Bathroom Remodeling in Orleans, MA

Village antiques near Town Cove, Nauset Heights cottages, East Orleans farmhouses, Rock Harbor bayside houses — and a downtown that finally has sewer.

On Cape Kitchens has been remodeling bathrooms in Orleans for more than 30 years, working out of a design office and showroom at Unit #7, 4250 State Highway in North Eastham — about ten minutes up Route 6. Owner and designer Vern Hatt is a Massachusetts licensed and insured contractor (Construction Supervisor License #CS62739, Home Improvement Contractor License #177590) and runs every project personally, which means the person who drew your layout is the person who answers the phone when a vanity arrives damaged.

Orleans housing runs from Federal and Greek Revival houses along Route 6A and around Town Cove, through East Orleans farmhouses and the cottages of Nauset Heights, to bayside houses near Rock Harbor and post-war ranches through the middle of town. Almost none of them were built with the bathroom anyone wants now, and a good remodel starts by understanding which of those houses you have.

We take on as much or as little as the project calls for: a vanity and top supplied only, a single failing shower rebuilt properly, or a full gut with demolition, plumbing, electrical, waterproofing, tile, fixtures and finish carpentry. Orleans is close enough to the showroom that we can drop a sample by rather than describing it over the phone, which turns out to matter more than people expect.

The antiques around Town Cove and along 6A were finished long before anyone plumbed a house, and their bathrooms arrived later — fitted into a hall end, a stair landing, a borrowed slice of a back chamber, or a closet that seemed expendable. The rooms that resulted are small, frequently under forty square feet, with awkward ceiling heights and a door hung where the framing allowed rather than where it makes sense.

These rooms respond very well to a handful of decisions, and badly to being treated as though they were larger than they are:

• Move or re-hang the door. A pocket door, or simply reversing the swing, commonly frees six to nine square feet — more usable floor than any other single change in the room.
• Replace an unused tub with a tiled shower in the same footprint. The room gains apparent size and actual function at the same time.
• Choose a vanity that shows floor beneath it, wall-hung or on legs. Visible floor is what makes a small room read as a room.
• Recess what you can — medicine cabinets and shower niches taking their depth from inside the wall rather than protruding into it.
• Do not oversize the fixtures. Clearance is worth more than cabinet width in a room this size.

What is inside the walls is the other half of the job. Knob-and-tube wiring, plumbing added across three separate decades, an uninsulated exterior wall cavity, and framing never intended to hold a cast iron tub full of water are all routine in an Orleans antique. We would rather open it, look, and give you a number we can stand behind.

Orleans is one of the very few Lower Cape towns where the answer to "can we add a bathroom" now depends on which street you are on. The town built a downtown wastewater collection system, and properties within the served area connect to it rather than relying on a private Title V septic system.

If you are connected, the septic constraint that governs most Cape Cod projects simply is not your constraint. A different set of connection and capacity rules applies instead, and they are usually easier to live with.

If you are outside the served area — which still describes most of East Orleans, Nauset Heights, Rock Harbor and the outer roads — then Title V governs, and here is the nuance that trips people up: design flow is calculated on the number of bedrooms, not the number of bathrooms. Adding a second full bath to a three-bedroom house does not by itself change your septic calculation. Converting a den, a bonus room or a finished attic into a bedroom as part of the same project does.

We establish which side of that line you are on before we price the work. A septic upgrade discovered midway through a project is the most expensive surprise in Cape Cod remodeling.

Nothing separates one bathroom contractor from another as sharply as the work that gets buried, and nothing is harder for a homeowner to judge. New tile looks like new tile. Whether it was set over a real waterproof assembly or over something cheaper only becomes apparent three or four years later, from the ceiling below.

The assembly matters more than the tile does. We slope the pan correctly or set a pre-formed tray, bond a waterproof membrane over cement board rather than tiling onto greenboard, band every seam and inside corner, waterproof the curb and any niche as carefully as the open field, and select the setting material for the specific tile going on the wall. Porcelain, natural stone and mosaic each want different treatment and are not interchangeable.

Curbless and low-threshold showers are the most requested item in Orleans, and for good reason — they look better, they are far easier to clean, and they are the difference between a bathroom that works at fifty and one that still works at eighty. On a first floor over a crawl space or basement they are usually straightforward. On a second floor in an antique house it depends on the joist depth and direction, which is something we determine before promising it rather than after.

Vanity finishes photograph nothing like they look in a north-facing Orleans bathroom in November, and drawer hardware feels fine in a picture and cheap in your hand. We keep JSI vanities on display at the North Eastham showroom, ten minutes up Route 6, alongside U.S. Cabinet Depot and Forevermark, plus countertop samples, sinks, faucets and hardware. You can put a door sample against your tile, compare hinge and glide quality between price levels, and see the new Fall 2026 Haven Sage finish in daylight.

Consultations are free, whether at your Orleans home or at our showroom at Unit #7, 4250 State Highway in North Eastham, next to Ace Hardware. Bring photos and measurements if you have them; if you do not, we will take them.

Or send us an email to schedule  ·  Monday–Friday 8:00 AM–5:00 PM, Saturday by appointment