Bathroom Remodeling in Montclair, NJ
Montclair has more original prewar bathrooms than anywhere else we work, and some of them are genuinely worth keeping. Telling the difference between a bathroom with good bones and one that has been quietly leaking for fifteen years is most of the job.
- NJ HIC Reg. #13VH12107200
- Based in Irvington
- 14+ years in North Jersey
With roughly 59 percent of its housing built before 1940, Montclair is where we see the most original prewar bathrooms. Some of them are excellent: hexagon floors, subway walls, cast iron tubs, real fixtures, all built to a standard that is easy to admire.
They were also built without any waterproof membrane behind the tile, because nobody had invented one yet. Ninety years on, that is what determines whether a bathroom is a preservation project or a rebuild.
- Median year built
- 1938of 16,521 housing units
- Built before 1940
- 59.4%73.9% before 1960
- Single-family detached
- 49.8%71.9% in 1–4 unit buildings
- Owner-occupied
- 56.9%6.24 sq mi, Essex County
U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2024 5-year estimates. Figures describe Montclair township, Essex County, NJ.
How prewar bathrooms fail
A 1920s wet wall is tile set into a thick mortar bed over plaster and lath. It survives on the mass of the bed and on the tile being well set, and it works remarkably well for decades.
Failure is slow. Grout opens at a corner, water enters the bed, and over ten or twenty years the plaster behind disintegrates and the framing takes moisture. By the time tile sounds hollow or comes loose, the assembly has been passing water for a long time and the damage below is usually worse than the visible symptoms.
The other recurring findings in Montclair houses: rotted subfloor around the toilet flange, galvanized supply lines closing up internally, joists that have taken water where a leak went unnoticed, and exhaust fans, where they exist at all, ducted into an attic or a chase rather than outside.
The framing itself is usually excellent, so structural repairs tend to be localized rather than extensive.
What we handle in a Montclair bathroom
Demolition, framing and subfloor repair, plumbing and electrical, waterproofing, tile, fixtures and finish. We work to an architect's or designer's drawing where one exists. Permits filed with the township.
Not sure whether your original bathroom is sound or slowly failing? That is exactly what a look is for.
Call (862) 218-7292Shower Remodeling in Montclair
Most shower work here is rebuilding an assembly that was never designed to keep water out of the structure. That means back to the studs in the wet area, repairing whatever the plaster and framing need, then a sloped pan and a continuous bonded waterproof membrane detailed at every corner, at the curb and at the drain, before backer board and tile. The valve gets replaced with a pressure-balancing or thermostatic type. We do not tile over a substrate that is already wet, because that is a two-year fix. See shower remodeling.
Full Bathroom Remodels in Montclair
In a house of this age, once the wet wall has to come out, doing the whole room is usually better value than doing it in pieces. The demolition, containment, permits and waterproofing are already happening, and the marginal cost of replacing galvanized supply lines, repairing the subfloor and properly ducting a fan is far smaller now than in a separate project later that reopens the same walls. Three to four weeks with the layout unchanged. See full bathroom remodeling.
Bathroom Tile in Montclair
Where original tile is being kept, the work is careful: matching grout, repairing the movement joints with flexible sealant rather than grout, and being honest about what the wet wall can and cannot support. Where new tile is going in, the substrate governs, floors of this era usually need an added plywood layer or an uncoupling membrane, and old plaster walls are rarely flat. Period-appropriate choices sit well in these houses without pretending to be original. See bathroom tile.
Bathtub Replacement in Montclair
Cast iron is the standard find and it is genuinely good. Nothing holds heat as well and they last indefinitely. In a house with several bathrooms, keeping one period tub is often the right call. Where a replacement is wanted, getting the old one out of a second-floor bathroom usually means breaking it up in place, and the surround comes with it since the tile laps the flange and matching ninety-year-old tile is not realistic. See bathtub replacement.
Walk-In Showers in Montclair
Most of these houses have open basements, which makes a fully curbless shower more achievable here than in slab-built areas, since the shower floor can be recessed by getting at the framing from below. Where the room allows a larger shower, that means space for a bench, a proper niche and a hand shower on a slide bar, and more waterproofing detail, since a large low-curb wet area has more corners to get right. A linear drain lets the floor slope in one plane. See walk-in showers.
Bathroom Vanities in Montclair
Many original bathrooms here still have a pedestal or wall-hung sink and no storage whatsoever, so adding a vanity is a genuine improvement rather than a swap. In a large converted-bedroom bathroom, a 60-inch double vanity works well; below that width, a single sink with generous counter is the better room. A recessed medicine cabinet uses four inches of depth between the studs at no cost in floor area. See bathroom vanities.
Small Bathroom Remodeling in Montclair
Secondary bathrooms in these houses, squeezed into a former closet or under a stair, respond well to a handful of moves: a clear glass panel instead of a curtain so the eye reaches the far wall, recessed storage between the studs, tile carried to the ceiling to remove the horizontal break, and a shallower vanity to free the door swing. In a room with no window, proper lighting and a correctly ducted fan matter as much as any finish. See small bathroom remodeling.
Permits and inspections in Montclair
Montclair's Building Office issues and inspects construction permits under New Jersey's Uniform Construction Code. Bathroom work altering plumbing or electrical requires one, which covers essentially every real remodel. Adding a bathroom involves new drainage and venting and is a more involved application. Interior bathroom work is generally not a historic district review matter, though the township is the authority on that.
Township of Montclair, Building Office
- Department: Building Office
- Address: 205 Claremont Avenue, Montclair, NJ 07042
- Phone: 973-509-4923
Contact details verified September 2026. Permit requirements depend on your specific scope of work and can change, so the department above is the authority on what your project needs, not this page.
Where we work in Montclair
Across the township, Upper Montclair, Montclair Center, Watchung Plaza, Frog Hollow, the South End and the Estate Section.
Bathroom work in Montclair
Keeping the original or starting over. Either way, it helps to know what is behind the tile.
Where Montclair sits, and where we work
Montclair township covers about six square miles of Essex County, bordered by Bloomfield, Glen Ridge, Verona, Cedar Grove, Clifton and West Orange.
Montclair boundary map not yet published.
Import maps/kml/montclair-nj.kml into Google My Maps, then paste the embed URL into
src/_data/locations/montclair-nj.json.
Township of Montclair covers about 6.24 square miles of Essex County. Boundary drawn from U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line data.
Bathroom questions from Montclair homeowners
Our 1920s tile is beautiful. Does it have to go?
Not necessarily, and this deserves a real look rather than a default answer. A dry-area floor in good condition (a hexagon mosaic, say) frequently can and should be kept. The wet wall is the harder question, because tile set into a mortar bed has no waterproof membrane behind it, and once water has worked past the grout the bed and the plaster deteriorate invisibly. Loose or hollow-sounding tile has already answered it.
How can we tell whether it is leaking?
Grout that cracks in the same corner every year despite repairs, hollow-sounding tile, a stain on the ceiling below, a soft or springy spot on the floor outside the tub, white mineral deposits on the tile, or a musty smell. Any one of them is worth investigating. The framing takes damage the whole time it continues.
We want a second bathroom upstairs. Realistic?
Often, in houses of this size. The determining question is drainage: whether a new drain can reach the existing stack with proper fall and be vented correctly, and whether the joists run in a direction that allows the pipe to get there without cutting anything structurally important. With an open basement it is frequently workable, though the second floor is more involved than the first.
What is the plumbing likely to be?
In an unrenovated house of this age, galvanized steel supply lines are common and by now are closing up internally. The symptom is a shower that drops pressure when a tap runs elsewhere. Waste piping is usually cast iron, often still perfectly serviceable but not easily moved. Both are worth establishing before planning any layout change.
We are in a two-family. Anything different?
About half the housing here is not single-family, so this is common. In a stacked two-family the bathrooms are aligned to share a waste and vent stack, which makes the toilet difficult to move and means a shower failure upstairs shows up as a ceiling stain downstairs. Work in one unit at a time is normal. Per-unit water shutoffs make everything easier if the building has them.
Call about your Montclair project
Original bathrooms hold more history than they show. Worth having someone look before deciding.