The shower is the part of a bathroom that has to work hardest and the part where a shortcut takes the longest to show up. Everything visible — tile, glass, fittings — sits on top of an assembly that has to keep water out of the framing for the next few decades. Getting that assembly right is not more expensive than getting it wrong; it is only more expensive than getting it wrong today.
Built to the opening, not to a catalogue. A stock shower base comes in a handful of sizes, and fitting one into a 1,320mm alcove means either losing 180mm of the room or building a filler wall to make the opening match the pan. A site-built shower floor takes the dimension the room actually offers. That matters most in the small bathrooms common across older Nanaimo housing, where the difference between a 900mm and a 1,050mm shower is the difference between turning around comfortably and not.
What a proper shower build involves. The floor is sloped to the drain at a consistent fall — a uniform quarter inch per foot to a centre drain, or a single plane to a linear drain set at one end. Curbs are built solid and waterproofed on all three faces, including the top and the inside return. Walls get a substrate suited to continuous wetting rather than standard drywall. The waterproofing layer is continuous across floor, curb, corners and up the walls to above the shower head, with corners, changes of plane and the drain connection treated as the details that decide whether the whole thing works. Niches are framed between studs, sloped slightly so water drains out, and waterproofed as part of the wall rather than as a hole in it. Benches are framed and waterproofed like a curb, never hollow. Only after that does tile begin.
Walk-in, low-threshold and barrier-free. A walk-in shower with a low threshold or none at all is the most requested change in this region, and it is a floor-structure question before it is a tile question. A curbless entry needs the shower floor recessed below the surrounding finished floor, which means either dropping the joists locally, sistering and re-sheeting, or building the whole bathroom floor up to meet it. On a concrete slab in a condo, recessing is usually not available and a linear drain at the far wall with a very low threshold and a generous slope is the practical answer. Either way, water control substitutes for the curb: a longer wet zone, a well-placed linear drain, a fixed glass panel positioned to catch spray, and a floor tile small enough that its grout joints provide grip.
Tub-to-shower conversions. Removing a tub in a standard 1,525mm alcove and building a shower into the same footprint is one of the highest-value renovations a household in Parksville or Qualicum Beach can do, and it is usually more than a swap. The tub drain sits at one end and a shower drain usually wants to be central or linear, so the waste is generally relocated. The valve height moves up. The wall substrate behind a tub surround is rarely adequate for a full-height shower. Where a household has two bathrooms, keeping one tub is worth considering for resale and for anyone bathing children.
Bathtubs. Alcove tubs, drop-ins built into a tiled deck and freestanding tubs each make different demands. A freestanding tub needs a floor that can carry it filled and occupied, a filler either floor-mounted through the finished floor or wall-mounted at exactly the right height and projection, and enough clearance around it to actually clean behind — 100mm from a wall looks generous on a plan and is unreachable in practice. Drop-in tubs need an access route to the trap and overflow that survives the tiled deck being finished.
Enclosures, doors and surrounds. Glass is templated after tiling, not before, because the finished surfaces are what it has to seal against. Frameless panels need blocking in the wall for the clamps or channel, which has to be set during framing. Sliding doors need a level head. Hinged doors need to be checked against the toilet and vanity in the plan, and they should open outward so water runs back into the shower. Tiled surrounds, large format panel surrounds and solid surface surrounds all behave differently at the corners and at the wall-to-floor junction, and each has a joint detail that matters more than the material choice.
Coastal reality. Bathrooms on this coast dry slowly. A shower that stays damp between uses puts a continuous load on its waterproofing and on the wall assembly behind it, which is why extraction sized to the room and the waterproofing detail behind the tile carry more weight here than in a dry climate.