Well, phooey. I taped it out in the bathroom with blue tape last night and it looked like it would fit, but with too many nos, I'm back to the drawing board. Interesting thought, Vix. Right now we don't actually have a toilet room, so much as a separate toilet "area" (there's no door, and the closet takes up too much room to add a door), but it's on my agenda to create one. In our house, it's very necessary. I generally use that bathroom to try to FIND privacy, only to have 3 people (and sometimes the dog) follow me into the bathroom. I'm looking forward to having a door that locks and a fan so that I don't have two little people handing me the TP and asking whether I'm doing number 1 or 2 (oh, and the 1 year old likes to flush while I'm ON the pot; so I've got my own special cold water washlet), while DH decides that he absolutely has to shave and brush his teeth at that exact moment. Now if I take a hike to the guest bath on the other side of the house, all three just follow me AGAIN. Sometimes when I have insisted on locking the door in the guest bath (no way to do that with our LOUVERED -- why??? -- pocket door in the master), my one year old plopped down prostrate outside the door and cried until I open the door. For my W/C, I want to put in a LOUD fan; no whisper quiet for me. Maybe I'll even add a radio. :) The way I'm seeing it, I can either get rid of the long vanity altogether and live with a fairly small vanity, plus a tub and shower, I can skip the tub and live with the kids' bathroom on the third level as the only room with a tub, or we can bump out that weird corner jog, which would give us an additional 49'' X 27'' space -- enough to fit a 5X3 tub, 5X3 shower and keep the two vanities. But that sounds very expensive and will require carefully removing and replacing the siding to match the existing. DH's response to all this was "why do we need a tub?"

Thanks for the advice. I ripped out the walls, flooring and old shower stall. I had to cut the shower stall (used jigsaw) to get it out. The current drain line is indeed 2". But I am also planning to redo the shower and sink drains (I will post another thread about this). I will redo them because although there is no leak, they are a mess going from ABS to cast iron back to ABS and then back to cast iron before joining the 4" toilet drain. Many flexible rubber joints, including a rubber Y to be used as a cleanout So I will choose a good spot to cut the cast iron, preferably close to the 4" Y and redo everything in ABS. Access is not a problem since I am on a perimeter foundation with crawlspace. I actually opened a hole on the floor between two joists so that I have a second, quick access to the plumbing, rather than having to crawl 40 through the normal crawlspace trap door. Seems like I may have to do some structural work under there anyway to repair water damage from an old roof leak (before I bought the house), but that is another challenge for the structural forum. So, now another plumbing question is how far from its current vent can I move the tub without having to also relocate the vent? Because, if I, say, wanted to move the drain on the opposite side of the tub, the new drain would now be 5 feet from the current vent. I seem to have read that 5 is the limit as to how far the drain can be from its vent. Is that right?

@pennydesign, This question is based on another plan that I'm considering where I would keep a bath/shower combo in my main bathroom, but then add an esnuite to my master bedroom with a small dedictated shower: In this layout, I would only have room for a 15" deep vanity if I want 26" between a standard 32" tub and the vanity (so every inch counts). I could move the wall behind the vanity as a last resort if needed, but I'm trying to find a way to work within the existing footprint (which is why I'm looking at a 28" wide tub). Another alternative is to put the tub along the left wall with the window, but I'm not too keen on this idea because: I don't think I'd like to shower in front of a window that faces the street, especially at night time :S I don't think I'd want to deal with cleaning waterproof blinds that get wet all the time I don't really like the idea of frosting the window so that I can't see out any more

Handyman here. Just replaced a shower valve today with different circumstances, but similar to what OP is talking about. My 2 cents: 1. Trades people will most likely charge more than you think they should. This is due to many of the things people already mentioned in this thread, but also because you bought the material. Trades people often have products they like to work with because they are familiar with them. Familiar with how they install, how they perform, how they function. When you provide materials, you also remove one of the ways they pay for their cost of doing business - markups. You can judge the practice of marking up however you'd like (just like some people don't like tipping), but its standard throughout every trade you are ever going to hire. Some people are transparent about it, some are secretive. Either way, it's how everyone pays for the cost of providing any semblance of a guarantee. 2. There will always be a spread of cost for the trades. Think of it compared to a whole house - at some point, someone is going to build a house that is less expensive in order to sell it faster or more often. The only way to do that, is to compromise somewhere. That price compromise can happen in the quality, profit margin, or speed. The race to the bottom sinks all ships. When you undercut the markets evolved price, you cannibalize small business (think about Amazon compared to small local boutique shops, toy stores, or anything non-chain). If you take a loss, you wont stay in business. If you hide cost cutting measures, like hidden poor workmanship or speedily done work that will not last, you might win in the short term, but your reviews and your customers will reflect that over time. If you are able to outlast everyone else, run at a loss, and own the whole industry - well thats not good for anyone except you. 3. Costing more often means more value. The person may have been a poor salesman, but I would wager that they provided more than their competitor - cleanliness, documentation, warranty/guarantee, etc. 4. Understand that often a quick quote will be some standardized cost that the company or person is confident they can make a reasonable profit with over time. This may mean that jobs like yours, while simple seeming to you, sometimes are more complicated than anticipated. Yours may not have been, but the next one down the road might take a whole day and they would loose money. The subsidized model is similar to the way insurance companies price their products - obviously different in other ways since it's not a subscription model. To those other people in the thread saying things like: "spare me the overhead' or "its on youtube, DIY it" or "my friends a master and says it should cost this" You should be cautious when telling other people how to run their business. Your assuredness and sometimes smug responses, while protected by the anonymity or distance of online communication, it doesn't protect you from forming poor mental habits filled with logical fallacies. You come across as arrogant and ignorant. Imagine everyone one you've ever met in your life - that's a garbage sample size from which to pull an opinion when you speak to the crowd of the world online.