If you’re in the middle of a bathroom remodel and want a shower, you’re basically deciding between two main options. The pre-fab stall or tiled walls. There are pros and cons of both.
Pre-fab shower stalls come in either one piece or several pieces (two-piece is pretty common). The biggest problem with a single-piece stall is that a lot of older homes don’t have doorways wide enough for it to fit through. They aren’t expensive, especially compared to a professional tiling job, but the pre-fab units are definitely considered a step down in quality. To their credit, they do last a long time and finally come in more color options than just white or off white.
Tiled stalls are definitely more elegant and coveted, but the problem is the labor cost, in addition to the price of nice tile. Whatever you choose, the result is pretty permanent; you can’t just rip it out and change it in 6 months. This is something you’ll have for a while.
One-piece shower stalls have the advantage of no seals, no places for water to leak. Of course, it must still join up with the wall, and if that connection is done improperly, you could have water issues, but the stall itself will not leak from top to bottom because it’s molding into one complete unit at the factory.
A lot of people will get two-piece shower stalls, with the top and tub portions in two separate units. This is beneficial for getting through tight doorways and halls, in addition to making installation a little easier.
There are several advantages to the pre-fab stall, whether single or multi-piece.
- It installs quickly.
- It’s lighter, which is helpful if you question the stability of the floor or house in general.
- If your house is older and flexes more, especially when the tub is full of water, these units won’t crack or split. Tile can split easily and be permanently disfigured.
- If your handyman skills are less than professional, you can still install it yourself.
Corner Shower Stalls
As part of our bathroom makeover project, we recently went shopping at Menards for a new shower stall. There were a lot of options, both in stock and special order. One option we have is to take out the existing tub shower combo and use a corner shower stall instead. This would add the benefit of additional space since the corner unit has a smaller footprint, but we’d lose the bathtub feature.
Probably what we will do is use a standard tub surround for our main bath (keeping the tub) and put the corner stall in the lesser-used bathroom and let the kids have that one. This would be a perfect fit as it would increase our half bath to a 3/4 bath, and get the kids into their own space and out of mine.
There are two ways to think of a corner stall. One image that comes to mind is just a regular shower stall that fits in the corner. However, if you search the Home Depot website, you’ll find two results, both of which feature a corner entry shower stall, so the place you walk into the stall is actually on the corner as opposed to a traditional side entry. The idea is intriguing.
Most people are just looking for a stall they can put in the corner of the bathroom, out of the way, something that has enough places to hold a shampoo bottle, drains well, and is easy to install, preferably with a simple install kit. The corner entry options run about $800 each, and the standard kits cost an average of $300 to $700, depending on how fancy the walls and doors are. You can get very modern-looking neo-angle kits where one side cuts in like a trapezoid and has fancy tempered safety glass. It still fits in the corner, but it doesn’t have a sharp edge sticking out into the room. These are some of the most popular styles since they add an aesthetic boost to your traditional shower stall.
The cheapest options are the two-piece sectional showers that are so narrow they fit through most doorways. They are very narrow and will remind you of most trailer bathrooms, nothing you’d want in the primary bath, but great for a mudroom area or secondary bathroom shower.
The best advice is to look locally at your remodeling stores as well as local lumberyards, as they will have the ability to order exactly what you need. Most of these come in standard sizes, so anything unusual required to fit an odd space will need to be custom-ordered. You’ll want to see it in person if it all possible. We are still deciding on the perfect unit for us, mostly because I’m weighing cost against features such as built-in shelf placements for bath supplies, built-in decoration, and so forth. But in the end, a corner shower stall will greatly fit our needs in the secondary bathroom.
