Four things turn up in almost every 1970s split-level bathroom we open in Kent: asbestos under the floor, galvanized supply lines, aluminum branch wiring, and one overloaded wet wall doing the work of three. None of them stop a bathroom remodel. All four cost less to plan for than to discover on demo day.
Why the same bathroom keeps showing up in Kent
Split-levels and tri-levels went up across Kent through the 1970s, and the builders working East Hill, West Hill, and Panther Lake reused a short list of floor plans. The main bathroom almost always landed in the same place: upstairs off the hall, stacked over the kitchen or the garage, sharing a wall with the second bedroom. Same 5-foot tub alcove, same 30-inch vanity, same single window over the tub.
That repetition works in your favor. We have already opened this wall, in this plan, on this street. It also means the surprises repeat. Four of them come up often enough that we now price for them before the first estimate goes out, which is the difference between a change order and a line item you already approved.
If you are earlier in the process than that, start with our bathroom remodeling in Kent, WA page for scope, timeline, and what a full remodel runs here.
Problem 1: what is under the vinyl floor
Pull the toilet in a 1970s Kent bathroom and you rarely find one floor. You find three. Someone laid peel-and-stick over the original sheet vinyl in 1994, then someone else floated a thin layer and put down 12-inch ceramic in 2007. The bottom layer is the one that matters. Sheet vinyl from that era often has a paper felt backing with asbestos in it, and the black mastic holding it down can contain asbestos too. Same goes for 9-inch floor tile, which is a reliable tell on its own, since 9-inch tile was almost always asbestos-containing.
None of this is dangerous while it sits there intact. It becomes a problem the moment a demo bar goes through it.
Washington does not leave this to the contractor’s judgment. Any renovation that disturbs suspect material requires an asbestos survey first, and the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency enforces that across King County. You can read the requirements on the agency’s asbestos page. Two things worth knowing before you call anyone:
- The survey has to be done by an AHERA-certified building inspector, not by your contractor. Firm Remodeling is a licensed remodeling contractor, not an abatement contractor, and we do not pretend otherwise.
- If the sample comes back positive and the material has to come out, a certified asbestos abatement contractor removes it and files the notification. Then we start demo.
Sampling a bathroom floor is cheap and fast. Testing costs a few hundred dollars and adds a few days at the front of the schedule, when nothing is torn up and nobody is inconvenienced. Finding out on demo day means the crew stops, the containment comes down, and your bathroom sits open while you wait on a lab and an abatement schedule.
We test before we bid on any Kent bathroom built before 1985. Every time, no exceptions, and we tell you what the lab said.
Problem 2: galvanized pipe that looks fine from the outside
The homeowner complaint that tips us off is almost always the same. Someone flushes downstairs and the upstairs shower goes cold, or the shower has never had good pressure and three plumbers have shrugged at it.
Galvanized steel supply pipe corrodes from the inside. A three-quarter-inch line can silt down to something closer to a pencil after fifty years, and nothing about the outside of the pipe shows it. We cut a section out, hold it up, and the homeowner can see daylight through a hole the size of a drinking straw. That is the part people remember from demo day.
What we usually find in a Kent split-level is a mix. The main line was swapped for copper at some point, but the branch feeding the upstairs bathroom never got touched because it runs inside a finished wall nobody wanted to open. Your remodel opens that wall anyway.
Repiping the bathroom branch while the wall is already off is inexpensive relative to the rest of the job. Doing it later means cutting into new tile and new drywall you just paid for. We quote it as an option on the original estimate rather than springing it on you in week four, and the honest advice is to take it. A bathroom with a new tile shower fed by seventy-year-old steel is a bathroom you will be unhappy with in five years.
One caveat we will not skip: replacing the branch fixes the branch. If the rest of the house is still galvanized, the pressure improves but it does not become a new house. We will tell you where the remaining old pipe is and roughly what a whole-house repipe would cost, and then you decide.
Problem 3: the wiring behind the vanity
Two separate issues turn up here, and they often turn up together.
The first is aluminum branch wiring. Copper prices spiked in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and a lot of houses built in that window got aluminum on the 15 and 20 amp branch circuits. Aluminum expands and contracts more than copper as it heats and cools, so connections at outlets, switches, and wire nuts work themselves loose over decades. Loose connections in a damp room with a hair dryer plugged into them are worth taking seriously. The fix is not ripping the house apart. Approved connectors at every device in the bathroom, installed by a licensed electrician, handle it.
The second is simpler. A 1970s bathroom was wired before GFCI protection was required at bathroom receptacles, and plenty of them still have the original ungrounded two-prong outlet next to the sink. Many also share a single circuit with the hall and a bedroom, which is why the breaker trips when someone runs a space heater while you dry your hair.
Once you pull a permit for a bathroom remodel in Kent, this stops being optional. The inspector will want GFCI protection, proper grounding, and the fan on a circuit that can carry it. That is not the inspector being difficult. It is the single cheapest safety upgrade in the whole project, and the wall is already open.
We run this as a fixed line item: dedicated circuit, GFCI protection, new devices, and a light and fan layout that matches the new plan. If your fan is the original builder unit venting into the attic, read our piece on bathroom ventilation in Kent’s climate before you pick a replacement, because the 50 CFM unit that came with the house was undersized when it was new.
Problem 4: one wet wall doing three jobs
This is the one that changes your floor plan, so it is the one worth understanding before you fall in love with a layout.
In most 1970s Kent split-levels, the upstairs bathroom sits directly above the kitchen, and both of them drain into the same stack running through one 2×4 wall. That wall carries the toilet drain, the vent, the hot and cold supply for the bathroom, and often the kitchen sink drain from the floor below. It is packed. The framing around it has usually been notched more than it should have been, sometimes to the point where the studs are doing very little.
When a homeowner asks to move the toilet four feet to open up the room, that is the wall we have to talk about. Moving a toilet means moving the drain, and moving the drain in a split-level means either opening the kitchen ceiling below or re-venting through the roof. Both are doable. Neither is free, and the kitchen ceiling option means drywall, texture, and paint in a room you were not planning to touch.
Keeping the toilet and the vanity on the existing wet wall while changing everything else is the move that saves the most money in these houses. You can still gut the room, re-tile, replace the tub with a shower, and change the vanity and the lighting. You just leave the drain where the builder put it.
When the layout really does need to change, we open the kitchen ceiling on purpose rather than by accident, price the repair into the original estimate, and sequence it so the kitchen is out of commission for days rather than weeks. Two related pieces cover the ground next to this one: what happens when the floor joists say no to a curbless shower, and how to survive a Kent home remodel when two rooms are open at once.
What the four add to the budget
A full bathroom remodel in Kent generally runs 6 to 8 weeks from demo to walkthrough. The findings below do not usually change that number much, because most of the work happens inside walls that are already open. What they change is the total.
| Finding | Who does the work | Typical added cost | Added days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asbestos survey, negative result | AHERA-certified inspector | $300 to $600 | 3 to 5, before demo |
| Asbestos found, floor abated | Certified abatement contractor | $1,500 to $4,000 | 5 to 10 |
| Galvanized branch repiped to PEX or copper | Licensed plumber | $1,800 to $4,500 | 1 to 2 |
| Aluminum wiring pigtailed, GFCI circuit added | Licensed electrician | $900 to $2,500 | 1 to 2 |
| Toilet relocated off the existing wet wall | Plumber plus our crew | $3,000 to $8,000 | 4 to 7 |
Those ranges reflect South King County pricing for a standard hall bath. A larger primary bathroom, a tight crawl space, or a stack that has to be re-vented through the roof pushes toward the top of each range. Your written estimate names the actual number for your house, not a range.
For whole-project context rather than line items, see what a master bath remodel actually costs in Renton vs Kent vs Bellevue.
How we price what we cannot see yet
Nobody can quote a closed wall with certainty. What a contractor can do is tell you which unknowns exist, price them as named options, and put the trigger in writing so you know in advance what turns an option into a cost.
On a 1970s Kent split-level, our written estimate arrives within three business days of the walkthrough and lists the four findings above as separate lines with their own numbers. If the lab comes back clean, the abatement line disappears and you never pay it. If the wall opens and the galvanized branch is worse than expected, you already approved the repipe number before demo started.
Four questions worth asking any contractor bidding one of these houses:
- Are you testing the floor before demo, and who is doing the sampling?
- Is the electrical scope priced for GFCI and a dedicated circuit, or is it assumed the existing wiring passes?
- If the toilet moves, whose ceiling gets opened and who pays to close it?
- Do you sub out the tile? Ask this one even though it is not on the list above. It is where most bathroom jobs go sideways.
We pull our own permits with the City of Kent and King County, we bring our own tile setter rather than subbing that work out, and you get one project manager with a cell number you can actually use. Firm Remodeling LLC is licensed in Washington, LIC# FIRMRRL783PU, bonded, and insured. Our shop is at 26424 233rd Ave SE in Maple Valley, about fifteen minutes from downtown Kent, and we work Kent, Covington, Black Diamond, Ravensdale, Hobart, Renton, Issaquah, Enumclaw, Auburn, and Federal Way.
If your house is a 1970s split-level on East Hill, West Hill, or Panther Lake, call (206) 773-8264 or request a free in-home estimate. Bring the floor plan if you have it. We can usually tell you over the phone which of the four you are looking at.
You can see finished bathrooms from these houses in our project gallery, and if you want the full pre-demo checklist, we wrote a guide to preparing for a bathroom remodel in Kent.
