts flow over time. If we’re opening a wall for your bathroom remodel, we replace the galvanized lines in that run, which often improves pressure at that fixture noticeably.
Since you’re based in Van Nuys, does that make scheduling faster?
It helps. Our office is at 16120 Sherman Way, so site visits, material deliveries, and daily crew arrival don’t involve long drive times across the Valley. It doesn’t shorten LADBS’s plan check timeline, but it does mean fewer delays on our end.
Can you add a second bathroom to my Van Nuys house?
Yes — it’s one of the most common requests in post-war Valley houses, given how many original layouts have only one bathroom. The scope depends on where the new bathroom goes and how far it is from existing plumbing; that distance is usually the biggest cost factor, more than the fixtures themselves.
What’s involved in a curbless shower for a Van Nuys hall bath?
The floor framing needs to be dropped, or a recess cut into a slab, so the shower floor sits flush with the rest of the bathroom. In an older Van Nuys tract house, this is workable but takes planning around the existing floor joists or foundation type, which we assess on site before quoting it.
Sources
Permit rules on this page are City of Los Angeles rules and can change. Confirm what applies to your address with LADBS before you plan around a date. Cost ranges and durations are our own, from jobs we have built.
- LADBS, Building Permits — the work that requires a permit in the City of Los Angeles, and the rule that building plans must be approved as a Building Plan Check before a permit is issued.
- LADBS Information Bulletin P/GI 2020-003, Express Permits — the narrower list of work that can be permitted without plan check, including re-roofing and non-structural kitchen and bathroom work.
- LADBS, Van Nuys office — the Development Services Center that serves the San Fernando Valley, at 6262 Van Nuys Blvd, 2nd floor, Room 251.
Last reviewed 17 September 2026.
Tell us about your Van Nuys bathroom
We’re a few minutes from most of Van Nuys, so let’s start with the one-bathroom problem, the layout that’s never worked, or whatever’s actually bothering you about the room. Free two-hour site visit, written proposal in 48 hours. Call (800) 348-3050, or see service areas: Van Nuys. For plumbing questions, see plumbing, and for the full bathroom remodeling overview, see bathroom remodeling.