Converting the tub to a walk-in shower - anything to know?

Keep one tub in the house

Losing the last tub costs you buyers with small children, and that is a large slice of the market in Seminole County. If the house has two bathrooms, convert the primary and leave the hall bathroom alone.

The slab decides the budget

A tub drain and a shower drain are rarely in the same place. On a slab foundation, moving it means cutting and patching concrete, and that is a real line item rather than an afterthought. Price it before you choose the tile.

Get the pan right

• Slope: a quarter of an inch per foot, falling to the drain, across the whole pan.
• Waterproofing: a bonded membrane over the pan and at least the lower wall. Cement board on its own is not waterproof.
• Corners and the curb: the membrane laps up and over, because that is where water finds its way out.
• Niches in the wet wall, never in an exterior wall.

Curbless, if you can decide early

A curbless shower is the accessibility-proof choice and it looks better, but it needs the slab or subfloor recessed, which is a decision made at framing rather than at tiling. Decide it before demolition, not during.

If the wider plan is a parent moving in, aging-in-place modifications covers what else to do while the walls are open. For the overall cost, see what a bathroom remodel costs here.

The details that make it feel finished

• A bench or a foot ledge, decided before the waterproofing rather than after.
• A handheld on a slide bar as well as the fixed head.
• A linear drain if the tile is large format, because a centre drain needs four falls and large tiles do not like them.
• A door that opens without hitting the vanity, which is a plan decision, not a glass one.

None of these cost much when they are part of the design. All of them are expensive or impossible once the pan is poured and the walls are tiled.

Ventilation, which nobody quotes

A larger shower puts more moisture into the room. If the extractor is the original builder fan venting into the attic, or nowhere at all, the new tile will be the cleanest surface in a room that now grows mould in the corners.

Replace it with a fan sized for the room, ducted outside, and put it on a timer or a humidity sensor. It is a small line on the quote and it protects everything else on it.