This is the most common request we hear. A tub nobody has taken a bath in for years sits in the corner while everyone showers standing up in it, stepping over a wall that gets harder to clear every year. Replacing it with a real shower is usually the right call. It is also not a swap, no matter how it gets advertised, and understanding why saves you from the quote that sounds too easy.
A tub drain and a shower drain do not sit in the same place, and they do not sit at the same height. A tub drains at one end of the unit; a shower drains from the field of a sloped pan. That means the floor gets opened, the drain is relocated and set at the right elevation, and the pan is built so every part of it falls toward that drain. The walls come out too, because a shower surround has to be waterproofed as one continuous system.
Two things drive a conversion more than anything else: how far the drain has to travel and how much tile the new enclosure needs. Staying inside the old tub alcove keeps both contained. Going wider, going curbless, or adding a bench, a niche, and small-format tile pushes labor up quickly, because every one of those is more cuts, more corners, and more detailing in the waterproofing. Glass is its own line and depends on whether you want a single panel or a full enclosure. And whatever the floor shows once the tub is gone, soft subfloor or aging galvanized supply, gets handled before the pan is built.
No. The drain sits in a different place and at a different height, the pan has to be built and sloped, and the surround has to be waterproofed as a full shower rather than a splash zone. Anyone describing it as a straight swap is describing a different project than the one you are buying.
That depends on your house rather than on a rule. Many homes have a second tub in the hall bath, which makes converting the primary shower an easy call. If the tub coming out is the last one in the house, it is worth thinking about who lives there next before the plumbing changes, since putting one back is its own project.
Sometimes. A curbless entry needs the shower floor recessed into the framing so the slope has somewhere to go, and whether that is possible depends on your joists and what sits below the bathroom. It is a question for the contractor standing in the room, and far easier to answer before demo than after.
Longer than the tub being gone. The room is unusable from demo until the pan is built, waterproofed, tiled, grouted, and the fixtures are set, and mortar, grout, and sealants each need their own cure before water touches them. Ask for the sequence rather than a single number, and plan around the tiling stage.
Down to studs and subfloor, then back up in the right order. This is the version where demo tells you things: soft plywood at the toilet flange, galvanized supply lines, a vent fan that never moved much air.
Learn more →Tile is what you see. The waterproofing layer under it is what decides whether the wall stays dry, and it is the easiest place on the job to save a few hours and cause a failure nobody finds for years.
Learn more →Some of this is a swap: same footprint, same rough plumbing, new fixture. Some of it moves pipe inside a wall or under the floor, which is a different job with a different level of disruption.
Learn more →Curbless entries, blocking in the walls for grab bars, room to turn around, and a shower you can walk into. Easier to plan while the walls are open than to retrofit after something changes in your household.
Learn more →Which bathroom it is, and whether anything needs to move. That is enough to begin.
