It’s been a stream of tenants for over a decade—one moves out, another moves right in. Well, the shower tiles walls are getting soft, the shower wooden window frame (yes wood) is starting to go, and I want to get the whole thing gutted and redone fast. It’s also a 1 bathroom 4 bed house.

Question1: anyone able to get a shower/tub redone quickly? In my own experience it takes at least several days. Advice and experience?

Question 2: a LL buddy says to get the entire bathroom, including toilet and walls redone, and rent a port-o-john for the tenants. He says do the whole thing and it will make renting and resale much easier. Worth it? I’m hesitant but open to being persuaded.

We do them frequently these days but you need a few days, it's not just a 24-hour job unless you have some help and move fast. Otherwise, DH takes about a week working alone.

Rip tub, walls, flooring, vanity, toilet.

Replace tub with shower pan - no more tubs. Replace flooring with Allure. Replace tub walls with PVC wainscoting, and put half-wall of wainscoting around toilet.

New commode, vanity and doo-dahs.

Done.

Take the time to do it right. Hopefully you're not in the financial position where you HAVE to move another tenant in right away.

At our last move-out, I decided to replace the ancient baby-blue pedestal sink and toilet with white ones. Since they were out, it made sense to remove the lath-and-plaster wall behind and put in a better substrate for tile. It was only a little more work to demo the adjoining outside wall. That made us notice that the ceiling was even worse, so we pulled that down too.

With the ceiling and walls open, we took the time to install a humidity-sensing fan and replace the existing knob and tube with a dedicated bathroom circuit. And we moved the light switch to next to the door rather than across the room. Then we noticed that the original cast-iron and galvanized drain lines were leaking. We opened up the floor to replace all the drains with PVC and noticed that the joists had been cut in too many places, so we beefed those up. The banging around jostled a fragile copper coupling, which started leaking and had to be replaced. Oh, and it made sense with two exterior walls open to insulate.

Around HALF (1/2) of the installers make mistakes that limit the life of your new bathtub install. They skip a vapor barrier, install tile on greenboard, not tile board.

If you are going to keep the current bathtub, you can re-tile and grout the surrounding area in two days.

I would not try to deal with it while tenants were there.

This is a 4 bedroom 1 bath. Around here, a 3 bedroom 2 bath would rent faster and sell for a higher price.

Thanks for all the replies! Very helpful. It sounds as if there’s no quick bathroom renovation. 4-6 days is an eternity for these young adults. Having a rental with only one bathroom is tough as it is. It’s a cape cod and there’s nowhere I can think to add another. A new groups moving right in as the other moves out, so not time, unfortunately. It’s a young adult rental town for the most part. Even students want to stay in summer. Sounds like it’s a can of worms when you start working on bathroom renovations. I’ll wait till vacancy for a full remodel… The wood window frame is shot, so I will have that replaced, and shower stall walls and tiles I’d like to try and have done. At least I’ve gotta recaulk…

Also, hang a piece of shower curtain (cut to size) over that window as it's curtain.

Last bathroom I did had a window in the tub area. It's a duplex so I went to the other side and asked the tenants if they ever opened the window in there.

Answer was no so I covered it over. It was a vinyl replacement window and the trim was wrapped outside. Brick home.

I left the window in place. Put some foam board against the frosted glass, then insulated it good to the wall thickness. Then I put cement board over the entire wall. Tile after that and we are good to go.

I used aluminum angle on the other apartment for the corners at the window. Ran tile all the way up to it.

Plenty (MO): Great idea re the plastic bathroom window trim! I’m going to call my window contractor. I can’t believe folks ever put wood trim in bathroom windows. But this goes back decades I guess.

Zero (IN): covering up the window like you did sounds like it was the right move. I’d do it but there’s no exhaust fan and tenants apparently take hour long hot showers as it is. Every time I inspect the property the bathroom is humid. should get a ln exhaust fan in there soon too.

I would get an exhaust fan in there as soon as possible. The tenants are not opening the window when they shower. Maybe after but then the moisture is set in.

I was introduced to a humidistat for the exhaust fan. I have only installed one of them, but the theory is sound. If it gets too humid in there the fan will kick on automatically.