House flippers screwed me. So I asked pros to quote on a fix.
The lowest quote for simply replacing a showerpan and a glass box that sits on it is $9k. Yikes. WTF is going on here? Other quotes have hit $16k. I’ve seen in the hardware store shower box kits that are like $700. So I am really baffled here. Those kits should be like 1 or 2 ppl working for 1 day, no?
Clearly I am out of touch. So my next thought is, if I am going to spend that kind of serious money, I might as well do a luxury bath extension to the house.
For complex reasons I am looking to avoid doing the work myself, but that idea is not completely off the table. I am thinking if I do the project myself, concrete bags are cheap. Wedi boards and the like come in showerpan kits IIRC, which are not exactly cheap but compared to the quotes by contractors the Wedi board seems quite reasonable. I’ve seen the various videos of YTers discussing in detail how to do it right and how others screw up. Are the crazy quotes from contractors mainly due to labor costs?
What kind of building is this? An alpine old house built with rocks and cement? A central european concrete and bricks? A northen european wood house? An american cardboard and framing construction?
American wood frame stucco.
To be clear, if I do the work myself, I would likely renovate the existing problematic bathroom. I would try to do a curbless design out of concrete or a wedi kit, but I am not sure yet if I have enough area for curbless. I would add a shoulder height wall and try to avoid having a door or curtains for the shower stall.
If I hire a contractor, I guess I will consider the house extension since the costs are crazy anyway, in which case I would simply abandon the existing shower until I figure out later what to do with it.