A properly waterproofed large walk in shower with construction, labor, and frameless glass could eat upwards of 10k. My heated floor mat and remote thermostats only cost a grand in materials for a slightly smaller area, but the labor, floors need leveling and lots of prep prior to installing, was another grand. Tile for floor and shower was quite a few thousand in addition to the fore mentioned install costs.

So in those two desires alone you may spend over half your budget. Those will be your splurges. Good luck. I hope you are in a low cost area for your budget otherwise may not be realistic.

Think of different methods to fund this. A HELOC allows it to be tax deductible. Your wants would need to be pretty well gutted of any frills whatsoever in order to make that number.

Low cost materials won't significantly change the price of a bath renovation. Most of the costs are in the labor.

I wish I had done a shower base not to save money but because my first install needed to be redone due to issues such as pal alludes to! Pal for future reference what is the average labor cost for base installation? Also do the walls still need water proofing too?

The walls still need to be waterproofed, but instead of building a curb and sloping a bed or using preslopes and waterproofing and laying the tile properly and hoping you chose the proper tile that won't absorb water, etc, and so on...you are essentially installing a very shallow bathtub and waterproofing the walls like a three wall bathtub with shower.

I even had a shower pan custom fabricated out of Corian with upgraded fully coved edges, a corner for a stub wall cut out of one corner, and a slightly off center drain location and it was between $1000-$2000 in an upper price group color.

Probably a few hours labor in installation while it would have taken my tile guy at least a week to do a tile shower pan start to finish.

sorry to be a pest, how does one find custom corian bases. Is it the same fabricators as kitchen counter suppliers? My GC only knew of a fabricator in Boston, I am in ct, to recommend for the shower base and the lead time was long. Is that a typical issue or was my GC just not in the know?

With most counter shops eliminating solid surface from their offerings, custom solid surface anything is hard to find locally. It's far easier to find custom cultured marble. It's just not significantly cheaper in the end, and can wear worse. Depends on the user, and on who sets it. I've seen plimbers crack it around the drain by over tightening things.

I'd rather find the right contractor for a tiled pan if I were fling a shower. Or, skip custom anything and build to a standard sized cast iron shower base.

I'm planning a bath remodel right now and will probably do a cast iron pan. You can always add a bench area to it in order to visually stretch it more. I do know that I want Kerdi or Kerdiboard walls. No Redguard. And NO marble anywhere. At least that is the preliminary plan. It may change when I talk to my designer.

I am pretty lucky because there is a guy in the far suburbs here that does primarily Corian shower pans and bath vanities rather than kitchen fabrications. I found him through Googling.

But sure, I would use standard sized cast iron shower base in most bathrooms. This bathroom happened to be small and not amenable to stock sizes of cast iron pans.

laurarjones- If aging in place is a main concern you should make the barrier free shower a priority as it would cost a great deal to add down the road. Other fixtures are small ticket items that can be added but you want to plan your plumbing and electrical now. There are plenty of varied opinions here. I agree labor is a large portion as many trades are involved. There are prefabricated shower units available if you choose to not go custom. Choosing custom a properly constructed tile shower will give you the most flexibility for design & function. I use USG custom shower bases as they are approved for barrier free without cutting into joists and are a fraction of the cost of many other barrier free options. @ roarah - Syn-Mar in Ellington CT will make custom solid bases. Nice folks. @Mary Margaret - you should consider other systems for waterproofing. Foam boards that require washers are the sign of a weak board. USG & Laticrete foam boards are a couple to look at. Just one tile guys opinion.

I want at least a 4X5 shower and a 4' entrance in the event wheelchair access may be required. So will definitely consider using a shower base instead of having it built onsite. Pal mentioned one by Kohler any others that are worth considering? I live in San Antonio, and while I'm sure there are excellent fabricators here but they are hard to find and separate from those who claim to be good at their job.

There shouldn't be hardly any additional prep work for underfloor electric heat if your tiles are on the larger side.

There are many good shower bases. In San Antonio, I would get a custom cultured marble solid white one. They're surprisingly affordable.

But if you're in San Antonio, you'll need a biiiig hunk of your budget for foundation work associated with the zero threshold shower.

Large format tiles have a more stringent subfloor requirement not less. If you are on a slab the cost of barrier free will be substantial. Wood frame construction would not add a big cost providing your framing meets acceptable deflection standards. Finding someone with the knowledge would be key.

I am doing a roll-in shower with a solid-surface pan. You can get one fabricated to just about any size through Grifform Innovations in Oregon. They priced out a 36 x 60 trench drain Corian pan for me at $1827 in white with colored colors going up in 3 other color groups to $2205. Shipping to me in Michigan would be around $20.

I chose this Shower pan instead, from a company called Transolid. It is a solid-surface pan with a trench drain in the front. The regular drain is just behind the trench drain and they give you a piece of the solid surface material to cover it with (only the edges really need to be open to let the water in). In a very nice looking white Carrara Marble look, it runs $1020 before the 5% discount they are running. It is 37 3/4" x 63" before the walls go up, which will decrease the front-to-back depth to 37" and the width to 61 1/2."

They also have a wall system in White Carrara that has white lines embedded into the surface (though they are flat, no indentation) to imitate grout lines so that it looks like they are made with tiles. There are four shelves, too. The walls are made with solid -surface, too. I have a piece of it and it looks like the Corian or Swanstone samples I have sent for, 1/4, " stiff and solid with the color going all the way through the material. Their Carrara looks much better than the Ice and Tundra colors from Swan that was as close and they could get. (My previous choice for a roll-in solid surface pan was Swanstone, and was 34" deep before the 3/4" was subtracted for the wall)

Their walls come in two styles. If you want just a hand-held shower head on a bar, you can get their New Construction style set that has an aluminum mesh backer on the quarter-inch panels that stiffen the panels and allow you to have them mounted directly to the studs. If you are like me and need to drill for shower heads and shower valves and the on-off valves, then you need the Remodel style walls. The New Construction set can come with a dome that covers the ceiling, too and gives three LED lights inside the shower. The Remodel style does not have a dome but has and Extension that allows you to take the walls up to or near the ceiling.

Here is a link to see their New Construction version with Dome top.

The other nice thing about the New Construction version for the ADA shower pan is that it is ready for you to just drill through the outer surface of the shower through holes lined with metal ferrules for the installation of grab bars and the bar for the hand-held shower spray that they sell to go with it. You then just put 2x4 bracing in between the studs when you are preparing the walls before putting up the shower enclosure. Drill the wall material through the ferrules for any grab bars that you want to install.

I have been planning my bath remodel for four years. The first delay was due to my hubby wanting time to recover from our previous remodeling nightmare. It was supposed to just be building a wall of bookshelves and cabinets in the front room to make the living room into a den/music room/library. Jim and I discovered that the slab that this room was built on was sunken and cracked in two and that this was hidden under a false floor by the previous owner. We had to get a foundation repair company involved, then repour the slab, repaint and refloor the room. We had no front door all summer while all of this was going on. So I promised hubby no construction for three years!

In those years of planning, I looked at all of the possible solid premade shower pans. For the size you want, there are few choices. I am assuming that you want something better than the fiberglass ones that sometimes crack when not installed perfectly and that get dull and cheap looking fairly quickly. Kohler does not make one of their cast iron ones the size you want. 3 ' x 5' (or maybe 34" x 5') will be their largest, and none of them are wheelchair friendly.

From my research, I learned a few things to look for. Get either a cast iron or a solid-surface pan. A solid surface is one that has the color going all the way through, where there is no outer coating. This way, if there is ever any staining or scratching, you can use scouring powder and a green scotch brite pad to scrub the surface and buff out most stains or scratches. There are ways to sand out worse scratches. You can actually repair the surface like this because the surface is the same as the inside of the material.

You do not want to get a pan that has an outer finish on it as traditional marbleite does. You probably know the kind I mean, the one that looks dull after a few years and cannot be renewed. The acrylic ones have the same problem. If someone tries to sell you anything with a shiny finish, ask if the scotch brite and scouring powder method of renewing the surface can be used, if they say "No," then you know that this is not a solid-surface and that the shine is a temporary condition. The solid surface ones will not be shiny to begin with!

I understand your desire to have a nice big shower. I share it. I have to steal a foot of space from my second bedroom to get the shower size I chose and some maneuvering room in the bathroom. So I am settling for the 37" deep shower.

Pal, would you mind sharing the name of your shower pan fabricator? I'm in the Philadelphia suburbs.

I am not a professional in any sense, however we have just renovated two bathrooms, and 23K sounds very low. Depending on your choices, that amount of money may only cover materials. As for what to save/splurge -- the stuff that cannot easily be changed -- shower, floor -- those should be done the way you want them. Electrical should be done (floor heat, drawer receptacles) as that is not easy/impossible to go back and do later on. I can't think of anything that would be "easy" to go back and re-do later, except a toilet. Taking out a vanity/top/sinks to upgrade later on is still a mess... I do second Pal's comment about a solid shower base; Kohler and other brands make acrylic bases as well as cast iron ones. Creative Tile is right -- a correctly done tile job is great, but that's the $64K question -- there are so many folks on here with tile issues, I was not certain how to know if the GC has got a talented sub or not. And obviously anyone having a bad day -- well, for us, I just wanted the security of a solid base. Another consideration is a solid base, and even solid walls, can save a lot of material and labor costs vs. tile.

bfox254

John Kramer's Fabrications:

http://kramerfabrications.com/

A custom curb less shower would really be great for aging in place. Having used a wheelchair at times due to hip surgery I'd say go curbless or get a tub if you've got the upper body strength to lift yourself, otherwise someone's going to have to help you get in. You'd need to go tile for this, but it would be the best for an injury or limited mobility.

I'd splurge on your shower, sink and toilet since you'll be using those daily. I'd also splurge on tile and design. Make sure you really like it, and shop around for the tile since it really varies in price. Other things like a vanity with electrical connections is nice, but not necessary and no one will notice if you don't have it.

You could also leave bits in place to splurge elsewhere. For example, a marble shower will look great and be a focal point, and you could do grout able luxury vinyl plank flooring (warmer than tile, but not super delux).

Also, remember permits. They are expensive!

Actually Bee TW, you DON'T need tile to have a curbless shower, even a custom one. You can get them from the solid surface manufacturers I listed and Palimpsest listed. My entire shower pan, walls, and panels for the ceiling (with enough left over to cover my vanity) will cost me $3483. I am waiting for the contract for the builder for installation costs. Custom sizes might be $1500 to $3000 more, depending on the size. You can get 1/4" panels of Swanstone and Corian and many other solid surface materials to use as walls, molding to put over seams, cove molding to cover caulk in corners and you will see virtually no caulking, have no grout, be perfectly waterproof and last for many, many years.

That sounds expensive! We went with custom tile for $3k on the nose including materials, demo and installation from a licenced and bonded contractor. We did mosaic on the floor, and large format on the walls.

But I guess this gets back to the whole where to splurge argument ;) I like the variation of real stone and mosaic and think faux marble is a bit dated, so I went with tile. Real stone like travertine and marble may be cheaper but does have maintance requirments. Splurge on what you love and make sure you get samples!

Yes, BeeTW, you have it right on the nose, the lower maintenance requirements are the key for me. This quote was for a 38" x 63" roll-in shower with a trench drain, four shelves, full height walls with a ceiling also covered with material. The wall solid surface is inlaid with white lines in your choice of either 16" square or 8 x 16" subway style tile-look.

All grouted surfaces require maintenance that I am unable to provide.