There is a garden tub in a tiled deck under the window in a large share of the homes in Bonita Springs. It was standard in everything built here from the late eighties through the 2000s. It takes up roughly a third of the primary bath.
Ask a homeowner how often they use it and the answer is almost always the same. Twice. Once when they moved in, and once to see if they still felt the same way.
Two projects come out of that. One is pulling the tub and building a proper shower in its place. The other is a full primary bath remodel. Here is what each one runs and what you get.
Tub-to-shower conversion: $15,000 to $18,000
This is the highest-satisfaction project we do, dollar for dollar.
The deck tub comes out. In its place goes a large walk-in shower using the footprint you already had, which is why the conversion is efficient. You get new tile in the shower, a frameless glass enclosure, a proper bench or seat, new valves and fixtures, and a niche built into the wall rather than a plastic caddy hanging off the showerhead.
Where the number moves inside that range: the tile you pick and how high it runs, whether the glass is a standard panel or a custom configuration, whether you add a rain head or body sprays, and how much of the existing plumbing can stay where it is.
What you get out of it is a bathroom that feels twice as large, because the visual weight of the tub deck was doing more damage to the room than anyone realizes until it is gone.
Full master bath remodel: $30,000 to $45,000
A full remodel takes the room back further. Everything goes.
New tile on the floor and running up the walls. A new shower, usually frameless, often with the tile carried floor to ceiling. New vanities, and in most of these homes that means replacing a single long builder vanity with two proper ones or one furniture-style piece. New countertops, new mirrors, new lighting, new toilet, new hardware.
The changes that matter most in a Florida primary bath, in our experience:
- Tile to the ceiling in the shower. Stopping tile partway up is the single most dated detail in these bathrooms.
- Frameless glass. Framed enclosures chop the room into pieces. Frameless keeps the sightline and makes the space read as one room.
- Real lighting. One fixture over the mirror and a can in the shower is not a lighting plan. Sconces or vertical lighting at the mirror do more for how the room feels than any material choice.
- A freestanding tub, if you want a tub at all. It reads far better than a deck tub and takes up less floor. Plenty of clients skip it entirely and give the space to the shower.
Where you land in that range depends on the size of the room, the tile and stone you choose, whether the layout shifts, and how much glass and custom cabinetry is involved.
If you are thinking about resale
A dated primary bath is one of the first things a buyer reacts to in this market, and in the golf communities around Bonita Springs it is often the thing that separates two otherwise similar listings.
We are not going to pretend a bathroom pays for itself, because that depends on the house and the year and nobody can promise it. What we will say is that of the rooms in a Florida home, the primary bath and the kitchen are the two where dated finishes cost you the most attention from buyers.
What is not included
Moving plumbing is the variable that sits outside these ranges. If the shower is staying roughly where the tub was, the drain and supply work is contained. If you are relocating fixtures across the room, or the house is on a slab and the drain has to move, that is additional scope and we price it separately once we know what we are dealing with.
We look at that before you commit, not after.
Come see what your bath could be
Send photos of your primary bath and we will tell you which of these two projects fits, and roughly what yours would run. The conversation is free.
Premier Magnolia Homes · Bonita Springs, Naples & Southwest Florida · (239) 499-3496 · FL Certified Building Contractor CBC1267977
