What it costs
What actually determines the price of a bathroom.
Almost nobody in this industry will publish a number, and there is a legitimate reason for that: the honest range is wide enough to be useless until someone has stood in the room. What we can publish is exactly what moves the price, so that you can read any quote, ours included, and understand precisely what you are looking at.
The eight variables
What actually moves the number.
In rough order of how much difference each one makes.
Scope: wet space, dry space, or the whole room
Replacing just the shower or tub is the smallest job in this category and by a wide margin the most common. Adding the vanity, flooring, toilet and lighting roughly doubles the work. A full gut with a new layout is a different project entirely. Most of the price difference between two quotes is scope, not markup.
What we find when the old unit comes out
This is the single biggest source of surprise on any bathroom job. A soft subfloor from a pan that has been leaking for years, rotted studs behind a tile surround, or galvanized supply lines in a postwar house all add real labor and material. We look for the signs during the consultation and tell you what we suspect, but nobody can price what is behind a wall with certainty until the wall is open.
Whether the drain and plumbing move
Keeping the drain where it is costs a fraction of moving it. A tub-to-shower conversion that reuses the existing drain location is straightforward. Relocating a drain means opening the floor, and in a slab-on-grade house or over a finished ceiling that is a significant piece of work.
Wall material and finish
A standard tile pattern in a high gloss sits at one end of the range. A veined stone colorway in a smooth matte velvet finish sits at the other. Every tier we install is solid surface and grout-free, and all of them will outlast tile in a wet area, but they are not the same price. The consultation is where you see the samples side by side and the difference becomes obvious.
Base type, size and threshold
A standard-footprint base with a threshold is the baseline. A zero-threshold base for roll-in access, a non-standard size, or a tub-replacement footprint all cost more, and a zero-threshold installation sometimes requires structural work to drop the floor.
Glass
A framed sliding door and a frameless glass panel are separated by several hundred dollars at minimum, and more when the opening is out of square and the glass has to be made to measure. Older Michigan houses are rarely square.
Accessibility work
Grab bars are inexpensive. Blocking them into the framing correctly, moving a doorway to 36 inches for a walker, adding a fold-down seat, or running a new anti-scald valve are all real additions. Worth knowing: for veterans, most of this list is exactly what the VA HISA grant exists to pay for.
Permits and municipality
Requirements vary across Michigan. Straight replacement work in the same footprint often does not require a permit; moving plumbing or altering structure usually does. We tell you which category your job falls into before you sign anything, and we pull the permit when one is needed.
Use this on us too
Eight questions to ask any bathroom contractor.
Including us. If a quote is genuinely comparable to another quote, the answers to these will match. Usually they do not, and that is where the price difference actually lives.
- 01Is this quote for the wet space only, or the whole room?
- 02What happens to the price if you find a rotten subfloor? Is that a change order, and at what rate?
- 03Is the drain staying where it is?
- 04What exactly is the wall material, and does the color run through the full thickness or sit on the face?
- 05Is the glass stock or made to measure?
- 06Who pulls the permit, and is it in the price?
- 07What does the warranty cover, what does it exclude, and who honors it in year ten?
- 08Is this price the same next month?
A word on discounts
If the price drops because you hesitated, it was never the price.
You will see percentages off labor, dollar amounts off installation, and installation costs waived entirely, each with a date on it. Look closely and the date moves. An offer that is available on every product, every month, on a rolling expiry, is not a discount. It is the price, with a bigger number written above it.
We do not operate one. Our quote is the same figure today, next Tuesday and thirty days from now. It makes for a less dramatic appointment, which is precisely the intention.
What you get at no charge
- An in-home measure and assessment
- Actual material samples to hold
- An itemized written quote
- Thirty days to think about it
Get a real number for your bathroom.
It takes a single visit. We measure the room, inspect what sits behind the existing unit wherever we can reach it, and leave you with an itemized quote in writing. Call (833) 637-8466 or send us the details.