What a Full Bathroom Remodel in Iona Actually Involves, and What It Costs
A full bathroom remodeling in Iona means taking a bathroom down to the studs and subfloor and rebuilding everything: new shower or tub surround, new vanity and countertop, new flooring, new toilet, new lighting and exhaust fan, and often reconfiguring the layout. In Iona, most of these jobs run $9,000-$28,000 and take three to six weeks from demo to final walkthrough. That range assumes dry-season scheduling and a straight swap of fixtures in the same footprint. If you’re moving plumbing or chasing post-Ian structural surprises, the timeline and budget adjust accordingly. Call (844) 638-7249 and we’ll walk through what your specific bathroom needs.
How We Build a Full Bathroom Remodel, Stage by Stage
Day 1-3: Demolition and Discovery
We shut off water, cap supply lines, protect the rest of your house with floor runners and zip walls, then strip everything to framing. This is when we see what the walls haven’t been telling you. In Iona’s canal-front homes especially, we find concealed moisture damage behind original 1970s-1990s tile, swollen drywall from slow plumbing leaks, or corroded galvanized supply lines that need to be replaced before we can move forward. You’ll make exactly one decision during this phase: whether to proceed as planned or adjust scope based on what we find. We won’t ask you to guess, we’ll show you photos and give you a fixed price for any additional work before we touch it.
Days 3-10: Rough-In and Inspections
With the room open, our plumber re-routes supply and drain lines for the new layout (if you’re moving a shower or vanity, this is the phase that takes the longest). Our electrician pulls new circuits for lighting, exhaust fans, and GFCI outlets, and we add blocking in the walls wherever you’ll mount grab bars, towel bars, or a wall-hung vanity. A Lee County building inspector visits at this stage to sign off on the rough plumbing, electrical, and mechanical before we close any walls. In Iona, the inspection schedule depends on Lee County Building Department volume, which has been heavier since Hurricane Ian restoration projects began stacking up. We book inspections as early as the permit is pulled to avoid gaps.
Days 10-18: Drywall, Waterproofing, and Tile Prep
We hang moisture-resistant drywall (green board or cement board, depending on local code and the zone), then waterproof every surface that will see water. For showers, we use a full waterproofing membrane system, not just a pan liner, because Iona’s humidity demands more than bare-minimum moisture management. Tile backer goes up, the shower pan is poured and sloped, and any tub gets set and leveled. You’ll finalize grout color and tile layout pattern before we start mixing thin-set. This is the phase where material lead times from brands like Kohler or custom vanity shops can add a week if the selections weren’t confirmed earlier, so we front-load those decisions in week one.
Days 18-30: Tile, Trim, and Fixtures
Tile comes first, starting with floors, then shower walls, then the backsplash if you’re doing one behind the vanity. We let everything cure fully before grouting. Then we hang the vanity, set the countertop, mount mirrors, install lighting trim, and connect the toilet and plumbing fixtures. The glass enclosure for the shower gets measured now and installed roughly a week later, once fabrication is done. You’ll see the bathroom start to look like a finished room again, and we’ll ask you to do a walkthrough before the last punch list so we catch any grout haze or caulk gaps while we’re still on site daily.
Days 30-38: Punch List, Final Inspection, and Handoff
Our project lead walks the whole room with a checklist: every drawer opens smoothly, every valve works, the fan draws correctly, the caulk lines are clean, the floor is level. The Lee County inspector returns for the final sign-off, we remove our protection, and we clean the bathroom top to bottom. You get a written record of every fixture and finish installed, and the clock starts on the 730-Day Done Right Promise. If anything isn’t right, you call the same number you’ve had since day one and a live person answers, 24/7.
The Options You’ll Choose Between for a Full Bathroom Remodeling in Iona
- Shower system vs. tub-and-shower combo. A walk-in shower with a frameless glass enclosure creates an open look and is easier to age into. A tub keeps resale value for homes with young families. Keeping the existing tub footprint saves on plumbing labor. Moving or enlarging the shower adds two to five days and typically $1,500-$4,000 in plumbing and tile costs.
- Tile selection. Porcelain is the workhorse. Porcelain tile handles Iona’s humidity and occasional standing water better than natural stone, costs less per square foot, and won’t need resealing. Large-format tiles (12×24 or larger) mean fewer grout lines to clean but require flatter walls and a more experienced installer. Glass mosaic accents add visual punch but cost more in both material and labor per square foot.
- Vanity: stock, semi-custom, or full custom. A stock vanity from a home center works if the footprint is standard and you want the project moving fast. Semi-custom lets you choose door style, finish, and countertop separately. A full custom vanity, built to exact dimensions with dovetail drawers and soft-close hardware, uses every inch of a tricky Iona bathroom layout but adds $1,200-$3,500 over stock and takes three to five weeks to fabricate.
- Countertop surface. Quartz resists staining, never needs sealing, and handles the moisture swings of a Florida bathroom better than marble. Solid-surface materials like Corian offer a seamless look with integrated sinks. Granite is less common in wet rooms now because it’s porous and needs regular sealing, but it’s still an option if the look fits the rest of the house.
- Ventilation and lighting. A bathroom in Iona without a properly sized exhaust fan will grow mold, period. We spec fans with at least 80 CFM for a standard full bath, and we vent them to the exterior (never into the attic). Lighting runs from recessed LED cans on dimmers to sconce lighting at the mirror, and we pull dedicated circuits so the hair dryer doesn’t trip the lights.
What Full Bathroom Remodeling Costs in Iona, FL
A full bathroom remodeling in Iona typically lands between $9,000 and $28,000. At the low end of that range, you’re keeping every fixture in the same spot, using mid-grade tile and a stock vanity, and not opening any walls that reveal hidden problems. At the high end, you’re reconfiguring the layout, upgrading to a custom vanity with quartz counters, using large-format porcelain or natural stone tile floor-to-ceiling, adding a curbless shower with a frameless glass enclosure, and upgrading wiring and plumbing to current code.
The biggest cost drivers: layout changes (moving a toilet or shower drain adds $2,000-$5,000 in plumbing rough-in and floor work), water damage remediation (replacing rotted subfloor or wall framing found behind old tile in Iona homes, especially those hit by storm surge or slow canal-side moisture intrusion), material grade (the difference between $3/sq ft builder-grade tile and $12/sq ft porcelain with a custom pattern is real), and permit scope (if Lee County requires structural-elevation triggers or a seawall certification for a canal-front property, the project scope can expand before we even open a wall).
Our written estimate for a full bathroom remodeling in Iona includes all labor, materials, fixtures, finishes, and permit fees, itemized by line so you see exactly what you’re paying for. It does not include hidden structural repairs nobody could see until demo (we price those separately if they appear), nor does it include furnishings like mirrors or towel bars beyond what’s in the spec sheet. No change orders without your approval, no surprises at the end. Call (844) 638-7249 for an on-site estimate with real numbers for your bathroom.
What Iona Homes Specifically Do to a Full Bathroom Remodeling
Most of the bathrooms we remodel in Iona sit in 1970s-to-1990s concrete-block homes on slabs, a lot of them on finger canals that drain into the Caloosahatchee. That matters because these homes were built to the elevation standards of their era, not today’s post-Ian FEMA flood requirements. Opening walls in an Iona bathroom often means finding moisture that’s been migrating upward through the slab for decades, or discovering that the original cast-iron drain stack has rusted through below the floor line. Neither is rare. Both change the scope of the job before tile ever touches the wall.
Permits run through the Lee County Building Department, not a municipal city hall, and the department is still working through the volume of substantial-improvement reviews that Hurricane Ian triggered across the Iona corridor. For a canal-front property especially, we sometimes need a marine engineer’s seawall certification before the county will issue the building permit. That’s a step out-of-market contractors miss entirely, and it can add two to three weeks if it isn’t lined up before demo starts. We know the drill, we know the inspectors who work this side of the county, and we don’t get delayed by surprises that a local team sees coming from the first site visit.
Construction seasons are real here. We schedule full bathroom remodels in Iona between October and May whenever possible, because summer-afternoon thunderstorms can roll in fast and saturate any exposed framing or freshly poured shower pan before we can get a tarp up. A lot of homeowners pair a full bathroom remodel with other post-storm hardening work. We’ve had clients in Iona tackle a Roof Replacement & Installation in Iona at the same time, or add impact-rated windows and doors, because once you’re living through a renovation, it often makes sense to group the disruption and get the house to current storm code in one campaign. Some also coordinate with Roof Repair in Iona if the bathroom moisture issue traces back to a roof leak rather than a plumbing one.
If the scope of work in the bathroom is part of a larger interior overhaul, it may roll up into a broader Bathroom Remodeling in Iona project that touches multiple baths, or a whole-home renovation plan. Our Bathroom Remodeling crew works across Lee County and knows the specific demands of Iona homes: low-slab elevations, corrosive coastal air, and a building department that expects documentation proving you’re not accidentally triggering a mandatory flood-elevation requirement on a property the county already considers substantially damaged.
Serving Iona, FL - Our Local Coverage Area
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Frequently Asked Questions About Full Bathroom Remodeling in Iona
Three to six weeks is the realistic window, start to finish. A straight fixture swap in the same footprint with a stock vanity and standard tile is closer to three weeks. Reconfiguring the layout, waiting on a custom vanity, or addressing hidden water damage pushes it toward six. Permitting through Lee County adds time if the property needs a seawall certification or if the inspector’s schedule is backed up after a storm season. We book the rough and final inspections as early as the system allows to keep things moving.
Yes. If you’re moving plumbing, altering electrical circuits, or changing the structural layout of a bathroom in unincorporated Lee County, you need a building permit with plumbing, electrical, and mechanical sub-permits. Iona properties that fall into the post-Ian substantial-improvement threshold may also trigger a FEMA compliance review, which is a separate conversation we have with the building department before we pull the permit. We pull every permit the job requires, and our work passes inspection. No shortcuts.
That is usually the fastest, most cost-effective path. Keeping the toilet, shower, and vanity in the same locations saves significant plumbing labor and avoids breaking into the slab. In Iona homes from the 1970s-1990s, the existing cast-iron or galvanized drain lines often need replacement anyway, so we sometimes replace the stack in-place without moving the fixture locations. It’s the best balance of modern materials and a contained budget.
Our 730-Day Done Right Promise covers all workmanship: tile that cracks or delaminates, grout that fails, plumbing that leaks, fixtures we installed that don’t perform as specified. If it isn’t right, we make it right. Manufacturer warranties on fixtures, tile, and vanities run separately and vary by brand, and we register every product for you so the warranty is active from day one. A live person answers when you call, 24/7, so you never wait through a voicemail maze when something needs attention.
Plan for $9,000-$28,000 depending on size, layout changes, material grade, and the condition of what’s behind the walls. A mid-range bathroom (standard footprint, porcelain tile, semi-custom vanity, quartz countertop) typically lands around $15,000-$20,000 in Iona. If the home is on a canal and has moisture history, we recommend setting aside an additional 10-15% contingency for concealed repair work that may surface during demo. A free on-site estimate gives you a written, line-by-line price for your actual space. Call (844) 638-7249 to schedule one.
Get a Free Estimate for Full Bathroom Remodeling in Iona
We’ll walk your bathroom, listen to what you want, take measurements, and hand you a written estimate with real numbers, not a ballpark. No pressure, no vague promises, just a plan and a price from someone who knows Iona homes. Call (844) 638-7249 to schedule the walkthrough. A live person answers, day or night, and we’ll have someone at your door ready to talk materials, timeline, and the exact steps we’ll take to turn your bathroom into the room you’ve been wanting.
Written by Derek Hollenbeck, Owner at Groundwork Construction Co., serving homeowners across Lee County with upfront pricing and a 730-Day Done Right Promise.