One: do the fixtures move?
Keeping the toilet, the sink and the bathing fixture in their existing positions means the rough plumbing largely stays. Move any of them and you are into supply, drain and vent work, often from the floor below, and then into patching.
The toilet is the least forgiving of the three: its drain is large, it needs a specific fall to the stack, and moving it more than a short distance can mean re-routing in the joist bay. A bathroom that keeps its toilet and moves a sink is a different job from one that reorganises the room.
Two: what is behind the walls
This is the largest unknown in any bathroom and the reason nobody honest quotes one from a photograph. Bathrooms are wet rooms that have often been wet in the wrong places for years.
What turns up regularly: a soft subfloor at the toilet flange, rot in the framing behind the tub surround, a failed shower pan that has been leaking into the ceiling below, galvanised supply piping at the end of its life, and no vent fan at all.
A scope that does not state what happens when those are found — with a unit rate, not "as needed" — is a scope that will produce a change-order conversation halfway through.
Three: what the bathing fixture is
A replacement tub in the existing footprint is the contained option. A tub-to-shower conversion depends on whether the drain moves. A tiled shower with a custom pan is more work than a pre-formed base. A curbless or wet-room shower means recessing or building up the floor structure, and that is a framing job as much as a tile job.
None of these is the right answer generally. They are different products, and the honest version of this conversation names which one you are buying.
Four: tile area and pattern, not tile price
Tile is labour. A floor and a tub surround is one thing; floor, full-height walls, a niche, a bench, a curbless threshold and a mosaic in a herringbone pattern is several times the labour in the same room.
Pattern drives it hard. Large-format tile in a straight lay is fast; small mosaics, herringbone, chevron and anything mitred at an outside corner is slow and skilled. Material tier moves the total far less than either.
Five: bringing the room up to current code
Old bathrooms routinely lack things current code requires: a GFCI-protected circuit, a dedicated circuit where one is needed, a proper exhaust fan ducted to the outside rather than into the attic, and correct clearances around the toilet and in front of the shower.
This is not optional, it is not padding, and it is a common reason an apparently cheap quote is cheap. Ask directly whether the electrical and the ventilation are in the scope.
Why we do not publish a bathroom price
Because the five items above move it more than the size of the room does, and the largest of them is not visible until demolition. A published range would be right for someone and wrong for you, and the person it is wrong for is the one who budgets from it.
What we give instead: a free walkthrough across Maryland and Northern Virginia and a written line-item scope — demolition, subfloor and framing repair with a unit rate, plumbing, electrical and ventilation to code, waterproofing named by method and product, the bathing fixture by model, tile with its layout and area, and cleanup. That is a document you can hand to any other contractor and get a comparable number back, which is the point.
Get it looked at, free
We inspect across Maryland — Montgomery, Prince George's, Howard, Anne Arundel, Frederick, Carroll and Baltimore counties. Free inspection, photo report within 24 hours, and the report is yours to keep whether or not you hire us.