Bathroom remodeling contractors on Long Beach Island and in Barnegat, NJ
Full bathroom remodels, tub-to-shower conversions, tile and vanity work. We open the wall and look at what is behind it before we put a price on the job — because that is the part that decides the price.
(609) 622-5647Free estimates.
10 years on the tools — and the person who walks your bathroom is the person who tiles it.
Long Beach Island and mainland Ocean County. Beach Haven, Ship Bottom, Surf City, Harvey Cedars, Barnegat Light, Brant Beach, Loveladies, Holgate, Beach Haven Terrace, Barnegat, Manahawkin, Stafford Township, Waretown, Forked River, Tuckerton, Little Egg Harbor, Toms River — and everywhere in between.
Alex Vega, owner. Vega Construction LLC, Barnegat, New Jersey.
The contractor you are actually hiring
Alex Vega owns Vega Construction and is on the job himself — ten years in the trade, based in Barnegat and working the island and the mainland around it.
Vega Construction is a small crew, and on a bathroom that matters more than it does anywhere else in the house. A bathroom is four trades stacked in the smallest room you own — framing, waterproofing, tile and finish carpentry, one on top of the other, each one covering the last one up. When those are four different companies on four different schedules, the gaps between them are where the problems get buried.
Here it is the same people from demolition to the last piece of trim. Nobody is covering up somebody else’s work, because there is nobody else.
Out on the island there is a second layer. These bathrooms live in salt air and, in a rental house, get a season of use in ten weeks. Ventilation that is merely adequate inland is not adequate here, and a shower pan that was built to pass rather than to last shows up as a stain on a ceiling downstairs two summers later.
Registered as a home improvement contractor with the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs, and insured. The registration number is at the bottom of this page and you can check it yourself in about thirty seconds.
What we do on bathrooms
From a tired guest bath to taking the room back to the studs.
Full bathroom remodels
We take the room apart, repair what is behind it, and put it back together properly. Layout stays or changes depending on what you want and what the room allows — and we tell you which of the two your plan is before you sign, because it is the biggest thing in the price.
Tub-to-shower conversions
We take the tub out and build a real tiled shower in its place — not a liner set over what was already there. Curbed or low-threshold, glass or not, with the pan built on site. Usually the single most requested change we do out here.
Tile and waterproofing
We tile floors, walls, shower pans, niches and benches, and we do the waterproofing underneath ourselves. That layer is the part you will never see and the only part that decides whether the tile lasts — so it is itemised in the quote rather than assumed.
Vanities, tops and storage
We fit stock and semi-custom vanities, and build to size when the wall is odd. In an older beach house the wall is rarely square, so we measure before you order — a cabinet that fits the drawing does not always fit the room.
Subfloor and framing repair
Soft floor at the toilet, a spongy spot by the tub, joists that have been wet for years. We repair it as part of the job rather than stopping for another trade, and we price it in advance as a possibility — so if it turns up it is already agreed instead of a phone call on day three.
Trim, doors and paint in the room
We finish the room: casing, base, a door that closes properly in a space that gets humid, and the paint. Same crew, so the last ten percent actually gets done instead of waiting on somebody else’s calendar.
What is behind the tile decides the price
The most expensive part of a bathroom is almost never the part you picked out. It is the part nobody quoted.
A bathroom quote is easy to write while everything is still covered up. Tile, vanity, fixtures, labor — those are all things you can count from the doorway. What nobody can count from the doorway is the condition of the floor under the toilet, the framing around the tub, or whether the last shower pan has been leaking slowly into the joists.
That is where the difference between two prices usually lives. Not in the tile. In whether the person quoting it expects to find something, and has told you what happens when they do.
Here is what we do instead. We tell you before you sign what the job is if the room is sound, what it becomes if it is not, and how each of those gets priced. So the number can still move — but it moves for a reason you already knew about, in an amount you already agreed to, instead of arriving as a phone call on day three.
On this island the odds are not neutral. Houses that sit closed and humid for months, bathrooms that run hard for a season, and decades of salt air mean the wall usually has a story. We would rather you hear it from us in the estimate than from a stain on a ceiling next year.
What that looks like on our quote: one line for the bathroom as we expect to find it, and a separate line for the repair if demolition shows it — priced now, at a number you agreed to, not negotiated while your bathroom is open.
What we look for before quoting
- Flex or softness in the floor at the toilet and tub
- Grout and caulk that keeps cracking in the same joint
- Staining on the ceiling of the room below
- Tile that sounds hollow when tapped
- A fan that is quiet because it is not moving air
- Where the water actually goes when the shower runs
Do you need a permit? In New Jersey the line is the pipe
People ask this on nearly every estimate, and the honest answer is more useful than a yes or a no.
New Jersey sorts work on a house into a few buckets. The two that matter for a bathroom are ordinary maintenance, which needs no permit at all, and minor work, which needs a permit but lets the work start once the town has been notified.
The state’s own wording is what makes the line clear. A fixture — a toilet, a sink, a tub — may be replaced with a similar fixture “no change in the piping arrangement.” Replace a vanity where the old one stood and the drain does not move, and you are in ordinary maintenance. Move that vanity to the opposite wall, or add a fixture that was not there, and you are not.
The same logic runs through the rest of the room. Replacing flooring is ordinary maintenance. So is redoing interior finishes below a threshold measured against the whole dwelling. Altering the room itself — changing what is where — is renovation, and renovation is where permits live.
Why this matters to your budget. Two bathrooms that look identical when finished can be very different jobs, and the difference is usually whether anything moved. Keeping the layout is not a compromise — for a lot of bathrooms it is simply the cheaper version of the same result, and it is worth knowing that before you fall in love with a floor plan.
When a job does need a permit, that is a normal part of the work and we handle it as part of the job, not as a surprise.
Where the line falls
- New vanity, same spot, drain does not move — no permit
- New toilet in the same place — no permit
- New tile, new flooring, new paint — no permit
- A fixture that was not there before — permit
- Moving the shower, sink or toilet — permit
- Changing the room’s layout or framing — permit
Your town’s construction office has the final word on any individual job.
If you rent the house out
A rental bathroom does not age like a family one. It ages like ten of them.
A bathroom in a summer rental takes a whole year of use between June and Labor Day, from people who are not being careful with it. Showers run back to back. The fan runs rarely. Wet towels and wet floors are constant for ten weeks and then the house sits closed and damp until spring.
What that does is predictable. Grout goes first, then caulk, then the spot where the caulk was holding water back. By the time a guest mentions it in a review, the wall behind it has been wet for a while.
Which is why the searching happens in January. The people who own these houses look for a bathroom contractor in the dead of winter, not in July — because the room has to be finished, dry and photographed before the first booking. A bathroom started in spring is a bathroom you are still worrying about in June.
We schedule accordingly. Off-season work gets planned around your booking calendar, and we would rather tell you in November that a job needs six weeks than find out with you in April.
Bring us your first booking date at the estimate. We work backwards from it, give you a start date in writing, and tell you honestly if the job does not fit the window rather than starting something that will run into your season.
What matters in a rental bath
- A fan that clears the room fast, ducted outside
- Surfaces that clean quickly between turnovers
- Fewer grout joints in the places that see the most water
- Fixtures that survive guests, not just owners
- Doors and hardware that do not need explaining
- Work finished before the season, not during it
Tub out, shower in
The most requested change in this area, and the one with the widest gap between two ways of doing it.
There are two ways to turn a tub into a shower. One is to set new surfaces over the existing ones — fast, tidy, and finished in a day or two. The other is to remove what is there, look at the wall and the floor behind it, build the pan, waterproof it and tile it.
The first is genuinely the right answer sometimes: a sound bathroom that just looks dated, where nothing behind the surface has ever given trouble. The problem is that it is offered as the answer for every bathroom, including the ones where the surface is not the problem.
Because whatever is behind the old tub is still behind the new one. If a pan has been leaking, covering it does not stop it — it removes the evidence and keeps the water. On a house near the water, with a bathroom that has run hard for fifteen summers, that is not a small gamble.
We do the second kind. That means a few more days and a real look at what we find. It also means that when it is done, the part that fails first in a bathroom has been rebuilt rather than hidden.
If you are weighing the two: tell us at the estimate and we will price the rebuild for your bathroom specifically, so you are comparing a real number against the one-day quote rather than a general argument.
Worth deciding early
- Whether the drain stays where it is
- Curb or low threshold at the entry
- Glass, half-wall, or open
- A bench, a niche, or neither
- Whether any bathroom in the house keeps a tub
- How the room will be used in ten years
How the job goes
Step 1
We come and look at the room
Free, on your schedule. We check the floor, the ceiling below, the fan and the joints that keep failing — not just the finishes you already want to change.
Step 2
Scope and price in writing
What is included, what is not, whether the layout moves, whether a permit is involved, and exactly what happens if demolition turns something up.
Step 3
Selections and schedule
You choose the finishes. We tell you what each choice means for lead time, and we set dates around your calendar — which on a rental means around your bookings.
Step 4
We build it
Demolition, any repair we find, waterproofing, tile, then the finish work. Same crew throughout, and the room is left usable at the end of each day wherever it can be.
Coming out to look at the bathroom is free and there is no obligation after. Call (609) 622-5647, or send three photos — the room, the shower or tub, and the ceiling below it — and we will tell you what kind of job you are looking at.
Why two bathroom quotes can differ by thousands
If you are holding two very different numbers for the same room, it is usually one of these six things — and none of them is the tile.
- What happens after demolition. One quote assumes the wall is sound and goes up if it is not. The other has already priced the likely repair. The first looks cheaper on paper and often is not.
- Whether anything moves. Keeping the plumbing where it is can be the single biggest difference between two prices for the same finished look.
- Surface work versus rebuilt work. Covering existing surfaces and rebuilding them behind are not the same job, even when the photos look alike.
- What is in the waterproofing. This is invisible when finished, impossible to compare from a photo, and the thing that decides whether the room lasts ten years or two.
- Who is actually doing it. One crew from start to finish, or four subcontractors whose schedules have to line up before yours can.
- What the quote does not say. Disposal, protecting the rest of the house, the fan, the permit, the last bead of caulk. Anything unlisted is a conversation you will have later.
Ask any contractor you are considering — including us — to put the answers to those six in writing. A quote you can compare is worth more than a quote that is low.
Where we work
Based in Barnegat and working the island and the mainland around it.
Long Beach Island
Beach Haven, Ship Bottom, Surf City, Harvey Cedars, Barnegat Light, Brant Beach, Beach Haven Crest, North Beach, Loveladies, Holgate, Beach Haven Terrace, Spray Beach, Haven Beach
Southern Ocean County
Barnegat, Manahawkin, Stafford Township, Waretown, Ocean Acres, Tuckerton, Little Egg Harbor, West Creek, Mystic Island
Northern Ocean County
Forked River, Lacey Township, Toms River, Beachwood, Island Heights, Bayville, Seaside Heights, Seaside Park
Questions people ask us
The ones that come up on nearly every estimate.
How much should a bathroom remodel cost in New Jersey?
Any number given before seeing the room is a guess, and the guesses you find online are averaged across the whole state. What actually sets your price is the size of the room, whether anything moves, what the finishes are, and what turns up once the old work comes out.
We will come and look at it for free, and you will get a written scope you can hold next to anybody else’s.
Can I renovate a bathroom for a small budget?
Sometimes, and the way to do it is to keep everything where it is. A bathroom that keeps its layout, reuses what is sound and changes what you see is a genuinely different project from one that moves the shower to the other wall.
Tell us the number you have in mind on the first visit. We would rather tell you honestly what it does and does not buy than write a quote that has to grow later.
What is the most expensive part of remodeling a bathroom?
Two things, and neither is the tile. Moving plumbing is the first — it changes the scope of the job and usually brings a permit with it. The second is whatever is found behind the old work: a soft subfloor, wet framing, a shower pan that has been leaking.
The first one you decide. The second one the house decides, which is why we tell you before you sign what happens if we find it.
Do I need a permit to remodel a bathroom in New Jersey?
It depends on whether anything moves. New Jersey treats replacing a fixture with a similar one as ordinary maintenance, as long as there is no change in the piping arrangement — no permit needed. New flooring and new finishes fall the same way.
Add a fixture that was not there, move one, or alter the room itself, and it becomes work that needs a permit. When your job needs one, we handle it as part of the job. Your town’s construction office has the final say on any individual project.
What should I avoid when renovating a bathroom?
Three things, in order. Accepting a price that has not accounted for what might be behind the wall. Skimping on the waterproofing and the fan, because those are invisible when finished and decisive afterwards. And covering old work instead of dealing with it.
The fourth, quieter one is starting a bathroom in a rental house in April.
How long will my bathroom be out of service?
It depends on the scope, and we will give you a date range in writing rather than a slogan. A surface-level job is short. A full rebuild with tile is not, because waterproofing and tile both need time to cure and rushing either one is how a bathroom fails early.
If it is the only bathroom in the house, tell us at the estimate. That changes how we sequence the work.
Can you do it in one day?
No, and we would rather explain why than promise it. A one-day bathroom means new surfaces installed over the existing ones. That is a real product and for some bathrooms it is a reasonable choice.
But it leaves whatever is behind the old surface exactly where it was. In a house this close to the water, in a bathroom that has run hard for years, that is usually the part worth dealing with.
Do you only do the whole bathroom, or smaller jobs too?
Both. A full remodel, or a single change — new tile, a new vanity, a tub taken out and a shower built in its place. Tell us what is bothering you about the room and we will tell you what it would take to fix just that.
Can you work while the house is rented?
We would rather not, and neither would you. A bathroom under construction is not something a guest should be next to, and the work goes faster and cleaner in an empty house.
The owners out here book this work for the off-season for exactly that reason. If you are planning a bathroom for next summer, the time to talk about it is the winter before it.
Do you handle the rest of the house too?
¿Hablan español?
Yes. Hablamos español. Call, text or send photos in either language and you will get an answer in the same one.
What a bathroom with us includes
So you know what you are buying before you ask for a number.
A free visit, no obligation
We come out, look at the room, the ceiling below it and the joints that keep failing, and tell you what it needs. If photos answer it, that is free too and we will say so rather than booking a visit we do not need.
An itemised written scope
What is included, what is not, whether the layout moves, whether a permit is involved, and exactly what happens if demolition turns something up. Hold it next to anybody else’s quote and you will see where the two differ.
The waterproofing as a line, not an assumption
The layer under the tile is written into the quote rather than left implied — because it is invisible when finished, impossible to compare from a photo, and the thing that decides whether the room lasts.
Dates that work around your season
Start and finish dates in writing, planned backwards from your first booking if the house is rented. One crew from demolition to the last bead of caulk.
Permits handled when needed
If your job crosses the line into work that needs one, we tell you before you sign and we handle it as part of the job — not as a surprise once the wall is open.
One person to call, in either language
The same number from the estimate to a year later. English or Spanish, and whoever answers has been in your bathroom.
What our clients say
A bathroom is the job people are most nervous about handing over. This is how it went for the last ones.
Straight from our Google profile
Not selected, not edited. These are the reviews on our Google Business Profile, shown here as they were written.
Send a photo of the bathroom
One of the whole room, one of the shower or tub, and one of the ceiling in the room below it. That is usually enough for us to tell you what kind of job you are looking at.
Vega Construction LLC · New Jersey Home Improvement Contractor · Barnegat, NJ · Serving Long Beach Island and Ocean County