In a $500 billion industry still dominated by clipboards and subcontractors, the most aggressive AI deployment isn’t happening in software or finance. It’s happening inside a central Pennsylvania company that helps you remodel your bathroom from your couch — and its founder is the first to admit the technology still thinks his EBITDA is measured in millimeters.
He’s still growing at 15% to 20% per year, and your remote remodeling habit has helped him build a quiet billion-dollar business. That, and it got him a seat on the board of his favorite Pennsylvania potato chip.
The engineer who turned bathrooms into an AI lab
B.J. Werzyn graduated from Penn State in 1999 aiming for a career in aerospace engineering, until upper-level calculus convinced him he wasn’t “genetically encoded” for a lifetime of abstract math. Instead, he took that engineering mindset — mapping systems, diagnosing problems, optimizing constraints — into an unglamorous corner of the real economy: home remodeling.
In 2006, after a stint helping his family’s window and door business expand into Florida during the housing boom, Werzyn moved back to Pennsylvania, walked into a Staples, and bought a phone, a desk, and a computer. That was the start of West Shore Home, a company built from day one around a simple promise: tear apart a bathroom, rebuild it in two or three days, and leave the homeowner with “fast, easy, convenient” service instead of the horror stories the industry is known for. Over time, he mapped and systematized every step — measurements, permitting, inventory, scheduling, install — and then began replacing the paper parts with software.
