Tub-to-Shower Conversion FAQ

A tiled conversion in Miami-Dade generally runs $4,500 to $12,000. The low end is a shower that stays in the existing tub footprint with standard porcelain tile, the drain left where it is, sound walls, and a fixed glass panel. The high end is a larger custom shower with a bench, niches, upgraded fixtures, a linear drain, and frameless glass. That range covers demolition and haul-away, plumbing adjustment, backer board, a waterproofing membrane, a sloped shower pan, tile and tile labor, grout, fixtures, glass, the permit, and a final water test. If an estimate is missing several of those lines, it is describing a different scope rather than a better price.

Those numbers come from cost aggregators that average a wide mix of jobs under one label. They typically include tub removals with no replacement work, prefabricated insert installations into an alcove that was already prepared, tub reglazing, tub cuts, and labor-only quotes where the homeowner buys every material. Average those together and you get a figure in the low thousands that does not correspond to any complete project. None of them include a shower pan, waterproofing, tile, glass, permits, or disposal. If a quote you receive lands near those numbers, do not assume you found a deal. Ask which of the thirteen standard line items are included and which are missing.

Keep the drain where it is and simplify the glass. Those two decisions move more money than any tile choice, and neither one feels like a compromise in daily use. Relocating a drain in a slab home means opening concrete, rerouting the line, patching, and rebuilding the floor, which can add well over a thousand dollars on its own. Custom frameless enclosures are the other large line, and in a small bathroom a single fixed panel often works better anyway because it leaves the room feeling open. What we would not cut is the waterproofing, the pan build, or the permit. Those are the three places where saving now reliably costs more later, and all three disappear behind tile.

Not a useful one. A conversion is dominated by fixed costs that do not scale with area. Demolition, drain work, the pan build, the permit, and the glass cost roughly the same in a 30 square foot alcove as in a 40 square foot one. Only tile material and part of the tile labor track square footage. A cost-per-square-foot figure taken from a large custom shower will badly overprice a standard alcove, and one taken from a simple job will underprice anything with a bench, a curbless entry, or a relocated drain. Ask for the itemized breakdown instead. It takes two minutes to read and tells you what a single multiplier never can.

Five to eight working days for a same-footprint conversion with sound walls and materials already on site. Day one is protection, demolition, tub removal, and inspection. Day two is plumbing and backer board. Day three is the waterproofing membrane and the shower pan, which then need to cure. Day four is a water test and the start of wall tile. Days five and six finish the tile. Day seven is grout, fixtures, and cleanup. After that the grout cures before the shower sees water. Add days for a drain relocation, a custom tile pattern, a curbless entry, or a wall that opened up worse than expected.

Because it is measured against your finished walls, not against a drawing. Tiled walls are never perfectly plumb or square, and a frameless panel has almost no tolerance for error. The glass is templated after the tile and grout are complete, then sent to a fabricator to be cut, tempered, and edge-polished to those exact dimensions. Tempered glass cannot be trimmed after tempering, which is why nobody cuts it early. Your shower is usually usable before the glass arrives, and many homeowners run a temporary curtain during that gap. If a fixed date matters to you, ask whether the quote includes custom glass or a stock enclosure, because stock arrives immediately.

Yes, for the product it describes. A trained crew installing a molded acrylic panel system into a standard alcove can genuinely finish in a day. The problem is not the claim, it is the comparison. A one day install usually bonds panels to the existing wall surface. A tiled build removes the wall, inspects the framing, waterproofs, and builds a sloped pan on site, and cure times cannot be compressed. Both timelines are accurate for what they describe. Ask any company what happens between removing the tub and the first panel or tile going on, and the difference becomes obvious in about thirty seconds.

We stop, photograph it, and show you before anything gets covered. In homes built before 1990 the surround has usually never been opened, and we find staining, swollen substrate, or a soft bottom plate often enough that we plan for the possibility. Minor staining on sound framing is usually handled inside the normal scope. Structural repair or a rotted plate becomes a written change order with its own price before work continues. What matters more than the odds is that your scope says in writing what happens when it appears. A quote that has no answer for this question is the one to be careful with.

Usually yes, because the project changes plumbing. A tub drain is typically 1.5 inches and a shower drain is 2 inches under code, so even a conversion that keeps the exact footprint and never moves the drain laterally still involves a plumbing modification. Plumbing work is the category that triggers permit review in Miami-Dade. Permit fees for a project this size generally land in the low hundreds of dollars. The bigger cost is usually schedule rather than fees. Permitting it properly protects the sale of your home later, protects you if there is ever a water claim, and puts a second set of eyes on the work before it is closed behind tile.

No. HB 803 exempts cosmetic work under $7,500 on single-family homes from building permit requirements, and it explicitly does not apply when work touches plumbing, electrical, structure, gas, or HVAC. A tub-to-shower conversion changes plumbing every time because of the drain size difference. The exemption also does not apply to homes in flood hazard zones, which covers a meaningful portion of Miami-Dade. HB 803 is genuinely useful for paint, flooring, cabinets, countertops, and same-spot fixture swaps. This project is simply not in that category, and treating it as though it were creates a problem that surfaces at closing.

Yes, and it is a separate process from the building permit. Your city or county issues the permit based on code. Your condo or HOA board approves the work based on your community governing documents, which are a private contract among owners. Neither one satisfies the other. In practice the association review usually has to come first, because many buildings will not grant access, reserve an elevator, or schedule a riser shutdown until they have approved the scope, and some require a copy of the issued permit before releasing access. Read your Declaration, By-Laws, and rules before ordering materials, and submit the architectural change request early. Review timelines run from a few days to several weeks.

You inherit it, and it typically surfaces when you sell, refinance, or file an insurance claim. A municipal lien search can reveal an open permit, or none at all where plumbing work clearly happened, and a buyer inspection may flag a shower that does not match county records. Resolving it usually means applying for an after-the-fact permit, which can require opening finished walls so an inspector can verify what is behind them. That is expensive on a shower that is already tiled. If you are buying a Miami home with a converted bathroom, ask for the permit record during your inspection period rather than after closing.

Almost always, and it is usually the best decision for the budget. Standard alcove tubs measure 60 inches long by 30 or 32 inches deep, and that is exactly the most common rectangular shower size. Staying in that footprint avoids relocating the drain, which in a slab home is one of the more expensive line items because it means opening concrete, rerouting the line, patching, and rebuilding the floor. Staying in the footprint also keeps the bathroom reversible for a future owner who may want a tub back. Code requires a minimum interior of 30 by 30 inches and 900 square inches, so a 60 by 30 alcove is well above the minimum.

They are different products, not better and worse versions of one. Acrylic gives you speed, a seamless non-porous surface, and no grout to maintain, and it is a reasonable choice when the walls are known to be sound, the bathroom is a rental, or you cannot lose the room for a week. Tile gives you a wall somebody actually inspected, waterproofing built for your specific geometry, any size or layout you want, and a shower that can be repaired in one spot instead of replaced as a unit. The risk with panel systems is not the acrylic. It is covering a wall without looking behind it first, which seals moisture in where it cannot dry.

No, and this is the most common misunderstanding in bathroom remodeling. Grout is not the waterproofing layer. It is a filler between tiles, and water passes through it by design. The layer that stops water is the membrane underneath the tile, applied over cement backer board and worked into every corner, seam, and change of plane. A properly built tiled shower with a correct membrane does not leak. A tiled shower built without one will leak no matter how perfect the grout looks. When people say tile showers leak, they are almost always describing a shower where the waterproofing was skipped or done badly. That is a workmanship problem, not a material problem.

A fixed panel works when the opening and the shower depth can contain the water, and it is the lower cost option by a wide margin. It also leaves a small bathroom feeling more open and gives you less hardware to clean, which matters in Miami where hard water spotting shows up fast. A door makes more sense when the vanity or toilet sits close to the shower, or when you want to keep heat in. The deciding factor is not looks, it is whether your floor stays dry after a normal shower. Decide before tile begins, because the enclosure is measured from finished surfaces and the layout affects the slope.

A low curb is almost always possible and it is the option we recommend most often. It looks current, it makes entry easier, and it does not read as a medical modification. A fully curbless entry depends on what is under your floor. Most Miami homes sit on concrete slabs, and a truly zero-threshold shower needs enough depth to build the slope and set the drain, which sometimes means recessing the slab or building the bathroom floor up slightly. That is a decision made at the pan stage, not later, so raise it on the first visit. We will tell you honestly whether your floor allows it or whether a low curb is the better result.

It depends on one thing: whether the house keeps another tub. If it does, converting usually does not hurt value and frequently helps, with a published return around 60 to 70 percent of cost and broader appeal to buyers over 50. The negative case is specific. Removing the last tub in a three-bedroom-or-larger home in a family neighborhood narrows your buyer pool, because families with young children often filter listings for a tub before they ever see photos of your shower. For most Miami homes with two bathrooms, the best answer is to convert the primary and leave the tub in the guest bathroom.

Generally yes, and this is the one situation where the resale math stops mattering. Stepping over a tub wall is one of the more common ways people fall at home. A low curb or curbless entry removes that motion. What makes a shower genuinely safer is the combination: a low entry, a slip-resistant floor tile, a seat at a usable height, a handheld sprayer on a slide bar, and grab bars anchored into blocking installed behind the wall. That blocking has to go in during construction, so decide early even if you install the bars later. It costs almost nothing at that stage and it makes the bathroom easy to adapt.

Original Medicare does not cover home modifications like a walk-in shower. Some Medicare Advantage plans include supplemental home safety benefits, so it is worth checking your specific plan documents. Florida Medicaid waiver programs sometimes cover home modifications as an environmental accessibility adaptation, and eligibility depends on the program and your circumstances. Veterans may qualify through VA SAH, SHA, or HISA grants. USDA rural repair grants exist for low-income seniors in qualifying rural areas, which excludes most of Miami-Dade. We are a remodeling company and not benefits advisors, so start with your plan administrator or the Florida Department of Elder Affairs rather than with us.

Yes. We work in English and Spanish across Miami-Dade, and the estimate form, the guides, and the project updates are all available in both. If Spanish is the language your household plans in, use the Spanish version of the site and we will keep the whole project in Spanish, including the written scope and the change orders. That matters more than it sounds. Most of the confusion in this trade comes from a scope somebody agreed to without fully reading it.