Master Bathroom Remodel — Destrehan, LA

Project Background

The homeowners reached out to Cajun Home Services after years of frustration with an aging master bathroom in their two-story brick and stucco home in Destrehan. The original tile shower had hairline grout failures, the marble floor tile had cracked along a slab seam, and the legacy plumbing valves were past their service life. They wanted a complete rebuild — not a cosmetic refresh.

We scoped this as a full master bathroom gut remodel: down to studs and slab, with new plumbing rough-in, modern waterproofing, and a rebuilt tile shower system. Because the homeowners were living in the house during construction, dust control and containment were treated as first-class deliverables — not an afterthought.

Destrehan sits in St. Charles Parish along the Mississippi River corridor, where high humidity and slab-on-grade construction make proper waterproofing and substrate detailing critical. A bathroom built to a Louisiana standard has to handle moisture from both directions — interior shower spray and exterior vapor drive.

Scope of Work

• Full demolition of existing tile shower stall, marble floor tile, fixtures, and finishes
• Plastic containment with zippered access to isolate the master bath from the rest of the home
• HEPA dust extraction during all hammer-drill tile removal to keep the home livable
• Plumbing rough-in inspection and replacement of legacy shower valves
• New pressure-treated shower curb framing and cement board substrate over the slab
• Full RedGard waterproofing membrane on shower walls and curb
• Tile rebuild with modern shower system, drain, and updated fixtures

Build Sequence

This project was managed through our standard JobTread workflow — daily photo updates, scheduled inspections, and a single point of contact for the homeowners throughout the build.

Materials & Systems Used

Why Containment & Waterproofing Matter

Most bathroom remodel complaints we hear from homeowners switching contractors fall into two buckets: "the dust got everywhere" and "the shower started leaking after a year." Both are preventable, and both are decisions made on day one of demo — not at finish.

Zippered plastic containment costs us a few hundred dollars in materials and an hour of labor. It's the difference between a homeowner sleeping comfortably during their remodel and a homeowner replacing HVAC filters every week. RedGard waterproofing adds a few hundred dollars to the substrate phase and prevents the single most common failure mode in residential bathrooms — water tracking through grout joints into the wall cavity.

Both of those decisions are made before the homeowner ever sees the finished tile. That's why we document every phase with timestamped photos — so you can verify the work behind the wall, not just the work in front of it.

Lessons for Homeowners

If you're planning a master bath remodel in St. Charles Parish, New Orleans, Metairie, or anywhere in Southeast Louisiana, ask three questions of every contractor you interview:

1. What does your dust containment look like? If the answer is "tarps," keep interviewing.
2. What waterproofing system do you use, and can I see it before tile goes on? RedGard, Schluter Kerdi, and Hydro Ban are all acceptable. "We just use cement board" is not.
3. Will I get daily photos? If the contractor disappears for days at a time, you have no way to verify what's happening behind the wall.