In the newer subdivisions across Pleasant Grove, on the east side rising toward the Timpanogos foothills and the newer streets north near Grove Creek, the bathrooms have a very different problem than the ones in older housing. Nothing is broken. The drains run, the valve works, the tile is flat, and there is no water damage waiting behind a wall. What there is instead is a molded shower unit with a framed door, a frameless sheet of mirror glued above the vanity, a cultured top with an integrated bowl, flat slab doors, one light in the center of the ceiling, and floor tile selected specifically to offend nobody.
That makes the remodeling question fundamentally different. You are not repairing a failure or rescuing a room. You are asking what would make a functional room actually pleasant, which is a harder question because there is no obvious starting point. It also means you have more freedom, since you are not spending the project's first week undoing somebody else's water damage. The useful discipline is to be honest about which changes carry the room and which ones just spend effort, because in a builder bathroom it is very easy to change several things and still walk in feeling like nothing happened.
In rough order of impact, the shower comes first. Replacing a molded fiberglass unit with a tiled shower and a clear glass panel changes the way the room looks and the way it feels to stand in, more than any other single move. Light comes second, and it is chronically underrated. A pair of sconces or a fixture at roughly face height beside or above the mirror replaces the harsh downward shadow of a single ceiling can, and a properly sized exhaust fan ducted outdoors makes the room feel and smell different. The vanity and top come third, floors fourth, then paint and hardware.
It is just as useful to know what does not move the needle. Swapping a faucet by itself, hanging a new mirror on the same wall under the same bad lighting, or adding a strip of accent tile in a room that is still dim will not change how the room reads. Mixed metal finishes are fine, but pick one to lead and let the others support it. And if the fan is undersized or vented into the attic, which is common, fix that during the remodel regardless of what else you do, because it protects everything you are about to install.
One genuine advantage of a newer home is that the layout is usually sensible and the rough plumbing is where it should be. The vanity is on a wall that makes sense, the toilet is not in a strange corner, and the drains and vents were installed to current practice. Leaving those fixtures in place keeps the project shorter, keeps the scope predictable, and puts the effort into the surfaces you see and touch every day. In a small room, that matters, because small bathrooms carry a high labor-to-material ratio and every fixture you move multiplies the hours before anything visible improves.
There are still cases where moving something is worth it. Converting a rarely used drop-in tub in the primary bathroom into a larger shower is the most common, and the drains usually sit close enough to make it reasonable. Relocating a sink is moderate work. Moving a toilet is the hardest of the three, since the drain is larger and needs fall, so it is worth a real conversation before committing. One thing to expect: when a molded shower unit comes out, it rarely fits back through the door and gets cut apart in place, and the wall behind it will be bare framing.
It can be, as long as you are honest that you are buying a better room rather than fixing a problem. Because nothing has failed, the work is cleaner and more predictable than a remodel in an older house, and the schedule is easier to hold. Focus on the changes that carry the room, meaning the shower, the lighting, and the vanity, rather than spreading effort thinly across everything at once.
Yes, and it is one of the most common projects in newer homes. The unit is typically cut apart and removed in pieces, the framing is inspected, then a waterproof assembly, tile, and glass go in. The rest of the room can stay. Expect the wall behind the old unit to need work, and plan for the new shower floor height to meet the existing floor cleanly at the entry.
The shower, by a wide margin. Moving from a molded unit with a framed door to tile with a clear glass panel changes the scale, the light, and the daily experience of the room all at once. If the shower is already tiled, then lighting is the next largest change, since most builder bathrooms have a single ceiling fixture that flattens everything below it, including the person at the mirror.
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