West Hollywood Bathroom Remodel: Navy, Brass and White Oak

A small West Hollywood bathroom rebuilt as a shower room, with a navy shaker vanity, brass fittings and floating white oak shelving against a mosaic tile accent. No tub — the space was better used as a proper walk-in shower.

Project at a glance

Location	West Hollywood, CA
Completed	2026
Project type	Bathroom remodel
Scope	Full strip-out, waterproofing, tiled walk-in shower with sliding glass, navy shaker vanity, marble-look counter, brass fittings, round mirror and sconces, floating white oak shelving, mosaic accent tile

Giving up the tub

In a small bathroom the tub is usually the thing standing between you and a shower you actually enjoy using. Taking it out is a decision worth thinking through rather than defaulting either way: a house with only one bathroom generally wants to keep a tub for resale and for small children, and a house with more than one usually does not.

Here the room became a shower room, which bought enough floor space for a full-width vanity and made the whole thing feel considerably larger than its footprint.

Where the character comes from

Nothing in this room is expensive on its own. The navy cabinet, the brass, the black round mirror, the two Edison sconces and the oak shelves are all ordinary choices — they work because they were chosen together and because the tile behind the shelves gives the eye somewhere to land.

The finished room

Bathrooms in older West Hollywood housing

Much of West Hollywood’s housing stock is small-lot, older, and frequently multi-unit. That changes a bathroom remodel before anyone picks a tile.

• Access and staging. Narrow lots, shared drives and street parking mean material goes in and debris comes out in smaller loads, on a schedule that does not inconvenience neighbours.
• Original plumbing. Galvanised supply and cast-iron waste are common in this era of construction. Once a wall is open, replacing what is exposed is nearly always the right call — the labour is already spent.
• Shared walls and floors. Where there is a unit below, waterproofing and the flood test stop being best practice and become the thing standing between you and somebody else’s ceiling.
• Rules with teeth. Work in occupied residential buildings here can engage tenant-protection requirements, which is a question to settle before scheduling rather than after.

Moisture is the real enemy in a small older bathroom

Older bathrooms in this housing stock tend to be small, internal, and originally built with either a window or nothing at all. Add a modern shower to a room with poor ventilation and the moisture has nowhere to go except into the finishes.

The requirement is mechanical exhaust directly outdoors in every room containing a bathtub or shower — 50 cfm for a switched fan, 25 cfm if it runs continuously (California Mechanical Code §405.3 and §405.3.1). In an older building the hard part is not the fan, it is the duct: finding an honest path to outside air through a structure never designed for one.

The wrong answers are common and all look finished: ducting into the attic, into a soffit, or into a wall cavity. Each of those moves the water from a room you can see into a structure you cannot.

Why an old bathroom is rarely just cosmetic

Homeowners often start out wanting new tile and a new vanity. Once a wall in a building of this age is open, three things usually appear: supply piping worth replacing, framing that has been wet at some point, and wiring that predates modern requirements for the room.

None of that is a disaster, and all of it is cheaper to deal with now than in five years. It is the reason a realistic proposal for an older bathroom carries allowances rather than one flat number — and why a bid without them tends to become a change order.

Questions about remodelling an older bathroom

Should I replace the plumbing while the wall is open?

If it is galvanised steel, yes. Galvanised corrodes from the inside and restricts flow long before it leaks; the symptom is weak pressure that gets slowly worse. The pipe is not the expensive part — opening the wall is, and that has already been paid for.

Can I keep the original tile?

Sometimes, and it is worth asking. Genuine period tile in good condition is not something to discard casually. But if it is loose, cracked, or set over a substrate that has been wet, preserving it costs more than replacing it and buys a shorter life.

What if there is no exterior wall for the fan?

Then the duct runs through the ceiling to a roof or wall termination. It has to end outside. Where that path is genuinely difficult it is an engineering problem to solve at the planning stage — not a reason to vent into the attic.

How disruptive is this in an occupied building?

Manageable, with planning. Water shutoffs get scheduled and announced, demolition happens in defined windows, and dust containment matters more than in a detached house. The neighbours are part of the project whether or not anyone acknowledges it.

More bathroom remodeling work, and our West Hollywood service area page.

Thinking about a similar project?

We remodel bathrooms across Los Angeles — see bathroom remodeling and where we work. The site visit is free, takes about two hours, and you get a written proposal within 48 hours. Call (800) 348-3050 or send us the details. More work on our projects page.