Tile and stone, laid out before the first cut.

The layout, and it's decided before a single cut is made. Where the pattern centers. Whether you walk into a full tile or a two-inch sliver. Where the cuts land at the door, the niche, the curb and the ceiling. Whether the wall grid and the floor grid relate to each other or just happen to share a room.

Everything after that — the setting, the grout, the caulk line — is craft you can hire. The layout is judgment, it takes an hour on paper, and it is the single thing most installers skip. It is also completely unfixable afterward.

Yes — porcelain and natural stone, with the veining carried across the seam so the pattern continues instead of stopping. It requires slabs sequenced from the same block or run, a seam location decided deliberately rather than at the fabricator's convenience, and dry-layout before anything is set. It's one of the most dramatic things you can do in a bathroom and one of the easiest to get wrong.

Yes — electric mat or hydronic, designed with the tile layout and the floor buildup rather than added on top of a plan that didn't account for it. In Michigan it's one of the highest-satisfaction things you can put in a bathroom, and it's cheapest to include while the floor is already open.

Large-format fails when the substrate isn't flat enough or stiff enough for it, not because the tile is bad. Big tile is unforgiving of deflection and of a floor that's out of plane — which is exactly why it gets specified by people who don't then check the subfloor. We assess and correct the substrate first. If your floor can't carry it, you'll hear that at the estimate rather than after the third cracked tile.

Both. Full bathroom and kitchen renovations are most of our work, but we also take specialty tile and stone scopes — a shower rebuilt properly, a floor replaced, a backsplash, a fireplace surround, a commercial entry. We also sub out to general contractors and builders who want the tile scope handled by someone who will lay it out.