Salt Lake City's older neighborhoods, from the Avenues and Capitol Hill to Yalecrest and the bungalow blocks around Sugar House, are full of houses built with lath and plaster walls, cast iron drains, and galvanized steel supply lines. Those materials lasted a long time, which is exactly why so many of them are still in service. Once a wall opens, the picture gets clearer. Galvanized pipe narrows with scale until the shower loses pressure every time someone runs a faucet elsewhere in the house, vent lines turn out to be undersized, and the framing was never blocked for anything you would want to hang on it today. None of that is alarming. It is simply what a bathroom of that era looks like on the inside.
The way to handle it is to look early rather than late. A contractor who works on pre-war houses will open a small test area, confirm what the supply lines and drain are actually made of, and tell you what is there before demolition is finished. From that point you get to decide. You can replace the galvanized run back to a sound connection, or leave it and live with the pressure you have. Either answer can be the right one for your house. What matters is that the choice gets made in daylight, in writing, with you in the conversation, instead of being discovered halfway through and handled by phone while your only shower sits in pieces.
A house with one bathroom is a fundamentally different project than a house with two, and it should be planned that way from the first conversation. With a spare bath, a slow week is an inconvenience. With one bath, every day the toilet is out is a day your household is working around it. That changes what good scheduling looks like. Tile, the shower valve, the vanity, the toilet, and the light fixtures should all be sitting in the garage before anyone swings a hammer, because a single back-ordered item stops the whole room. Ask any contractor you talk to how they sequence a single-bathroom job, and listen for a specific answer rather than a reassuring one.
The practical sequence runs demolition, rough plumbing and electrical, inspection where the work requires it, waterproofing, tile, then fixtures and trim. A good crew will reset a working toilet at the earliest safe point rather than leaving it out for the full run, and will tell you honestly which days you will need a shower somewhere else. Many households line up a family member, a neighbor, or a gym for that stretch and find it far easier than expected once it is planned instead of improvised. If you want help finding contractors who work this way in older Salt Lake City homes, call 801-644-9000 and we will point you toward them.
The old mortar-bed showers in these houses were genuinely well built. A thick floated bed over wire lath, a sloped pan, tile set by someone who did it every day. They were not cheap work, and that craftsmanship is why they are still standing. But a shower pan is a wear item, and after enough decades it reaches the end of its service life no matter how carefully it was made. The signs are consistent: tile that sounds hollow near the curb, grout at the base that never dries out, a soft spot at the threshold, or a faint stain on the ceiling of the room below. Once those appear, patching the surface only buys time.
It helps to understand that the tile was never the waterproofing. The membrane behind and beneath it does that job, and when the membrane fails, the failure shows up years later as soft framing or a stained ceiling rather than a visible drip. A rebuilt shower today uses a sheet or liquid-applied membrane, a properly sloped pan, and a bonded drain assembly, all of which get flood tested before a single tile goes on. Original floor tile elsewhere in the room can sometimes be preserved if the field is sound and the work stays out of it, though once the subfloor is opened that answer often changes.
It depends entirely on scope. Replacing a tub and surround in the existing footprint moves faster than a project that relocates fixtures and opens walls. Ask for a written day-by-day sequence before demolition, including which days the toilet will be out of service. Most crews can reset a working toilet partway through. Plan a backup shower for the tile and waterproofing stretch, since that portion cannot be rushed without risking the job.
Not always, but this is the least disruptive moment to do it. Galvanized pipe collects scale on the inside over decades, which is what causes weak shower pressure when another fixture runs. If the run to the bathroom is already exposed, replacing it back to a sound connection is straightforward work. If you leave it, understand that revisiting it later means opening finished tile and drywall you just paid to have installed.
Sometimes, and it is worth asking. An original hex or square floor field in good condition can occasionally stay if the remodel is limited to the shower and the floor is not disturbed. Shower walls are a harder case, because the mortar bed and membrane behind them are usually what needed replacing in the first place. A contractor should assess it in person rather than promising either outcome from photographs.
A few details about the room and the house is all we need to start. Or call 801-644-9000.