Home Improvement Q: Need new Shower

lauren9317

MH and I are not savvy when it comes to home improvements. We're also kind of frugal and hate spending our money on things. That being said, we really need to replace the whole shower stall in our master bathroom. I'm not even sure where to begin with this, but the shower floor (is that what it's called?) is cheap and horrible and pretty much everything about the shower is cheaply done and just hideous. We've hated it ever since we've lived here, which is 6 years now. Where do we start with getting a whole new shower? Sorry I'm so clueless about this

Aegis2005

Do you have an idea what you want to do (i.e. is it a fiberglass shower and you want to do another one)?  Do you think you have any water damage below/behind your shower?

Our old condo had some fugly peachy/orangeish tile from when it was built in the early 80's.  The cost to pull it all out and re-do was fairly expensive (I feel like it was about $6K per shower for a basic white tub and white tile - and we had two). 

We had re-bath come in (don't know if they're down here) and they resurfaced the two showers/tubs.  I feel like our master was around $2500 and our second bathroom was around $2000 - we chose a medium quality finish.  The came in one day to do measurements and another day to actually put the surround on.  It was really quick, and we were really happy with the way it came out.  It made a HUGE improvement (especially when it came time to sell).

If you're looking to have shower re-done with tile I would think you'd need to get a plumber and a general contractor.  A friend of ours did this.  I'll ask them what type of tradesman they had come in.

lauren9317

Yeah, we do have the some water damage I believe because a plumber told us there are cracks in the shower floor and water is leaking down there (I think?) When we're in there, stepping around, this irritates the cracks and we can then smell the old water that has leaked down there, so often there will be a sulphur smell while we're showering, lingering on for a while after we're done. Lovely! This is one major thing we dislike, obviously! And it needs to be fixed.

Other than that, I'm not even sure what type of shower we have so I guess I'd have to have someone come out to tell us our options. So you're saying we could probably either re-do it or just resurface it? Although I'm thinking that our shower is so crappy that it must need to be completely redone.

Thanks for the help

Aegis2005

If you have water underneath/behind the shower, you really should have it taken out and properly sealed.  If it's been happening for awhile you may have some mold issues that need to be taken care of too.  We had a leak in the wall of our old kitchen, and we had a bit of a mold problem.  I was freaking out about it, but in the end, they just had to cut out a small piece of drywall, treat the wood studs, and patch the wall.  It wasn't nearly as big of an issue as I had made it out to be in my head.

I sent my friend an e-mail to see how they went about their shower re-model.  I'll let you know when I hear back from them.

lauren9317

Thanks so much!

Loskadoodle

I would contact some handyman services.  When we moved the last time, we had to do some fixes to our house in order to get the Relo company to sell it.  One of them was that we had water moisture around our shower.  We had a handyman come (recommended from our realtor) and he pulled off all of our old tile, fixed any areas that were leaking, put up the waterproof board (and whatever else needs to go back there) and retiled/grouted everything.  We had him do a TON of things to our house, he was probably there for about a week straight and it all cost us about 2k, and he paid for the supplies.  I'm sure you will probably have to pay for the new shower fixtures/doors, etc. but I don't think the rest of it will be too bad.  It will take a couple days though because they have to wait for the tile to set before they can grout.  Let me know if you have any questions.