Oshawa · Whitby · Ajax · Pickering · Courtice · Bowmanville · Newcastle
Not three weeks. We take the tub out and put a walk-in shower in, in four working days. Monday morning to Thursday afternoon, and then we’re out of the house.
What you need is a bathroom she can use on her own, built fast enough that she never has to leave the house to get it.
Run past 4pm Thursday and we pay for the hotel.
Hotel and meals, every night, until you’re back in your own bathroom. Your completion date is written into the contract before you sign it.
Book a Home Safety Assessment→Check her bathroom first→
The assessment is $497, credited in full. The check is six questions, takes two minutes and costs nothing.
Fixed price · 7-year warranty · Asbestos tested before demolition · WSIB insured · 20 years building in Ontario
Why it hasn’t happened yet
You already know what needs doing.
You’ve had the conversation three times. She says she’s fine.
You’ve watched her hold the towel bar to get out of the tub. The towel bar, screwed into drywall, which will come off the wall the day she actually needs it.
You called somebody once. He said three weeks, and you didn’t call back.
And every time the phone rings before eight in the morning, there’s half a second before you look at the screen.
That’s the real problem, and it isn’t money. There’s one bathroom in the house. Nobody can lose their only toilet and shower for three weeks, so the quote sits on the kitchen counter, the months go by, and the fall everybody was worried about happens anyway.
What you need is a bathroom she can use on her own, built fast enough that she never has to leave the house to get it.
So the whole process was rebuilt around that one requirement.
Every material lands on site the Friday before. Plumber, electrician and tiler are each booked to a named hour, not a vague day. And the shower floor is a sealed one-piece unit rather than a tiled pan, which removes three days of waiting for mortar to cure and a flood test to pass.
The four days
Here is the week, day by day.
This is the low-step walk-in shower. Monday to Thursday, never Tuesday to Friday, because Friday is the buffer that protects your date.
Fri, before
Everything arrives
Materials on site, unwrapped
Floor protection and zip wall
Water shut-off found and tested
Monday
Demo and rough-in
Tub out, walls stripped
Plumbing and wiring roughed
Solid blocking for every grab bar
Tuesday
Floor and waterproofing
One-piece shower floor set in mortar
Wall membrane and backer board
Electrical and exhaust fan complete
Wednesday
Tile and set
Wall and floor tile
Toilet and vanity in
Valve trim on
Thursday
Finish and hand over
Glass panel, grab bars, bench
Grout, silicone, full clean
Walkthrough with you by 4pm
Curbless takes seven working days and a full accessible bathroom eight to ten, because the drain moves and the floor structure is opened and rebuilt. You are told which one your bathroom needs at the assessment, before you commit to anything.
What it costs
Four prices. Published. Not starting-at.
You’ve probably already been given three vague numbers by three different contractors. Here are ours, on the page, before you call anyone.
One day
Safety package
The tub stays. Two grab bars anchored to hold a real fall, comfort-height toilet, non-slip floor treatment, rocker switches and a motion-sensor light. No demolition.
$2,800
One day
Four days · Mon–Thu
Low-step walk-in shower
The tub comes out and a sealed one-piece shower floor goes into the same alcove with a shallow step in. Shower bench, handheld on an adjustable rail, full grab bar package into solid blocking.
$16,500
Four days · fixed
Seven days
Curbless walk-in shower
No step at all. The drain moves, the floor structure is opened and rebuilt, and the floor is tiled and sloped to a linear drain. Walker and wheelchair accessible.
$21,500
Seven days · fixed
Eight to ten days
Full accessible bathroom
The whole room to the studs. Everything in the curbless scope, plus full wall tile, new vanity and lighting, a wider door where the framing allows, and a layout planned around turning space.
$26,500
8 to 10 days · fixed
These prices cover a bathroom up to 40 square feet, the standard five by eight foot layout, which is what most homes in this region have. A larger ensuite is quoted separately after the assessment. We’d rather tell you that here than surprise you later.
If we find asbestos or rotten framing behind the wall, you hear about it before we start, because we test for it during the assessment. Not on day two with the wall open and your mother in a hotel.
Not sure which one fits?
Tell us about her bathroom and we’ll tell you.
Two minutes. You’ll find out which walk-in shower her bathroom can actually take, roughly what it costs, and whether anything is likely to get in the way. Free, and it tells you honestly if the answer is no.
A fifth option, and a bigger one
What if the stairs are the real problem?
Where a walker is already in daily use, the best bathroom in the world is still upstairs. Some families with the space convert a dining room or a den into a bedroom and a full accessible bathroom on the ground floor. Quacy built his first one in 2016 and it is still standing up.
$55,000 to $68,000
Bedroom and bathroom, converting existing space
$40,000 to $52,000
Bathroom only, no bedroom
The question that decides everything
What if it’s the only bathroom in the house?
Then say so at the assessment, because it changes what we recommend.
Four days without a bathroom is manageable. Most families arrange for a parent to stay with them Monday to Thursday, or we work around a downstairs powder room. Seven days usually isn’t, and ten certainly isn’t.
So where there’s one bathroom and nowhere else to wash, we will normally steer you to the low-step conversion even when a curbless entry would be technically better. A slightly less ideal shower she can actually live through beats a perfect one she can’t.
If a curbless entry is genuinely necessary and there’s no second bathroom, we’ll say that too, and help you plan the week properly rather than pretending it away.
Included in every conversion
Four things nobody else puts in the base price.
Ask the next contractor whether these are in their number. Watch what happens.
Solid blocking in all three wet walls
Grab bars go into three-quarter inch plywood behind the tile, never drywall anchors. A bar in an anchor is decoration. It fails under a 190-pound person going down sideways, which is precisely the load it exists for. On the one-day safety package the walls stay closed, so the bars go into engineered hollow-wall fasteners rated to 800 lb, the only fixing accepted as an alternative to structural blocking.
Thermostatic anti-scald valve
Set and labelled at 49°C, and positioned so the water can be running before she steps in. If your mother has reduced sensation in her hands or feet, this is the difference between a shower and a burn she won’t feel until afterward.
A shower floor she can’t slip on, and doesn’t have to scrub
The low-step conversion uses a sealed one-piece shower floor with a certified slip rating and no grout lines at all. Nothing for mould to live in, and nothing for her to scrub. Where the floor has to be tiled, on the curbless and full builds, it’s small format rated for wet grip.
Asbestos testing before demolition
On any house built before 1990. It’s required under Ontario Reg. 278/05 and almost nobody does it. We take the sample in front of you at the assessment and show you the lab result, whatever it says.
The first step
Ninety minutes, and it comes off the job.
Home Safety Assessment
$497
90 minutes · one visit
Credited in full against your project if you go ahead. If you don’t, the report is yours and you can take it to any contractor you like.
Or call (647) 800-1302 and ask me anything first.
Money you get back
Up to $3,000, with no income test.
$3,000
Home Accessibility Tax Credit
15% back on up to $20,000 of eligible work, per dwelling per year. No income limit. You qualify if the person living there is 65 or older, or eligible for the Disability Tax Credit. We package your receipts the way the CRA wants them, at no charge.
$7,500
Multigenerational Home Renovation Tax Credit
15% back on up to $50,000, and refundable, for creating a self-contained secondary unit so a parent can move in with family. Only applies where the work creates a full separate unit with its own entrance, kitchen and bathroom.
Ask
Veterans Affairs, and your municipality
If your parent served, home adaptations are funded and almost nobody thinks to ask. Ontario Renovates through Durham Region may also apply. We’ll tell you which of these fits you, including when the answer is none.
We’re builders, not accountants. These are the programs worth asking your accountant about, and we’ll give you the paperwork they need. We don’t administer any of them and we don’t apply on your behalf. See what applies →
Before you call
The questions everybody asks.
Because a visit nobody is paying for is a sales call, and a fixed price is impossible without ninety minutes of real work. You keep the written report either way, and the $497 comes off the invoice if you hire us.
The things that usually hide behind a wall are all findable before demolition, and we look for every one of them at the assessment. Joist direction, cast iron, galvanized supply, rot at the tub apron, asbestos. If we miss one, we absorb it.
Sequenced, not rushed, and it applies to the low-step conversion only.
Materials arrive the Friday before, every trade is booked to a named hour, and the sealed one-piece floor removes three days of waiting for a tiled pan to cure and pass a flood test. A curbless conversion cannot be done in four days and nobody here will pretend otherwise. That one takes seven.
For a four-day low-step conversion, most people have their parent stay with them Monday to Thursday, or the crew works around a downstairs powder room.
Seven or ten days is a much bigger ask, which is why the number of bathrooms in the house is one of the first things checked at the assessment. If there is only one, you will usually be steered to the four-day option even where a curbless entry would be technically better.
Usually not.
A walk-in tub has a door in the side, so she sits inside it while it fills and again while it drains, several minutes each way, cold and wet. The door seal is a long-term maintenance item, and if she needs help getting out, a carer cannot reach past the door.
A walk-in shower with a bench and a handheld gets her clean faster and keeps working for longer. The full comparison is here.
Yes, and we’d prefer it. Send it over before the assessment and we’ll build to it. If there isn’t a report and the situation is clinical, we’ll tell you to get one before we quote anything. We’re builders, not clinicians.
Then the published prices won’t hold and we’ll quote it separately after the assessment. Cost doesn’t scale in a straight line. A large ensuite carries more tile, more floor preparation and often a second vanity. Ask us and we’ll tell you honestly whether yours is close enough to matter.
What’s actually being decided
This isn’t a renovation decision. It’s a housing decision.
If it keeps waiting
More than a third of seniors admitted to hospital after a fall never go home. They go into long-term care. Not because the family gave up, but because by then the house doesn’t work for them and there’s no time left to fix it.
Half the falls that put someone in hospital happen at home, and the bathroom is the worst room in the house for it. You know this already. That’s why you’re reading this at night.
If it gets done
She stays in her own house, with her own things, on her own schedule. She showers without needing anyone in the room, which matters more to her than she will ever say out loud.
And you get your week back. No more planning around it, no more quiet arithmetic about how long this can hold. The next family conversation is about something else.
The bathroom is the part of all this you can still control.
Thursday, four o’clock
The bin is gone. The floor protection is off. The room is clean and the silicone is cured enough to use in the morning.
Your mother walks in and steps over almost nothing. She sits down if she wants to. There’s a bar exactly where her stronger hand reaches for it, because we watched her reach for it on a Tuesday in March and built it to her, not to a standard.
And the thing that’s been sitting at the back of your mind for a year is finished. Not planned. Not quoted. Not “we’re getting to it in the spring.” Finished.
She stays in her house. That was always the point.
