The Garden Tub Nobody Bathes In: Reclaiming a Colorado Springs Primary Bath

The dust cloth sat folded on the edge of the garden tub, right where it had lived for three years. A homeowner in Briargate ran a finger along the acrylic deck, came away gray, and realized she had cleaned that tub far more often than she had ever sat in it. Twelve steps from the bed, a jetted basin the size of a small canoe, and not one real soak since the house was new.

That is the quiet story behind a huge share of the tub-to-shower conversion work we do across Colorado Springs. The oversized garden tub was a status feature in homes built from the late 1990s through the 2010s, and for a lot of owners it turned into wasted square footage that is a chore to keep clean.

One real project, start to finish

Let us follow that Briargate primary bath through, because it maps closely to what most owners face.

The room had a corner garden tub roughly 60 by 42 inches, a separate 32-inch fiberglass shower stall with a leaky door, a double vanity, and a water closet. The tub ate the best window wall and the shower was too tight to turn around in. The goal was simple: lose the tub nobody used and build one generous walk-in shower.

Here is what the tub-to-shower conversion involved:

• Demo of the garden tub, its tiled deck, and the old fiberglass stall
• Reframing the corner to square up a single shower footprint near 60 by 42 inches
• New waterproofing behind the walls and a properly sloped, fully bonded shower pan
• A low-threshold entry, a bench seat, a niche, and a linear drain
• Porcelain tile walls with a large-format look and a frameless glass panel

Because the plumbing supply and drain lines were already in that corner, the rough-in stayed relatively contained. That is the part homeowners rarely see: when a conversion reuses the existing wet zone, you avoid opening up floors across the room, and the budget and timeline both stay tighter. This particular project ran a little under two weeks of active work.

Why the corner tub is the easiest win

Not every tub is worth removing, but the neglected garden tub in a primary suite is often the single best candidate for a tub-to-shower conversion in an El Paso County home. A few reasons:

The space is already generous. A garden tub deck typically occupies more floor area than a comfortable shower needs. Reclaim it and you can build a walk-in with room for a bench, a curbless or low entry, and dual controls without stealing space from the vanity.

The plumbing is close. The drain and supply are usually right there in the corner. Moving a drain more than a couple of feet is where surprise costs hide, so a like-for-like footprint keeps the number honest.

Daily use jumps immediately. A shower you step into every morning beats a tub you dust every week. That is the whole point, and it is why we lead with how you actually live in the room, not with a feature list.

If you are weighing whether to keep any soaking option at all, our tub or shower guide walks through the trade-offs, including resale.

The decisions that shape the result

Once you commit to removing the tub, a handful of choices drive how the finished shower feels.

Threshold height

A low threshold near four inches reads clean and keeps water contained. A curbless entry looks the most open and supports aging in place, but it asks more of the framing and the drain slope. In a slab-on-grade Colorado Springs home, curbless is very doable; in an upper-floor bath over a joist bay, we plan the recess carefully so the slope still drains right.

Bench, niche, and glass

A built-in bench earns its keep for shaving legs and for anyone who tires standing. Recessed niches keep bottles off the floor. For glass, a fixed frameless panel often beats a full enclosure in a reclaimed garden-tub corner. It lets the tile do the talking and there is one less door track to squeegee.

Tile scale

Large-format porcelain means fewer grout lines, which means less cleaning and fewer places for water to work in. In our region’s dry air, sealed grout holds up well, but less grout is still less maintenance.

For the full picture on how these pieces come together, see our stage-by-stage walk-in shower checklist.

What it typically costs to reclaim a garden tub

A straightforward corner-tub conversion that reuses the wet zone commonly lands in the mid four figures to low five figures, depending on tile, glass, and whether you go low-threshold or curbless. A second Colorado Springs example: a Powers-corridor primary bath swapped a jetted tub and a tight stall for one 66-inch shower with a bench and a niche, and the frameless glass plus large-format porcelain pushed it toward the upper end of that range.

The number moves most when the drain has to relocate, when we find old or improper waterproofing behind the tub deck, or when you add heated flooring during the same tear-out. Because bathrooms hide surprises behind the walls, we quote a fixed price after we see the room, so the figure holds. You can read more about that approach on our full bathroom remodels page and in our overview of remodeling across Colorado Springs.

Is this the right move for your bath?

Ask three questions. Have you genuinely soaked in that tub in the last year? Does the layout leave your shower cramped while the tub sprawls? And does anyone in the household find stepping over a high tub wall harder than it used to be? If you nodded to two of the three, reclaiming the tub is likely your best return in daily comfort.

Want a second set of eyes on your layout? Call us for a free in-home design consult and we will map the conversion to your actual room, not a template.

Frequently Asked Questions

We might sell in a few years. Will removing our only tub hurt resale?

If it is your only tub and the home has a single bathroom, keep a tub somewhere for families with small kids. But in a primary suite where a hall or guest bath still has a tub, converting the unused garden tub usually helps, because buyers see a modern, low-maintenance shower they will actually use. Our tub or shower guide covers the resale angle in more depth.

Can you leave the jetted tub plumbing capped in case we change our minds?

We can cap and abandon the tub supply lines cleanly behind finished walls, yes. Just know that reversing the decision later means opening the wall again and rebuilding the deck, so it is rarely worth designing around. Most owners who reclaim the space never look back.

Our garden tub sits on an upper floor. Does that change anything?

It can. On an upper-floor bath, the drain and the pan slope have to work within the joist depth, so a curbless entry takes more planning than it does on a slab. It is still achievable in most Colorado Springs two-story homes. We check the framing during the in-home consult and design the threshold around what the structure allows. Our bathroom remodel overview explains how we scope these details before quoting.