Remodeling a bath or kitchen in an older Alton house mostly comes down to what turns up when the wall comes open. Plan for that and the job goes fine. Skip it, and the surprise shows up on the invoice.
Alton Bay has been a resort for a long time. The railroad from Dover reached the Bay in 1851 and ran until 1935. Steamers have called there since 1872 — the Mount Washington still does. The camp meeting that became the Conference Center started in 1863. All of it brought people, and people needed somewhere to sleep, so a lot of what stands around the Bay is old summer cottage that’s been fixed, added onto, and fixed again.
The town’s water department puts it plainly: much of the original water pipe has been replaced, but some is still in use in the Alton Bay area. That’s out in the street. Inside the houses it’s the same story, smaller — copper in the newer bath, galvanized hiding in a wall, a drain somebody rerouted in a hurry when the kitchen moved.
Up in the village where Routes 11 and 140 meet there are older homes of a different kind, and the newer houses up the hills are a different job again. Easier, mostly. So when you call about a remodel, tell us roughly when the house was built if you know, and whether it started life as a camp.
If your Alton house started out as a summer cottage, assume there’s at least one run of old pipe in it somewhere. Finding it before the tile goes up is the cheap version.
Three things we look at before anybody orders tile. The supply first: any galvanized that’s left is usually narrowed inside with scale, and tying a new shower valve into it just moves the weak pressure somewhere new. Then the drains — old cottages often have runs with barely any pitch, and a new bathroom on top of a bad drain is a bad bathroom. Then venting. A lot of camps never had much, and that’s the gurgling sink you’ve lived with for years.
None of that means gutting the house. Usually it means replacing a short run back to good pipe, adding a vent, and re-pitching one drain while the floor is open anyway. Cheap at that moment. Not cheap once the new floor is down.
Small jobs too, naturally — a faucet, a toilet, new shut-offs on a sink nobody’s touched since it went in. And if the cottage still closes for winter, we set the new fixtures up so they drain completely in the fall. One thing worth knowing: New Hampshire requires a state plumbing license for contracted work, so ask anyone you hire to show theirs.
Fixture work in Alton — a faucet, a toilet, a fresh set of shut-offs — generally runs $200–$600 installed. Remodel rough-in, replacing a run of old galvanized, and new bathrooms are quoted per project once we’ve seen the plan and opened up enough to know what’s there. Call us at the sketch stage; moving a drain on paper costs nothing.
Possibly, but look inside first. In an older cottage the usual cause is galvanized pipe somewhere in the wall, narrowed by decades of scale. If the cold at the kitchen sink is strong and the shower is feeble, it’s almost always the house plumbing. We can find the run and replace just that section.
Usually, yes. The real questions are where the drain can go, whether it can get proper pitch, and how it vents. On a slab or a low crawlspace that takes planning. We’d rather see the camp before you settle on a layout — a bathroom on the wrong wall can double the plumbing cost.
For contracted plumbing work, yes. The state licenses plumbers through the Office of Professional Licensure and Certification, and whoever does your plumbing should hold that license. Permits and inspections vary with the job. It matters later, too — unpermitted plumbing can complicate a sale or an insurance claim.
It should. Every fixture we put in has to drain completely in the fall, so we think about low points, shut-off locations and how the water heater empties before anything is installed. A remodel that ignores closing day costs you a little every October for as long as you own the place.
We can’t give a fair number without seeing it. The plumbing share depends on whether fixtures stay put, what’s in the walls and how the drains run. Straight fixture swaps run $200–$600. Anything bigger gets quoted after a visit, and you’ll have the number before work starts.
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