Every decade of American bathroom, all in one city.

In the older middle of the city — Mid-Wilshire, Koreatown, Hollywood, Silver Lake, Highland Park — a great deal of the housing is pre-war, and the bathrooms came with cast iron tubs and colored tile. Pink, mint, black and yellow tile from the twenties and thirties is everywhere, and in most cases it's in perfectly good condition. It just isn't the color anyone wants anymore. That's a refinishing job, not a demolition job.

Out in the San Fernando Valley the stock is largely post-war tract housing, which means porcelain over steel and four-inch square tile, usually in one alcove per bathroom.

And across the whole city there are more apartment units than houses. Turnover work is a large part of what refinishing exists for: it puts a unit back on the market without a permit, a dumpster or a plumber.