Porcelain and ceramic tile for the rooms that get wet. Showers and tub surrounds, bathroom and mudroom floors, kitchen backsplashes and the repair work that comes from somebody else’s shortcut. Waterproofing certified installers, a leak-free guarantee on every shower we build, and an itemised flat-rate quote within 24 hours.
Part of our wider custom tile services across the Kansas City area.
Shawnee was laid out in 1857 and burned to the ground by Quantrill’s raiders in 1862. By 1950 it still held only 845 people. Then it grew more than tenfold in a single decade, and it has not stopped since — 47,996 residents in 2000, 67,311 by 2020, across 26,465 homes and forty-two square miles.
What that leaves is a city with two completely different tile problems, split roughly at Nieman Road.
East of Nieman, the houses are 1950s to 1970s ranches whose bathrooms are on their first or second renovation in sixty years. Small rooms, tile set into a mortar bed or straight onto plywood, a crack that runs the length of a joist, and a wet wall that has been quietly soft for a decade behind a surround nobody wanted to open up. The interesting work there is underneath.
West toward K-7, the builds are newer and the work is about scale and specification: large-format floors running through entries and mudrooms, and primary showers with benches, niches and frameless glass that have to be waterproofed as a system rather than a surface.
We do both, out of Prairie Village, with the same crews. Read more about our custom tile services, or see every area we cover.
Every one of them is quoted as a flat rate before anyone opens a box of tile.
The biggest job on this page and the one with the most hidden in it. Pre-sloped pan, bonded membrane, reinforced corners, a niche waterproofed as its own box, and a bench that drains rather than pools. Every shower is flood tested before a single tile goes on.
See how we build one
Porcelain floors in the rooms that take snow melt, road salt and wet dogs off the driveway. Large format needs a flat floor before it needs anything else, so we check with a straightedge and level the substrate before we quote the tile rather than after.
Compare layouts
The cheapest square footage in the house to make interesting, and the fastest job we run — usually one to two days. Outlets get cut cleanly, the run gets laid out so cut tiles land in the corners, and the pattern is centred on the range rather than on whichever wall was convenient.
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Grout that keeps coming back out, tiles that sound hollow underfoot, a crack running in a straight line. These are movement and coverage problems, not grout problems, and re-grouting buys a season. We find what is moving, then fix that.
Read the diagnosis guideThe same tile in a different layout can move a quote by a third. Choose a pattern to see the waste factor, the labour band it falls into, and where we would actually use it.
Tiles line up in a grid, joints running straight in both directions. It is the cleanest, most contemporary layout and by far the least forgiving: every joint lines up with the next, so a wall that is out of square or a batch of tile that varies in size announces itself immediately.
We laser a control line and dry-lay the first course rather than starting in a corner and hoping, because in a straight lay the error at the far wall is the sum of every joint before it.
Each row shifted along, the way brick is laid. It forgives small size variation between tiles and small errors in a wall, which is exactly why it is the default for subway tile and why it suits the older bathrooms east of Nieman Road where nothing is quite square any more.
One caution: on long tiles, a full half-tile offset can telegraph lippage, because the high point of one tile lands at the centre of its neighbour. On anything over about twelve inches we drop the offset to a third.
Tiles set at forty-five degrees in interlocking pairs. It is the most requested feature layout we install and the most cutting by a wide margin — every edge of the room becomes a diagonal cut, which is where both the extra material and the extra labour go.
That combination moves it out of the $5 to $8 per square foot band and into $10 to $15. Worth every cent on a backsplash or an entry; expensive spread across a whole floor.
Subway tile turned on end. It makes a low ceiling read taller, which is genuinely useful in a 1960s Shawnee bathroom with an eight-foot ceiling and a tub surround that stops halfway up the wall.
It does need plumb walls. Vertical joints reveal a lean that horizontal joints hide, so if the framing is out we either shim and re-board it or steer you back to a horizontal layout — and we say which at the estimate.
Tiles fifteen inches or larger on a side. Fewer joints means less grout to clean and a calmer, more expensive-looking floor — which is why it dominates the newer builds west toward K-7.
The trade is that large tile is unforgiving of a substrate that is not flat. Lippage that would vanish on a four-inch tile is obvious on a twenty-four-inch one. We back-butter for full coverage, use levelling clips across the whole field, and level the floor first rather than trying to bury the problem in mortar.
Tile is not waterproof and grout never was. The assembly behind them is, and it fails in five predictable places. Here is each one, and what we do about it.
Almost every leaking shower we are called out to repair failed at one of these. None of them is exotic; all of them are skipped when a job is priced to be the cheapest quote in the stack.
A pan that is flat, or sloped only in the mortar above the liner, holds water against the substrate indefinitely. It never dries, and the first sign is a smell rather than a stain.
A pre-slope goes in under the waterproofing, so any water that gets past the tile still runs to the drain instead of sitting. The tile bed is then sloped again on top of it. Two slopes, not one.
Membrane that is simply rolled or troweled into a corner cracks there first, because every change of plane is where the building moves. It is the single most common leak we are asked to chase.
Pre-formed corners and reinforcing band bonded into every inside corner and every change of plane, including where the wall meets the pan and where the curb meets the wall. Not painted over — bedded in.
A niche is a hole cut into a wet wall. Built as an afterthought it is a shelf that collects water and a gap in the waterproofing at exactly the height where water runs down the wall.
The niche is waterproofed as its own sealed box, tied back into the wall membrane, and the sill is sloped so shampoo bottles drain rather than stand in a puddle.
Every valve, mixer and shower arm is a deliberate hole straight through the membrane. Mixing components from different waterproofing manufacturers voids the warranty on both, and most people never find out until it matters.
Each penetration sealed with the gaskets and sealant from the same system as the membrane, and we stay inside one manufacturer’s system for the whole shower so the warranty stays intact.
Water tracks along the top of a curb and finds the door jamb, then runs out onto the bathroom floor. The tile looks perfect and the subfloor outside the shower quietly rots.
The curb is wrapped on all three faces and pitched back into the shower, and the glass is set so the door sheds inward. Changes of plane get silicone, not grout, because grout cracks where things move.
Then we flood test it. The drain is plugged, the pan is filled, and it sits for twenty-four hours before a single tile goes on. A leak found on day two costs nothing. A leak found in year two costs a ceiling.
Book a Free EstimateNeither is anyone, until somebody pulls a piece and looks. That happens at the free estimate: we check the substrate, sound the floor for hollow spots, and tell you whether you have a grout problem, a movement problem or a water problem — before anyone quotes a number.
Five stages, one project lead, and a schedule set by cure times rather than optimism.
A project lead measures the space, sounds the existing floor for hollow spots, checks walls for plumb and square, and looks for what failed last time. Thirty to forty-five minutes, evenings and weekends available.
Pattern, tile size and grout colour decided together, then an itemised flat-rate quote within 24 hours. We calculate exact quantities including the waste factor for your chosen layout and tell you how much to buy.
Old tile out and hauled away, then the honest part: wet walls opened up, soft framing replaced, floors stiffened or levelled, and an uncoupling layer where a floor is going to keep moving.
Pre-slope, bonded membrane, reinforced corners, sealed penetrations and a waterproofed niche. Then the pan is plugged, filled and left for twenty-four hours before anything is tiled over it.
Back-buttered for full coverage, levelling clips across the field, grout and sealant given their cure time, silicone at every change of plane. Then a room-by-room walkthrough before the balance is due. See our full process.
Straight answers to the six that come up on nearly every estimate.
The detail behind the decisions that come up most often in Shawnee homes.
Tell us the room, the address and roughly what you have in mind. A project lead comes out, checks what is behind and beneath the tile, and sends an itemised flat-rate quote within 24 hours — with no obligation attached to any of it.
Waterproofing certified · Leak-free guarantee on every shower · 1-Year Workmanship Warranty
Shawnee population counts, housing unit total, land area and founding history: U.S. Census Bureau decennial censuses (2000, 2010, 2020) and city records. Permit exemptions for cosmetic interior remodelling, the work that does require a permit, and the adopted 2018 International Codes with the 2017 National Electrical Code effective July 1, 2019: City of Shawnee Building Permits and Inspections. Substrate flatness, movement accommodation and lippage guidance follows ANSI A108 standards and TCNA handbook practice. Waterproofing details follow the manufacturer instructions for the bonded membrane system used on each job. Per-square-foot pricing ranges: our own published pricing.