A tub-to-shower conversion with no grout lines anywhere

A West Seattle rental with a reglazed tub that was already failing again. Instead of tile, we finished it in microcement — continuous across the walls, the pan and the floor, with nothing for mildew to get into.

August 1, 2026

4 min read

By Mike Mune, Lead Contractor

Finished microcement walk-in shower with frameless glass panel and no grout lines

Table of Contents

This is some text inside of a div block.

The tub had been reglazed once to buy time, and the time was up. That's the normal cycle on a rental: reglaze, wait, reglaze again. The property manager wanted to stop paying for the same repair.

Before: a dated tub-shower combo with a failing reglaze in a West Seattle rental — Before — a reglazed tub-shower combo, failing again.

The plumbing question underneath the finish question

A tub-to-shower conversion means a real shower pan, and a real pan means a mortar bed sloped to the drain, a PVC liner under it, and a flood test before anything goes on top of it. We filled it and left it 24 hours.

That test is the whole job. If it fails later you're opening a finished bathroom back up.

Building the mortar-bed shower pan and waterproofing before the 24-hour flood test — Mortar-bed pan, PVC liner, then a 24-hour flood test.

Microcement instead of tile

Two coats on the shower walls, carried straight across the pan and out onto the bathroom floor, so there's no threshold and no transition strip — one continuous surface. A matte polyurethane topcoat over it to seal it.

First coats of microcement going onto the shower walls — First coats of microcement.

Why people ask about it: no grout lines

Not fewer. None. Grout is where a shower ages — it stains, it cracks, it holds mildew, and eventually someone regrouts it. There's nothing to regrout here, and nothing to scrub out of. On a rental that's a maintenance line item that just disappears.

We finished the vanity countertop in the same material to match, swapped the faucet and pulls to matte black, and framed the mirror in light oak. A frameless glass panel instead of a sliding door and its track — the track being the other thing in a rental bathroom nobody can ever get clean.

Is microcement right for your bathroom?

Straight answer, because it isn't for every bathroom.

Good for it: a seamless look, no grout maintenance, small rooms that benefit from an unbroken surface, and rentals where upkeep is the real cost.

Worth knowing: it's a hand-applied finish, so it's a specialist job, not a material you swap in at the last minute. It needs the same waterproofing underneath that tile does — the finish isn't the waterproofing.

Tile is still the answer if you want a pattern, a specific stone look, or the lowest cost per square foot.

Three weeks, start to finish.

Built by Emerald City Repairs — completed as a subcontractor for DuetRight, Seattle.