You’re talking 20-40K to do all of what you want. You are really talking a gut to the studs and redo everything. This isn’t at all s minor job. A tile shower is more upscale than plastic, and comes with an upscale cost. Moving any drain slab means cutting through the concrete and digging out bow the slab. That’s always big money. If the house has a post tension slab foundation, it’s virtually impossible to move a big drain like a toilet. The tensioned cables will be in the way, and those can NOT be touched. You have to X-ray everything just to see if it might be remotely possible.

Okay, so we won't be moving the toilet. I still think we have enough room perhaps to change the bathtub to a walk-in shower, although it may be a bit tight. Still, this is what Kevin wants, and I would like to do it for $5K-$6K at the most. If the costs are too high, I will leave my bathroom as it is for now, as I am okay with it and can take showers in the odd shaped tub.

Here are photos of my bathroom in the CC house:

The door to the left of the bathtub is to the W/C.

As posted above, the issue is cost as there is enough room to convert from a tub/shower to a walk in shower. I just finished a gut remodel and did this - the size of the shower follows the footprint of the original tub and is fine with me.

However, although I don't know the final costs because I did two bathrooms plus a kitchen which required plumbing and tile work I can guarantee that the final cost of just the shower was in excess of $6,000.

There is demo; the drain for a shower is different than for a tub/shower; there are the new plumbing fixtures; there is the cost for the material - both what you see (tiles for floor and walls) and what you don't see - waterproofing.

Then there is the actual construction of the shower and a shower is probably one of the most critical components so you need to have it built by skilled labor - both for the water proofing and for the tile.

There is also the door - most new showers have frameless glass but of course you could save money by going with a curtain.

There are less expensive prefab showers which are cheaper because they simplify labor costs.

You didn't ask but you would also need to consider how to access the controls since they are now in a wall that is partially obstructed by the toilet. It seems a bit cumbersome to turn on the shower leaning over the toilet and then get into the shower. Most shower controls are located at the egress spot.

A tub to shower conversion is 8-16K Plastic and a shower curtain, to tile with glass, to stone with low iron glass. You rip everything out and start over with all new plumbing. A new drain location. New valves. Straighten out the framing. And hire someone With a clue about proper waterproofing, if you want tile.

Measure stud-to-stud in the shower alcove and hope that you actually have 60". In that case, you can find Kohler cast iron or acrylic shower bases with a left or right drain as a tub replacement. You might consider moving your shower valve and shower head to the open side so you don't have to reach behind the toilet. We just did that in our remodel and the cost for the plumber to install the shower pan, move the plumbing, and install the valve was less than $800 in the Portland area. Another reason we chose to move the valve and shower head was because you can only do bypass doors with the valve on the toilet wall. Now we can either do a stationary panel with a sliding door or a hinged shower door.

We only used a GC for the shower portion--he demo'd the shower, prepped the studs, and provided and supervised the tile setter. We used his plumber for the shower. We removed the vanity ourselves. We special-ordered the new vanity through a kitchen and bath cabinet store and installed it ourselves. The flooring company installed the tile floor but you may need someone to demo your tile--we only had sheet vinyl and the flooring installers removed that. The granite company installed the counter and sink. Our regular plumber hooked up the faucet and installed the toilet. The glass company who installs the shower door can also make us a mirror if we decide to go that route. So we avoided a GC mark-up on everything except the shower.

If you shorten the vanity, your toilet won't be centered in the opening.
You can save money on a vanity by keeping it simple, using fewer,
larger drawers, plainer door style, etc. But the cheapest way is to buy a
vanity with a counter and sink as a package. Fabricating a countertop
in quartz or granite is expensive--even with using a remnant, our
counter cost $1200 for a 60" single-sink counter.

When we close on the house, we will get estimates for doing just the tub to walk-in shower conversion. My brother wants to do his conversion no matter what the cost, but I have a limit on what I will want to spend on converting mine, and right now I would prefer to stay under $6K, if possible. I have to look at it again and see how much I hate the plastic tub surround. My brother definitely wants me to do my conversion at the same time that he is doing his, and we have the money to do the project. We may have to cut back on trips to Europe or other locations, but we will just spend our vacations in Coachella Valley instead. Kevin really likes the area, and I've always liked it also, and I think I will like it even more once we have our own private pool.

While we will be renting the house via AirBnB or VRBO most of the time, we do also plan to spend quite a bit of time there ourselves and want to make it something that we love. We are not concerned with resale value of what we are doing, and our agent has told us that the conversion from tubs to walk-in showers will appeal to renters in the area, especially since we will be renting to adults only. We might not make the money back in increased rental value, but our main concern is how we feel when we are there.

I like what Jonathan Strattan did in south Santa Ana, and even his pool is very similar to ours.

We are definitely going to hold off on changing the vanities, as they are inoffensive to us.

What is under the floor - concrete slab or wood?

To convert to a shower you must increase the drain to 2" (its probably 1.5" now) because you no longer have the tub acting as a buffer for excess water. This might be fairly simple if its a wood framed floor, but gets way more complicated if all the pipes are in a concrete slab.

I haven't seen them used in a while, but there used to be large cultured marble panels that could be used to create a shower surround. Basically you just installed a pre-made shower pan, and then glued and caulked in the three side panels to create the enclosure. They were much thicker and heavier than the plastic prefab side panels, and actually looked pretty good if you picked the right pattern.

Bruce

I think you will be fine with just doing the to shower conversion. If you feel you need a couple more inches, replace that elongated toilet with a round one.

We went from tub/shower to walk in shower last year and love it!

Best $ we ever spent! Don’t have a great before pic, but our bathroom is long and narrow. When you walk in everything is on your left, shower, vanity and then toilet. Wall on right side. Walls were tiled3/4 of the way up with 4” tiles. Lots of dry wall had to be replaced.

I don't know what is under the floor, but I suspect that it is a concrete slab, since all the floors are tile. I do not like concrete slabs (and I do not have that in Los Angeles), but I have to take what I can get in Cathedral City. Most neighborhoods there seem to have been built as developments and the houses look very similar in each development, but not identical. Still, I don't think there is much choice for picking what foundation a house there has.

One thing I want for my own shower (not sure about my brother) is separate controls for temperature and flow. I installed this in my bathroom here:

This is off topic, but I feel it must be pointed out.

“We will not allow children in the rental, and that is pretty standard in this neighborhood.”

Ah, so the entire neighborhood is violating Fair Housing Laws? How can they all be doing this? Are you getting sold something by the realtor?

If you check AirBnB and VRBO listings in the area, you will see that many of them require the renters to be at least 25 years old. There are also communities in the area where you must be at least 55 to live. Short-term rentals have different regulations than long-term rentals.

I think the "renters over 25" refers to the actual renter, not their children. I'd look carefully at anti-discrimination laws to see if you can actually exempt children from your rental:

https://www.allpropertymanagement.com/blog/post/remember-these-things-when-renting-to-families-with-children/

The VRBO listings that I have seen for Cathedral City almost all say that all occupants must be at least 25 years old, but some say 21. My real estate agent said that other clients of his have put this stipulation into their rental agreements. I'll check with a VRBO agent in CC to make sure.

I still think that stipulation is to prevent teenagers and young adults from renting houses for parties, but it will be interesting to see what your agent says.

https://airhostsforum.com/t/it-could-be-risky-to-say-no-children-in-your-airbnb-listing/9446

I think AirBnB is different from VRBO, and so we may use VRBO, which might require me to be the agent. If one is using an agent for the rental, then it is illegal for the agent to deny children, but if the owner is the agent and owns fewer than three rental properties, then the owner can restrict his property to adults only.

Cathedral City is not really a place that children would want to go - in fact, the owners of the house are selling it because their children refuse to visit there. If we have to offer it to children, I will raise the amount of the deposit, refuse to allow pets (which is perfectly legal), and offer it as a two-bedroom instead of three. The third bedroom is an office at the moment, and so I can easily list it as two-bedroom. I don't want a crowd of people there at one time anyway, and as a two-bedroom, no more than four people would be allowed to occupy it, by CC regulations. We do not need the extra money from six vs four people, but we do need some income from this property, since I am retired.

We will, however, be interested in renting to people who attend the Coachella Festival, and the rents for that time period are the highest, but everything still gets booked solid.

My sister's stepson in Austin owns several houses (that his father bought for him), and he makes $30K during SXSW. Kevin and I make a point of avoiding visiting our sister during this time, even though it is close to Kevin's birthday in March, and March plus October are the nicest months in Austin for weather. Our nephew had the great consideration to have his wedding in October, and so we went to Texas for that, but our niece had hers the first week in August, and I refused to go, although Kevin did, despite the 110° weather with 90% humidity.