Bathroom specialists for aging in place, Sarasota and Manatee counties
About us
Tidewell started in 2003 as a two-person tile crew in Bradenton. We stopped taking kitchens in 2011 and never went back, because the things that go wrong in a bathroom are specific and expensive and you only stop guessing by doing it a thousand times.
Joaquin Restrepo set tile in Bradenton from 2003, mostly for general contractors working on whole-house jobs. The bathrooms kept coming back. Not his tile, but the rooms themselves: pans that had been sloped by eye, waterproofing that stopped an inch short, towel bars that somebody's mother had grabbed on the way down.
In 2011 he stopped taking anything but bathrooms. In 2014, after a customer's father fell in a shower Tidewell had just finished to a general contractor's drawing, he took the Certified Aging-in-Place Specialist course and rebuilt the company's whole specification around it. The blocking standard, the pull test, the DCOF requirement and the written assessment report all date from that year.
Today there are eleven of us. We finish somewhere between eight and twelve bathrooms a month across Sarasota and Manatee counties, we pull our own permits in both, and one lead carpenter stays with a job from the first zip wall to the final punch list. We are not the cheapest quote you will get and we are usually not the fastest. We are the one that can hand you a signed load-test sheet at the end.
A bathroom is the only room in the house where a person is naked, wet, alone and standing on a hard surface. It deserves more engineering than it usually gets.
Joaquin Restrepo, founderThese are not slogans. Each one costs us money regularly, which is how you know they are real.
Joaquin runs every assessment and he addresses the person who will use the bathroom, even when an adult child booked the call. It changes how the conversation goes, and it is the single most common thing families mention afterwards.
If the guest bath will never take a side transfer, we say so and suggest the money goes to the ensuite instead. We have talked more people out of walk-in tubs than into them, and our name has walk-in baths in it.
Grab bars pull-tested to 250 lbf with a gauge while you watch. Shower floors at DCOF 0.62. Light levels measured after dark. If we say something is safe, we can show you why.
The failure modes in a bathroom are specific and expensive: waterproofing, slope, blocking, ventilation, scald protection. Doing one room ten times a month for twenty-two years is how a crew stops guessing.
Six of the eleven. You will meet Harriet on the phone, Joaquin at the assessment, and then one lead carpenter every day of the build.
Founder and assessment specialist
Started as a tile setter in Bradenton in 2003 and has done nothing but bathrooms since 2011. Holds the CAPS certification and runs every free in-home assessment himself. Talks to the person who will use the room, not to the family member who booked the call.
Certified Aging-in-Place Specialist (CAPS)
Lead carpenter
Fourteen years framing and finishing. Dolores is the name most of our customers remember, because she is the one who is there from the first zip wall to the final punch list. Keeps the blocking photographs that let a future installer find lumber without a stud finder.
Lead carpenter, 14 years
Master plumber
Handles every drain relocation, linear trough and thermostatic valve on our jobs. Will not sign off a walk-in tub install without confirming the water heater can actually fill it, which has cost us several sales and saved several customers a cold bath.
FL Master Plumber #XXXXXXX (sample)
Tile and waterproofing
Floats every mud pan by hand and checks the fall with a 4 ft level in three directions before a membrane goes near it. Runs the 24 hour flood test and photographs it for your file. Has opinions about polished porcelain in bathrooms.
Certified waterproofing installer
Office and scheduling
Answers the phone, and it is a real phone. Pulls the permits, books the inspections, files condo association paperwork and keeps the current contact details for VA and Medicaid waiver desks so families do not have to find them alone.
Permits and association liaison
Electrical and lighting
Gets bathrooms to 50 to 75 footcandles at 3000K with a CRI above 90, which is roughly double what a builder leaves. Fits the night-path strips at 10 in and comes back after dark with a meter to prove the numbers.
FL Certified Electrical Contractor #XXXXXXX (sample)
Licence numbers on this demonstration site are placeholders. On a live site they would be the real ones, and you should always check them with the Florida DBPR.
The last thing on this page
Joaquin measures the room against every clearance, maps the studs so we know where blocking can go, and leaves a written report. If the honest answer is that your bathroom cannot do what you need, he will say so and the report is still yours.
We do bathrooms only. If you need a kitchen, an addition or whole-home work we will give you two names of people who do it properly.
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