How much to replace bath/shower combo

16 years ago

Our second bathroom has a bath shower combo. At least I think that's what you call it. It's one of those that has the fiberglass extend up the walls to above the showerhead. We hate it because it's ivory in an otherwise true white bathroom. We would love to replace it with a regular tub and tile the walls instead. I'm looking for ballpark figures on how much the labor for this would cost (I'm in NC). The room is just as wide as the tub. We could do the tiling ourselves, so I'm really just looking for an idea of ripping it out, putting in the new, and making the walls prep ready for tile.

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Comments (3)

thetews
16 years ago
Lucy - I can't give you any idea about the costs, but if you feel up to doing the tiling, there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to do the whole job. I did something similar all by myself in one of my first DIY jobs and it's not hard at all. Well, except that cutting a hole through a wall to slide the tub into the bathroom was very intimidating and my husband helped with that. Any basic bathroom remodel book (pick one up at Home Depot or Lowes) will show you the basic steps. And you can use a reciprcating saw to cut through the fiberglass unit. I just did that in my master bath this past Sunday, except that mine was a one piece molded fiberglass shower unit, and it was a hideous blue.

Good luck,
Alice
coolbeansw
16 years ago
Lucy, I just met with a GC yesterday to see about ripping the bath/shower combo out of my son's bathroom because it has a hole in the side of the tub. He said it would "cost a small fortune" because the unit would have to be hacked into pieces in order to get it out of the door. (Apparently these one-piece units are installed before the walls are even finished because of their size.) He recommended that we try to repair the hole instead.

I told a friend about this today and she said that she wanted to remove her combo tub shower because she hated the color, and was told the same thing -- that it would be cost-prohibitive to try to remove it. So she had it recolored! And is very happy with the result. Maybe you could look into that option.
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thetews
16 years ago
I do believe that a contractor would chage a small fortune for the job, but I don't know why exactly. It took an extremely small amount of time to remove the one piece fiberglass shower unit. First we removed the drywall from all around the edges of it. Then removed the few screws that were holding it in place. Then used a reciprocating saw to saw it into four pieces - three cuts. Each cut took a few minutes and each piece was light enough for me to carry down the stairs and out to husband's truck.

Coolbeans offers two reasonable suggestions, but if you still want to do the demo, I highly recommend doing it yourself.

With only a little help from my husband, who wasn't feeling well and was watching football, I gutted, down to the studs, my entire master bath, in about 5 hours. and that was taking my time. Of course taking out tile takes longer but we didn't have any in the bath, and it sounds like you don't either.

Alice - the eternal DIYer