A bath that has seen sixty years of Holiday Park mornings, one shower for a house of five, a step that gets higher every year. In Plum, every new pipe is drawn for the county first, and our carpenters build around that plan.
Plum Bathrooms
The 1960s built a quarter of the borough's homes, three in four are sized for a family, and in nearly four of ten households someone has turned 65. Those numbers point to six bathroom projects.
Construction in Holiday Park started in 1959, and 2,809 Plum homes date from the decade that followed. A bath that came with one of those can hold on to its original wall tile, tub and the steel or cast-iron drains behind them.
We open the walls and floor, swap aging supply and waste pipe for new, and rebuild any subfloor softened around the toilet or tub. Then the shower walls get a membrane before tile, so the next sixty years go better.
Old pipes and soft subfloorsMore than 1,500 Plum households are one person past 65. For someone living alone, climbing over a tub wall onto a wet floor is the riskiest moment of an ordinary morning, and the one most worth designing out of the house.
A shower you enter at floor level takes the tub's place, with wall blocking for grab bars, a built-in or folding seat, a hand shower and slip-resistant tile. Brighter light by the vanity and the door finishes the room.
Tub-to-shower conversionsThree-quarters of Plum's houses are three- or four-bedroom homes, and children live in three households of ten. If all of them share one full bath upstairs, the line at its door every school morning is the problem a second bath solves.
We find room in a closet, a bedroom corner or above the garage, draw the new fixtures into the county plumbing plan, and frame, plumb and tile the room once the plan is approved. The inspector sees it before walls close.
Adding a bathroomRoughly 2,100 Plum households rent, and each change of residents brings a borough occupancy permit, issued after an inspection. A worn rental bathroom has to be ready before that visit, not patched the week of it.
We fit the bath into the gap between leases, leave fixtures and pipes to a licensed master plumber, the county's rule for rentals, and choose finishes that hold up to hard use. The county's final inspection closes before the new tenant arrives.
Bathroom cost rangesOn Plum's hillside lots, a lower level can sit half underground on the uphill side. When it turns into the family's TV room, a bathroom comes next, and that uphill wall raises the water and radon questions first.
We test for radon, check the uphill wall and the grading above it, and fix the water before framing. Where the new drain falls under the sewer line, an ejector pump raises the waste, and the shower walls get a full membrane behind the tile.
Basement bathroomsLogans Ferry Heights went up around 1920 as a mine's company town. After a hundred years and many owners, a bathroom there may have been redone in pieces: a fixture here, a patch there, new pipe joined to old.
We plan for floors that have settled, walls that are not plumb and drain lines from several decades, and price those repairs before you choose tile. New framing is shimmed level so the shower pan drains the way it should.
Full bathroom remodelsFigures: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 2020–2024, Plum Borough. Plumbing rules and fees: Allegheny County Health Department. Neighborhood history: Tribune-Review.
The rest of the job
How it runs, what it costs and who builds it are on our main bathroom remodeling page.
A Bathroom in Plum
Borough permits don't change when the room is a bath. Two things set a Plum bathroom apart: the county's plumbing plan, drawn fixture by fixture, and the radon readings recorded below grade in the 15239.
BoroughStructural and occupancy permits
Structural permits, plus the occupancy permit that follows each new owner or resident come from the borough's office on Mike Thomas Way. Our Plum kitchen page covers both, plus the ZIP codes that hide a Plum address. A bath changes none of it, and the filing is ours.
Plum rules, explained$22County fee per fixture
Before any pipe moves, the Health Department must approve a plan naming each fixture being added or changed, drawn with its location and materials. A plan for up to five fixtures is $80, and each fixture is $22. Inspections follow the work, ending in a required final.
Allegheny County plumbing permits (opens in a new tab)32%15239 tests reaching the action level
The 15239 ZIP lies entirely in Plum, and of its 4,947 radon tests in the state's registry, 1,593 came in at 4 pCi/L or higher. Since a downstairs bath is a room you use daily, the reading should come before the framing does, and a high one means mitigation first.
PA DEP: Radon in the Home (opens in a new tab)Bathroom Questions
Five questions from Plum homeowners and landlords before the old bath comes out. For the usual sequence of a job, see the bathroom service.
Ask a QuestionIt follows how much plumbing changes. New surfaces over the existing layout cost least. Each step past that, a shower where the tub stood, an extra bath upstairs, a bath downstairs on a pump, adds cost and county fees. The written price follows our look at the room, and the bathroom service shows where most jobs fall.
Bathroom cost rangesYes, a lighter kind. Allegheny County's fee schedule lists a fixture replacement card, $27, covering water heaters and fixtures swapped in place, instead of a full plumbing plan. New fixtures or moved pipes go on a plan. Either way, the Health Department expects to know about the work.
Allegheny County plumbing permits (opens in a new tab)Not in Allegheny County. Its Health Department limits a landlord's own plumbing work to the home the landlord lives in; inside a rental unit, any repair or change goes to a master plumber. On the rental bathrooms we remodel, every fixture and pipe is handled that way.
A second visit carries a $75 re-inspection fee on the county's schedule, and it can push the finish back while you wait for a slot. We keep the plumbing ready for each visit as the work proceeds, so the final inspection passes the first time and the room can close up.
How a bathroom job runsFor a same-footprint remodel, usually a few weeks, with the county's approval of the plan arranged before demo so nothing waits on paper. Adding a second bath leaves your existing one in use until the end. We give you a day-by-day order with the estimate.
How a bathroom job runsOther Services
Plum owners also ask us for kitchens with room to work, decks on the slope and dry finished lower levels. Open any service below.
Kitchen RemodelingNew layouts, new cabinets, new counters: framed, built, and installed by the same crew.View Service
Attic FinishingUnused attics framed into bedrooms and offices: subfloor, insulation, drywall, and a proper stair.View Service
Basement FinishingUnfinished basements turned into real rooms: framed, insulated, drywalled, and finished by our crew.View Service
Additions & ADUsAdditions and accessory dwelling units (ADUs), framed from the ground up and tied in clean.View Service
Windows & Exterior DoorsWindows and exterior doors set, flashed, and trimmed so water stays out of the wall.View Service
Exterior Restoration & Structural RepairsRotted trim and siding, sagging joists, failed sills: opened up and repaired to solid wood.View Service
Decks & Covered PatiosDecks, covered patios and three-season rooms, flashed to the house and built for Westmoreland winters.View ServiceVerified Google Reviews
5.0 out of 5 · 17 reviews
Written by the homeowners we've worked for across Westmoreland County. Every one verified on Google, every one pulled from the real feed.
Get in Touch
Tell us about the project in the form or give us a call. Either way, estimates are free and the number is the number — priced to the actual work, written down before anyone swings a hammer.
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Trafford, PA 15085
