The 60-inch alcove is the most common tub opening in American houses, and it is why quotes for what looks like the same job come back anywhere from $3,000 to $15,000. Most of that spread is not tile and it is not fixtures. It is whether the new shower drain lands where the old tub drain already sits, and whether the floor underneath is wood joists or a concrete slab. This guide prices the three routes a contractor will actually offer you around that one question, and says plainly which parts of the job you should not attempt yourself.
The Three Routes, Priced
Almost every tub-to-shower quote is one of three jobs wearing different names. A one-day acrylic or PVC wall system keeps your existing footprint and bonds a moulded base and wall panels over what is already there. A prefab conversion by a general contractor strips the alcove back to studs and sets a stock base and surround. A tile rebuild strips it back and builds a waterproofed pan and tiled walls from scratch. A curbless conversion is the tile rebuild plus structural work on the floor.
The ranges below are installed prices for a standard 60 x 30-inch alcove with the plumbing wall staying where it is. Add the drain figures from the next section on top, because almost no quote includes them until someone has actually looked under the tub. We list the drain relocation separately rather than folding it into the base range because most quotes leave it out until someone looks under the tub, and how we handle add-on costs like this is covered in How We Estimate.
| Route | Typical Cost | Time |
|---|---|---|
| One-day acrylic or PVC wall system (Bath Fitter, Re-Bath, Jacuzzi Bath Remodel and similar) | $3,000–$9,500 | 1-2 days |
| Prefab base and surround, general contractor | $2,000–$6,000 | 2-4 days |
| Tile walls over a built and waterproofed pan | $6,000–$12,000 | 5-10 working days |
| Curbless / barrier-free tile conversion | $8,000–$15,000+ | 7-14 working days |
- Labor is 40-50% of the total on every route except the one-day systems, which price as a package.
- Residential plumbers run about $80–$130 an hour in 2026, and master plumbers $120–$200. Tile setters run $50–$150, with most independents at $65–$90.
- A tile shower in a 60 x 30 alcove tiled to about seven feet is roughly 90-110 square feet of wall and floor. At $16–$20 per square foot installed, that alone is $1,500–$2,200 before anything else happens.
- Every route above assumes the existing wet wall stays put. Moving the valve and supply lines to a different wall adds $700 or more on its own.
The Drain Is the Fork. Everything Else Is Trim.
A standard 60-inch alcove tub drains at one end, a couple of inches in from the finished end wall. A center-drain shower base wants its drain roughly 30 inches away, in the middle of the footprint. That is the entire problem. Nothing else in this project has a swing of three thousand dollars attached to a decision nobody explains to you.
There are two ways out of it. The first is to not move the drain: prefab and moulded bases are sold in end-drain and offset-drain versions specifically so they can land on an existing tub trap, and the one-day systems are built around exactly this. The second is to move it, which means opening the floor. On a joisted floor that usually means working from the ceiling below or cutting out a section of subfloor, re-running the trap arm, and re-tying the vent. On a slab it means saw-cutting the concrete, trenching, re-running the line, patching, and waiting for the patch to cure.
Ask for the drain position to be priced as a separate line before you sign anything. A contractor who has not lifted the tub or looked in the basement is guessing, and the guess is nearly always low.
One thing the alcove has going for it: size is not a problem. The IRC requires a shower compartment to have at least 900 square inches of interior area and no dimension under 30 inches, with an access opening at least 22 inches wide. A 60 by 30 footprint is 1,800 square inches, double the minimum. Whatever else this project argues about, it will not be whether the shower is big enough.
| Drain Situation | What It Involves | Added Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Offset or end-drain base, existing trap reused | New tailpiece and connection, no floor opened | $0–$400 |
| Move drain, joisted floor | Cut subfloor or open ceiling below, re-run trap arm and vent | $800–$1,500 |
| Move drain, concrete slab | Saw-cut, trench, re-run, patch, cure | $1,500–$3,500 |
| Concrete cutting priced on its own | Saw work only | $15–$25 per linear foot, plus $500–$1,000 trenching and patching |
| New or relocated shower valve | Open the wet wall, set mixer, test | $700–$1,200 |
| Relocating supply lines to a different wall | Re-run hot and cold, re-vent if the stack moves | $700+ |
- A tub drains through a 1-1/2 inch trap. A shower usually does not, and which code your town adopted decides whether that matters.
- Under the IRC, Table P3201.7 sets fixture trap sizes and permits 1-1/2 inches for a shower with a single head flowing 5.7 gpm or less. Multiple heads push you to 2 inches and up.
- Under the Uniform Plumbing Code, used across much of the West, Section 408.4 requires a 2-inch waste outlet and tailpiece for a shower. It carries an exception written for this exact job: where a 2-inch waste is not readily available and the authority having jurisdiction approves, an existing tub being replaced by a shower may keep 1-1/2 inch if a single 2.5 gpm head is installed.
- That exception is worth asking about by name. It is the difference between a connection and an excavation, and it is granted by your inspector, not your contractor.
The One-Day Conversion: What It Buys and What It Leaves Behind
The in-home sales pitch is real and so is the speed. These systems work because they change nothing structural: the base is moulded to sit on the existing subfloor over the existing drain, and the acrylic or PVC walls bond over the existing tile or surround. No demolition means no surprises, no permit in most cases, and no second trip. Expect $3,000–$9,500 for a tub-to-shower conversion depending on size, wall height and accessories, with the low end reserved for a plain alcove and a basic surround.
Two things about this route are consistently undersold. The first is that bonding new walls over old ones seals in whatever is behind them. A 30-year-old tub surround that has been leaking quietly at the corners has rot or mould behind it, and a panel system hides it rather than finding it. Ask for a moisture-meter reading on the wall before the panels go up, and get the written answer to what happens, and what it costs, if they open the wall and find rot. Get that answer before the same-day discount expires.
The second is the threshold. These bases still have a curb, usually several inches tall. That is a step-in shower, which is a genuine safety improvement over climbing over a 15-inch tub wall, but it is not barrier-free and it will not be. If the reason for this project is that someone in the house is starting to have trouble with a step, this route does not get you where you are going.
- Priced as a package, so the drain question is already answered: they are not moving it.
- Financing at 0% is standard on these sales. The written price without the promotional terms attached is the number to compare against a contractor bid.
- Wall panels over existing tile need that tile to be sound, flat, dry and mould-free. Loose or hollow-sounding tile is a reason to strip, not to cover.
The Tile Rebuild, Line by Line
This is the route where the price is built from parts rather than quoted as a package, so it is the one worth reading as a list. The figures below are what each piece typically adds in 2026 for a 60 x 30 alcove. The two lines that most often blow a budget are the ones you cannot price until the tub is out: framing and backer repair behind a surround that has been wet for years, and the drain work from the previous section.
Glass deserves its own warning. The frameless premium is mostly glass thickness and custom hardware rather than labor, and frameless panels are measured after the tile is finished, not before. That means a second trip and commonly two to three weeks of lead time, during which you own a finished shower with no door on it. Budget a shower curtain and a tension rod for the gap, and ask for the glass lead time in writing at the same time as the price.
| Line Item | Typical Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Tub removal and disposal | $300–$1,200 | Cast iron is at the top of the range |
| Framing and backer repair after demo | $200–$1,500 | Unknowable until the wall is open |
| Drain and trap work | $0–$3,500 | See the table above; this is the real variable |
| Shower valve, supplied and installed | $700–$1,200 | Pressure-balancing or thermostatic |
| Waterproofing membrane, installed | $700–$2,000 | Sheet membrane runs about $4.50–$5.50 per sq ft installed |
| Tile, supplied and set | $7–$25 per sq ft | $16–$20 is the typical installed rate |
| Framed glass door | $400–$1,200 | 1/4 inch glass |
| Semi-frameless door | $500–$1,550 | |
| Frameless, stock sizes | $1,200–$3,000 | 3/8 to 1/2 inch glass |
| Frameless, custom | $3,000–$5,000 | Measured after tile; add 2-3 weeks |
| Grab bar, installed | $150–$500 each | Needs blocking, see below |
| Fold-down seat, installed | $300–$800 | |
| Handheld showerhead on a slide bar | $100–$300 | |
| Permit | $50–$500 typical | Higher in large cities |
- Grab bars are not a drywall-anchor job. The accessibility standard behind them, ICC A117.1, requires the bar, its fasteners and the supporting structure to take 250 pounds applied at any point in any direction, and no drywall anchor realistically delivers that. Blocking goes in while the wall is open, which is why bars are cheap to plan for now and expensive to add later.
- Put blocking in for bars you do not want yet. It costs a few dollars of lumber during demo and saves opening a tiled wall in ten years.
- Ask to see the waterproofing membrane before it is covered. It is the only part of this job that is invisible afterwards and catastrophic when wrong.
Going Curbless, and Why It Costs Structural Money
A curbless or zero-threshold shower costs roughly $8,000–$15,000 in a standard alcove, which is a premium of about $2,000–$5,000 over the same shower with a curb. The premium is not for the look. A shower floor has to slope to its drain, and a curbless shower floor has to do that while finishing flush with the bathroom floor outside it. The only place that slope can come from is below, so the structure under the shower has to drop.
On a joisted floor that is a framing question, not a tiling one. The IRC limits notching hard: a notch in the top or bottom of a sawn joist can be no deeper than one sixth of the joist depth, cannot sit in the middle third of the span, and engineered I-joists and LVL cannot be notched at all except where the manufacturer or a designer specifically allows it. A shower tray typically needs three quarters of an inch to an inch and a half of drop, and it usually sits right in the middle of the span, which is exactly where the code says you cannot cut. So the compliant answers are re-framing, a purpose-made recessing bracket system that carries a lowered subfloor panel between untouched joists, or raising the surrounding floor instead. "Just notch the joists" is generally not one of them. On a slab you are back to saw-cutting, and the recess and the drain relocation get done in the same cut.
This is also where a linear drain earns its higher price. A center drain in a curbless floor needs the floor sloping toward it from four directions, which is difficult to build flat enough to feel safe underfoot. A linear drain lets the whole floor fall in one plane, and it handles far more water, which matters when there is no curb holding any of it in. One practical thing to ask your plumber: a linear drain set against the end wall where the tub drain already sits may be able to pick up close to the existing trap. It is not always possible, but it is worth pricing both drain positions before anyone assumes the slab has to come up.
- The ADA does not apply to a private single-family home. The US Access Board states it plainly: the ADA does not cover individually owned housing in the private sector, including single-family homes. Nobody is going to inspect your own bathroom against it.
- The dimensions people quote come from the ADA Standards and from ICC A117.1, the standard adopted by reference for multifamily and Fair Housing work. In your own house they are a design target, not a legal requirement: a standard roll-in compartment is 60 by 30 inches clear, with a threshold no more than half an inch high, beveled where it exceeds a quarter inch.
- A standard 60 by 30 alcove already matches that roll-in footprint. That is the quiet good news in this project: the hard part is the floor, not the space.
- The shower floor itself has to slope no less than a quarter inch and no more than half an inch per foot toward the drain, under IRC P2709.1. That range is what makes a curbless floor a craft job rather than a mortar job.
- On waterproofing, the IRC lists five permitted linings for a site-built receptor: sheet lead, sheet copper, plastic liner to ASTM D4068 or D4551, hot-mopped felt, and sheet-applied bonded waterproof membranes complying with ANSI A118.10, with liquid-applied membranes covered separately under P2709.2.4 and held to the same standard. So code does not require A118.10 across the board, but if the system going into your shower is a bonded membrane, compliance with it is not optional. Ask which listed system is being used and get the manufacturer named on the invoice.
- The IRC has no curbless-specific provision. Its curb rules are written conditionally, for where a curb exists, and its lining measurements are taken from a threshold that a curbless shower does not have. In practice curbless work is approved either as a listed prefabricated assembly or under the alternative materials and methods section, which means it is signed off by your building official rather than by a table. Do not sign a curbless contract with an inspector-shy contractor.
Permits, Inspections and What They Actually Catch
Relocating a fixture drain effectively always requires a plumbing permit. The IRC exempts a short list of plumbing work from permitting, and the exemption is written to stop exactly at this job: it covers clearing stoppages and repairing leaks only where the work does not involve the replacement or rearrangement of valves, pipes or fixtures. Moving a drain is rearrangement. A like-for-like swap onto the existing trap is a closer call and genuinely varies by jurisdiction. Straight permit fees for bathroom work with new piping run about $50–$500 in most places, and some schedules charge $75–$150 per relocated fixture. Large cities run well above that: published figures include Denver around $287, Atlanta $525, Austin $687, Chicago $902 and Dallas $994.
The argument for pulling the permit is not really legal. It is that the rough inspection is the last time anyone independent looks at your trap, your vent and your pan liner before they disappear behind tile for twenty years. The code is unusually direct about this: rough plumbing must be inspected before it is covered or concealed, and no part of a drainage system may be covered or put into use until it has been tested, inspected and approved. A final inspection catches almost nothing by comparison. Unpermitted bathroom work also has two long tails: it comes up on a sale disclosure, and it comes up when an insurer investigates a leak claim.
The one-day panel systems usually avoid all of this, because nothing structural or plumbing-related changes. That is a genuine convenience and it is also, precisely, the reason nothing gets inspected.
- Build the inspection into the schedule, not around it. The pan cannot be tiled over until it has been signed off, and that wait is a real line on the calendar.
- Whether a licensed plumber must do the work at all, as opposed to a homeowner pulling their own permit, is set by state law and local ordinance, not by the model code. Check your own state before assuming either way.
Paying for It: What Federal Help Actually Exists
If the reason for this project is aging in place or a disability, there are real funding routes, and there is also a great deal of confident nonsense written about them. Everything below is from the agency’s own published pages as of September 2026. Verify the amounts before you rely on them, because most of them change on a fiscal-year schedule.
Start with the thing that is not true: there is no federal tax credit for an accessible bathroom remodel in 2026. The 25C Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit that some pages still point at was terminated for property placed in service after December 31, 2025, and it never covered accessibility work in the first place. What does exist is an itemized deduction, which is considerably weaker: under IRS Publication 502, medically necessary capital improvements are deductible, and the cost is normally reduced by any increase in your home’s value. Bathroom accessibility work is specifically listed among the improvements that do not usually increase home value, so it can generally be claimed in full. That only helps if you itemize and clear the 7.5%-of-AGI floor, which rules out a lot of the households this work is done for.
- VA HISA grant: lifetime limits of $6,800 for a service-connected disability, $6,800 for a non-service-connected disability if the veteran is rated at least 50%, and $2,000 otherwise. Roll-in showers are named explicitly among covered sanitary facility work. All projects must be medically justified.
- VA Specially Adapted Housing (SAH): up to $126,526 for fiscal year 2026, for a veteran who owns or will own the home and has a qualifying service-connected disability.
- VA Special Home Adaptation (SHA): up to $25,350 for fiscal year 2026. Both VA housing grant figures reset on October 1, so check the current fiscal year’s number rather than a figure you saw on a blog.
- Medicaid HCBS waivers: home accessibility adaptations, also called environmental accessibility adaptations, are a permitted waiver service, and CMS’s own definition names modification of bathroom facilities. There is no national dollar amount. States set their own services, eligibility and caps, and any single figure you see quoted as a national benchmark is not one.
- USDA Section 504 Home Repair: in eligible rural areas, a loan of up to $40,000 at 1% fixed over 20 years, or a grant of up to $10,000 for applicants aged 62 and over with very low income. The grant is restricted to removing health and safety hazards and must be repaid if the home sells within three years, so the loan is usually the realistic instrument for a full conversion.
- Most of the money for these projects is state and local rather than federal. Your Area Agency on Aging is the right first phone call, and it is free.
If You’re Taking the DIY Route
There is a real DIY portion in this project and it is the demolition, not the shower.
- Metal-cutting reciprocating saw blades — A steel or cast iron tub comes out in pieces, not in one heroic lift. Cutting it into carryable sections in the alcove is the single biggest chunk of labor a homeowner can genuinely take off the bill, and tub removal and disposal is a $300–$1,200 line item.
- Tub drain extractor wrench — Backing the old tub shoe out of the drain without wrecking the trap below it. Worth having before you start rather than halfway through.
- Zip-door dust barrier and plastic sheeting — Old mortar beds and tile mastic produce a startling volume of dust. Sealing the doorway is the difference between a demolition day and repainting the hallway.
- Respirator, eye protection and gloves — Non-negotiable for tile and mortar demolition, and for anything behind a surround that has been wet.
- Handheld shower on a slide bar — A genuine accessibility upgrade that fits onto a finished shower arm after the trades have gone, with no plumbing work involved.
Stop at the pan. Drain relocation, the trap and vent connections, and the waterproofing membrane are where DIY bathrooms fail, and they do not fail visibly on the day. They fail into the ceiling below, months later, as a stain. Those three pieces are worth a licensed plumber and a tile setter who will show you the membrane before it disappears. The same goes for grab bars: mounting one into drywall anchors instead of blocking produces a handhold that pulls out of the wall precisely when it is being used to stop a fall.
The honest decision rule is short. If the drain can stay where it is and you want this finished quickly, a prefab or one-day conversion at $3,000–$9,500 is a reasonable buy, provided somebody checks the wall for moisture first. If you are already opening the floor, the incremental cost of doing it properly in tile is smaller than it looks, and that is the moment to add blocking for grab bars you do not need yet. If someone in the house is heading toward needing a curbless shower, do it now while the floor is open rather than twice. And one caution that has nothing to do with cost: a tub-to-shower conversion typically returns 60-70% at resale, but removing the only bathtub in the house narrows your future buyer pool noticeably, because families with small children will screen the listing out. If the house has a second tub, this is an easy call. If it does not, it is a decision about how long you plan to stay.
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