I have walked up on a slab that was formed, rebar tied, trucks coming in the morning, and the shower recess was not there.

Nobody did anything wrong. It just was not on anybody's list that day. We caught it, the forms got moved, and that house got a zero entry shower.

If we had not walked it, that house gets a curb, and whoever lives there steps over it every day for thirty years.

That is the whole newsletter. The decision costs nothing. It just has to get made before one specific morning.

A zero entry shower, curbless, walk in, whatever your builder calls it, is a shower floor flush with the bathroom floor. No lip. No step.

It works because the slab under the shower gets poured an inch and a half lower than the rest of the room, and the pan slopes to the drain. The water has somewhere to go that is below where you are standing.

Here is the part that bothers me. It costs nothing.

The concrete crew frames the recess with a 2x4 laid on its side. They already have the lumber sitting there. It takes a few minutes while they are forming the rest of the slab. No material to order, no trade to add, no line item on your bid.

It costs nothing if two people know ahead of time.

Your plumber has to know before rough in, because the drain sets at a different elevation.

Your concrete guy has to know while he is forming the slab, not after.

That is the entire ask.

You can still do it. I want to be clear about that, because people say it is impossible and it is not.

You cut the slab, bust out the concrete where the shower goes, re run the drain, and pour it back. A jackhammer, a plumber, and a day nobody scheduled. Contractors quote $3,000 to $5,000 and up to convert it later, and that is before a single tile.

Nothing on pour day. Three to five thousand after. Same shower.

Because it is early.

This is a foundation plan decision. It gets made months before anybody picks tile, and at that stage you are thinking about square footage and elevations, not whether you want to step over a curb when you are seventy.

By the time a curbless shower sounds appealing, which is usually while you are standing in the framed house looking at the primary bath, the slab has been poured for four months. And then it does not feel worth it anymore.

That is how something that was free turns into something you skipped.

Different timing. You want it known before the floor system goes in, so the framer is not running something through the exact bay you need.

Good news is a raised floor is more forgiving. Adding a recess back up there later is nowhere near as brutal as cutting concrete. Still cheaper and cleaner the first time.

Almost every one I do is a primary bath on a slab, on the first floor. That is where this one lives.

Water is going to run out onto the bathroom floor.

It does not. The pan sits lower than the room and the whole thing slopes to the drain. Water goes to the low spot, and the low spot is in the shower.

The one thing we watch is where the shower head points. We do not aim it straight out the opening. That is the trick.

This one happens at the plan stage, before the foundation plan is final. Not at a framing walk.

"I want the primary shower curbless. Put the recessed pan on the foundation plan, and make sure the plumber and the concrete guy both know."

Then go look at the forms before they pour. I am serious. Walk the slab, find the shower, make sure there is a box framed out where it goes. I have caught that one more than once.

I do not like stepping over a curb. That is the honest answer.

But the other thing is that a curbless shower wide enough to walk into is also a roll in shower. Not today. Maybe not for thirty years. It is just already there, it cost nothing, and nobody has to tear a bathroom apart in a hurry someday.

Not bad for a conversation you have once, eight months before anybody pours anything.

Everything I write about here works the same way. Cheap while it is still open, expensive once it is not. That is the whole field guide, 50 of them, with the numbers and the exact words to say before they close the walls.

Curious how this one splits. I suspect most of you have a curb and never got asked about it.

If you know somebody whose plans are not final yet, forward this to them today. On a slab house this one is gone the morning the concrete truck shows up.

And if one person signs up off your link, I will send you the full cost breakdown of the first house I ever built. Every line I tracked, 2017 prices, which are going to hurt to look at. It is not for sale and it never has been.

That is it for this week.

Hit reply and tell me whether yours has a curb. I answer these myself.

Jon | Built With This