What I done in the past is to place a heavy tarp or a small lite rug the size of the tub in the tub and tape it to the tops of the tub so that when tiles fall they hit they land on the tarp or rug. Otherwise, you can use plywood sheets 1/2" or thicker on top to cover the tub too. Plywood works the best because you can stand on it and it is level. Just need to know if you have shower sliding doors or not! If you do; you need to remove them before the tiling begins. You can still do it without protection if take the wall tiles out one by one if they are small size tiles and remove them by hand. Good luck!

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?"

"It depends." The catch-all answer, eh? But it does. It's a case where you may need to open up some of the structure and do a little exploratory investigation. The rough plumbing for your existing drain lines (traps and pitched drain lines) may very well already be contained within the depth of the floor's joists bays, and the added elevation of the tub/shower was simply for design. That would be a good thing. If for whatever reason your traps and drain lines could not be placed in the joist bays and that is why the entire system is elevated, that could be an issue. Unless this is a first floor (it's not) or on a slab (it's not) you should be able to accommodate your proposed changes. Without doing any demolition, about the only thing I can offer is to go downstairs in the room underneath your bathroom. Check out that ceiling. If you have a stud finder, try to map out the joist pattern in the first floor ceiling. They will be the same as the floor joists in the bathroom floor under the tub and shower. If you find a pattern or regularly sized and spaced joists, with the edges roughly 1-1/2" wide and with the joists spaced 16" or 19+" on-center, all should be well. If wood I-joists were used in teh framing, their flanges might be wider than the standard 1-1/2" width of the edge of a joist. If you find something substantially wider, say 4-1/2" or 6" wide, there may be a beam buried in there. And as a remote guess, also look for air conditioning or heating registers. Perhaps there is a duct installed in one of the framing bays. That's a wild card though. It's very common for tubs to be elevated on a platform pedestal, it can be for nothing more than design, or it can be for improved sight lines out a window when sitting in the tub. But it's not common to elevate a complete shower. Good luck!

I think it is a matter of considering all the possible ways you may want to use the room. If you have kids that currently take showers, will you still be in the same house when/if they have children. Do you ever have friends/relatives with small children visiting. Or are you likely to have a guest staying for an extended period. How likely is it that the plans for the master bath could fall through, leaving you without a tub for a longer period. I never use a bathtub, but needed the guestroom tub the other day when a visiting two year old unexpectedly needed a good wash. Those would be the issues for me.