The ensuite was standard 1990s builder spec: a corner jetted tub nobody used, a small framed shower, a bulkhead hiding ductwork, and a layout that wasted a third of the floor area. The owners wanted a genuine retreat — a large curbless shower, a freestanding tub, and warmth underfoot.
The brief demanded a full reconfiguration, which meant moving every fixture and doing the waterproofing properly rather than decorating over the old layout.
We gutted the room to the studs and subfloor. The drain moved twice-over: the shower drain shifted to the far wall as a linear drain, and the tub drain moved to the centre of the room for the freestanding unit, both run back to the existing stack with correct venting and inspected before closing. The floor was recessed at the shower by sistering and notching per the engineer’s detail, allowing a true curbless entry. The entire wet zone got a bonded sheet-membrane waterproofing system across floor, walls and banding, flood-tested for 24 hours before a single tile went down. Electrical rough-in added a dedicated circuit for in-floor heat and a ceiling-mounted rain head zone on its own valve.
The challenge was the recessed shower floor: one of the joists under it was doubled from original construction and could not be notched. We reworked the slope plan around it, shifting the linear drain 200 millimetres and re-detailing the pan, keeping the curbless entry without compromising structure.
The finished room reads calm: large-format porcelain, a ten-foot vanity in white oak, warm floors on a timer, and a shower with no step, no door track, and no compromises behind the tile.