Bathtub to shower conversion in Southeast Michigan
A bathtub to shower conversion is the most requested single change in a bathroom, and the one where two quotes for the same room can land far apart. The reason is under the floor. A tub drains through a small pipe at one end. A shower drains through a larger pipe, usually in the middle, and moving that connection is what separates a one-day liner job from a rebuilt shower. Wright’s converts tubs to showers across six Southeast Michigan counties, and this page explains what the work involves so you can read a quote line by line.
It is worth understanding before you call anyone, because the cheapest version of this project and the version that still looks right in fifteen years are two different jobs that happen to share a name. Our bathroom remodeling practice treats a conversion as a small remodel, with the same drawings, the same permits and the same line-item budget as a full room.
Who converts a tub, and why
Most of the people who ask for a tub to shower conversion have not taken a bath in years. The tub is a 30-inch wall they climb over twice a day, and the shower curtain never quite stays put. Others are planning ahead. A parent moving in, a knee that is not what it was, or a household that wants to stay in the house through retirement all point the same way: a shower you can walk into, and later roll into, with nothing to step over.
Small bathrooms are the third group. In a 5-by-8 hall bath in a Livonia ranch or a Plymouth colonial, the tub takes 15 square feet of a 40-square-foot room. Trading it for a shower with a glass panel makes the room read twice as large without moving a wall. Our small bathroom remodel guide covers the layout side of that decision in more detail.
Keep one tub in the house if you can
One piece of advice we give before any of the technical talk: if the house has more than one full bath, convert the one you use and leave a tub somewhere. Families with young children look for a tub when they buy, and so do people who soak. A house with no tub at all narrows the pool of buyers a little, and a guest bathroom is usually the right place to keep one.
If the house has one bathroom, the conversation is different and more personal. A curbless shower that a wheelchair can enter is worth more to some households than any resale argument, and we will build it that way without a second thought. Just make the choice knowing what it is.
What comes out and what goes in
Demolition takes the tub, the surround or tile, the old valve and usually the drywall behind the wet walls down to the studs. What we find there decides the next week. In houses built before the 1960s, that often means galvanized supply lines, a cast iron drain and framing that has been wet before. In a 1990s house it is usually clean, with copper or PEX and a drain that is easy to reach.
Then the new work goes in the same order every time. Drain and trap, then supply lines and the valve, then blocking in the walls for grab bars and a bench, then the pan or base, then waterproofing, then the walls, then glass and trim. The sequence matters because each layer covers the one before it, and the inspector wants to see the plumbing before the walls close. It is the same discipline we apply to bathroom tile and flooring work: the part you see is the last part we do.
The drain moves, and that is the part that sets the price
A standard tub drain sits at one end and is a 1.5-inch line. A shower drain sits where the pan needs it, usually centered or along the back wall for a linear drain, and code calls for a 2-inch line. So the drain is both relocated and upsized on nearly every conversion. How hard that is depends entirely on what is under the bathroom floor.
Over a basement or a crawl space, the plumber works from below and the job is a morning. Over a finished ceiling, the ceiling opens and gets patched, which adds drywall and paint downstairs. On a slab, the concrete gets cut, the line gets moved and the slab gets patched, which is the most expensive version and the one that shows up in ranches and condos across Canton and Westland. We look before we quote, and we tell you which of the three you have.
The valve moves too. Michigan code requires a pressure-balancing or thermostatic mixing valve on a new shower so a flushed toilet elsewhere in the house cannot scald you, and the old two-handle tub set almost never qualifies. Our shower valve replacement page explains the options, and a conversion is the natural moment to choose one.
Shower pans, walls and the waterproofing between them
You have two broad paths for the floor. A molded acrylic or solid-surface base arrives in one piece, sits in a bed of mortar and is the faster, lower-cost option. It comes in standard footprints that match a tub alcove, typically 60 inches long and 30 to 36 inches deep. A tiled pan is built in place over a sloped mortar bed and a waterproof membrane, takes longer, costs more and can be any shape or slope you want.
Walls follow the same fork. A three-piece surround snaps over cement board in a day. Tile goes over a sheet membrane or a liquid-applied one, with the corners and the niche detailed by hand. Either way, the waterproofing layer is the part that decides whether the wall behind the shower is dry in ten years. We do not tile over bare drywall or over greenboard, and we will say so if a previous installer did.
Details that are cheap during the build and expensive later go in now:
- Solid blocking behind the walls where grab bars will go, whether or not bars are installed today.
- A recessed niche at the right height, sloped so it drains, rather than a wire caddy hanging on the showerhead.
- A bench or a fold-down seat with the framing to carry it, positioned so the handheld reaches.
- A second showerhead rough-in, capped, if you think you will ever want one.
- A curb height and a door swing checked against the toilet and vanity before anything is set.
Curbless and low-threshold showers
A curbless shower has no step at all. The bathroom floor simply slopes toward the drain, usually a linear drain along the back wall, at a quarter inch per foot. Getting there means either recessing the subfloor between the joists or building up the rest of the bathroom floor to meet the shower, and which one we do depends on the joists, the ceiling below and where the door sits.
It is the right choice for anyone planning to age in place, and it is what we build in an accessible bathroom retrofit. It also looks the way the magazines look. The tradeoffs are real, though. Water travels farther, so the glass gets longer and the floor tile has to be small enough to follow the slope. A low-threshold base with a 1- or 2-inch curb gets most of the benefit for less floor work, and for a lot of households it is the better answer.
Glass, doors and the open shower question
A 60-inch alcove can take a sliding door, a hinged door with a fixed panel or a single fixed panel with an open end. Sliders keep water in and take no swing space. A hinged door needs clearance from the toilet, which is often the deciding fact in a hall bath. A single panel with an open walk-in end looks cleanest and needs the showerhead aimed away from the opening, or you mop every morning.
Frameless glass is tempered and heavy, and it hangs on hardware that has to hit blocking rather than tile alone. That is one more reason the framing plan comes first. If the glass is being replaced on an existing shower rather than a conversion, our shower door installation service handles that on its own.
Ventilation, outlets and the code items nobody asks about
A conversion is a permitted plumbing job whenever the drain or the valve moves, which is nearly always. The inspector will also look at the rest of the room, so a few things tend to come along for the ride. The exhaust fan gets sized for the room and ducted outside, not into the attic, because a walk-in shower puts more steam into the air than a tub ever did. Our bathroom exhaust fan page covers what that involves.
Receptacles near the water get GFCI protection if they do not have it. A licensed electrician does that work and pulls that permit; a licensed plumber does the drain and valve and pulls the plumbing permit. We schedule both, we coordinate the inspections and each shows up as its own line in the budget. The wider guide to bathroom lighting and ventilation explains why the fan and the fixtures are chosen together.
What a tub to shower conversion costs in this market
A tub to shower conversion sits below a full bathroom remodel and well above a liner. Where it lands inside that range comes down to four lines on the quote: what is under the floor, molded base or tiled pan, surround or tile on the walls, and glass. A slab cut, a tiled curbless floor and frameless glass are each a step up. A molded base, a surround and a slider are each a step down. Nothing else moves the number much.
For the full picture of where a bathroom budget goes in this region, including how a conversion compares to a whole-room remodel, read our bathroom remodel cost guide for Michigan. You get our number in writing as a line-item budget before any demolition, and you watch it in our design-build process as the job runs, with daily photo updates.
How long the work takes
A tub to shower conversion with a molded base, a surround and a slider, over a basement, is typically a week of working days including the plumbing inspection. A tiled shower runs closer to two weeks, because mortar and membrane and grout each need their cure time and the glass is measured only after the tile is set. Slab work or a curbless floor adds days at the front. Through all of it you have one bathroom out of service, so on a one-bath house we plan the sequence with you before the tub comes out.
This is interior work, and Michigan winters do not touch it. If you want the shower done before a parent moves in over the holidays or before a knee surgery, late summer and fall are the months to start the conversation, and the schedule is usually kinder than it is in spring.
A rebuilt shower versus a one-day liner
You have seen the ads for a shower in a day. Those systems fit a molded acrylic shell over or in place of the existing tub, cover the walls with matching panels and leave the drain and the valve where they are wherever possible. It is a real product and for some households it is the right one. It is not what this page describes, and it is not a service we sell.
The difference is what happens behind the panel. A rebuilt shower opens the wall, replaces the valve, moves and upsizes the drain, adds blocking and waterproofs the framing before anything decorative goes on. A liner covers what is there. If the wall behind your tub has been wet for twenty years, only one of those approaches finds out. Our tile shower rebuild page describes the same open-the-wall approach on an existing shower that has failed.
Questions homeowners ask about converting a tub
Can the new shower use the existing tub drain
Rarely, and we do not recommend it. The tub drain is undersized for a shower and sits in the wrong place for the slope. Some molded bases are made with an offset drain to line up with a tub location, which avoids the relocation but locks you into that base and that footprint. If the drain has to stay put for a reason we cannot change, we will say so and show you what that base looks like.
Will a walk-in shower work for a wheelchair
A curbless shower with a wide opening, a handheld on a slide bar, a fold-down seat and blocking for grab bars is built to be usable from a chair. We do not certify a residential bathroom as ADA compliant, because ADA is a standard for public buildings, but we design to its clearances when that is what a household needs. The ADA-style bathroom remodel package and our grab bar installation service cover the specifics.
Do you handle the tub removal in an older house
Yes, and a tub to shower conversion in an older house starts there. A cast iron tub in a 1940s Ann Arbor bungalow weighs several hundred pounds and comes out in pieces, carefully, with the floor and the door trim protected. We also know to expect plaster rather than drywall on the adjoining walls and to budget for patching it properly. Our historic home page explains how we work in houses of that age.
Can we add a second bathroom instead of converting this one
Sometimes that is the better move, especially in a one-bath house where losing the tub is a real loss. A half bath addition or a full bathroom addition costs more than a conversion and changes how the house lives. We are happy to price both in the same visit so you are comparing real numbers.
Conversions across Washtenaw, Wayne and Oakland counties
We convert tubs anywhere we remodel bathrooms: Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, where the houses are older and the surprises live behind plaster; Livonia, Canton and Dearborn, where slab ranches and 1950s baths are common; and Royal Oak, Troy and Birmingham, where the conversion is usually part of a larger primary suite. Livingston, Macomb and Monroe counties are in our service area too.
The house tells us most of what the quote will say. A mid-century ranch on a slab is a concrete cut. A two-story colonial with a finished family room below the bath is a ceiling patch. A bungalow with a Michigan basement is the easy one. If you know which you have, you already know more than most people do when they call.
Start your tub to shower conversion
Send us a photo of the bathroom, tell us what is under it and say whether anyone in the house needs to roll in rather than step in. That is enough for a first conversation and a realistic range. View our Portfolio to see finished bathrooms where the shower was once a tub, then Contact us now for a free quote or schedule an on-site consultation. You can also call (734) 540-0347 during business hours and talk to someone who has pulled a cast iron tub out of a second-floor bathroom.
