Completed project: a walk-in shower renovation in Vaughan

The homeowners in Vaughan were done with a cramped, dated tub-shower combo that leaked at the corners and looked every one of its years. They wanted a proper walk-in shower — bright, easy to clean, and finished with the matte-black fixtures they had been saving photos of. We stripped the wet area back to the framing and rebuilt it from there.

Demolition and rough-in

The first job on any shower is to see what is behind the wall. We opened the wet area down to the studs, checked the framing, and re-ran the supply lines to a new pressure-balanced valve — the kind that stops the water going cold-then-scalding when a tap runs elsewhere in the house. Everything was blocked solid and pressure-tested before we closed a single wall.

Waterproofing and tile

Every surface that gets wet was waterproofed before tiling. We ran white marble-look large-format porcelain up the walls, added a slim white mosaic accent, and set a matte-black square rain head, hand shower on a slide bar, and a recessed black valve to tie the fixtures together. Large tiles mean fewer grout lines, which reads cleaner and gives water fewer places to sit.

The result

A cramped tub-shower became a bright, walk-in space that takes seconds to wipe down. The frameless glass keeps the room feeling open, and the matte-black fixtures against the marble-look tile give it the spa look the owners were after — watertight where it counts and clean where you see it.

What a shower renovation costs

Shower projects are quoted after a site visit, because tile choice, glass and whether we are re-plumbing all move the number. As a rough guide for the York Region market:

• Re-tile of an existing tub or shower surround: $3,500–$7,000
• Full walk-in shower rebuild with new plumbing and frameless glass: $7,500–$14,000
• Curbless or large custom showers with feature tile: $14,000+

Materials, glass and accessibility all affect the price, so every shower gets its own fixed quote after we see it.

Why hire a professional

• The waterproofing behind the tile is what makes a shower last decades — it is also the step most often skipped when a job is done cheaply.
• A pressure-balanced valve and proper floor fall are the difference between a comfortable shower and a cold-shock, pooling one.
• Frameless glass is unforgiving; it has to be measured on site after tiling, because no real wall is perfectly plumb.

Shower and bathroom renovations across York Region

We rebuild showers for homeowners across Vaughan, Richmond Hill, Markham, Newmarket, Aurora, King City and the wider York Region as part of our full bathroom renovation service. Keeping an existing shower in shape usually just needs fresh caulking — we do that too. Prefer to keep the tub? See our Aurora bathroom renovation for a full-room rebuild.

Ready to replace a tired shower? Get a free estimate and tell us what you have in mind.

"A shower is one of the few things in a house that has to be watertight for twenty years. That standard lives behind the tile."