Meet Ryan · The Shirtless Handyman
One guy.
Real materials.
Done right.
I'm not a franchise. I'm not a brokerage. I'm not 16 sub-contractors in a trenchcoat. I'm one craftsman in New Orleans who got tired of installing tile and started doing something better.
Ryan Mena
Founder · Craftsman · NOLA-born
I used to install tile.
I stopped.
Born and raised in New Orleans. I spent years installing tile bathrooms across the metro — Lakeview, Uptown, Metairie, Bywater. Good work, fair prices, happy customers. And then, like clockwork, ten years later I'd be walking the same client through their black grout lines, their peeling caulk, and the wet drywall hiding behind the shower.
It wasn't the tile failing. Tile lasts forever. It was everything between the tiles — the grout, the caulk, the substrate — losing a slow war with NOLA humidity. I started telling people honestly: tile is the wrong material for this climate. They'd ask what to use instead. I didn't have a real answer.
So I went and learned. I studied microcement systems from Spain and Italy. I learned authentic Moroccan tadelakt the way it's been done in hammams for 800 years. I built sculpted rockscape feature walls. I figured out which substrates work in old NOLA homes and which ones need to be torn out first.
Now this is all I do. Microcement. Tadelakt. Rockscape. Seamless. Period. One craftsman, real materials, your house treated like it's mine. No call center. No "we'll get someone out next week." You text me. I show up. We figure out what your space wants to become.
That's the whole pitch. Welcome to The Shirtless Handyman.
— Ryan Mena
How I work
Four things I will never compromise on.
One craftsman, one job
When you hire me, you get me. Not a sales rep, not a foreman, not a sub-sub-contractor. I show up, I run the install, I'm the one who texts you back at 9pm on a Tuesday.
I treat your house like mine
Drop cloths down before tools come in. Daily clean-up. Photos of every coat. The bathroom is sealed off so the rest of your house keeps living. That's just how it should be.
Born in NOLA, built for NOLA
I grew up here. I know what humidity does to grout. I know which slab foundations are tricky. I know why your great-aunt's bathroom in Carrollton still has the same tile from 1987 and exactly why it's failing now.
Real materials, real techniques
I source authentic European microcement systems (Topciment, Mortex), real Moroccan tadelakt lime, and Italian Marmorino. Not big-box knockoffs. The finish you see in the photo is the finish you get.
Tina in Uptown saved a tadelakt shower design
8 min ago