The Dos and Don'ts of a Bathroom Remodel

[Chance]

Just my 2 cents, but the first thing I would do to stay on budget would be to stop calling it a remodel.

Yeah, I caught that. It's definitely not a full remodel - we don't want a full remodel and couldn't afford one at the moment anyway.

[Dagga Boy]

So......my bathroom needed to be gutted to the studs, and found out the floor needed to be completely redone. I LOVE my bathroom now, but it was expensive. The biggest thing to be prepared for when you have a great contractor is when you have one who knows how to do things right, be prepared to find a lot wrong and massive corners cut when the house was built and what is going on in places the original builders could cut costs and corners without it being seen or caught. My girlfriends mom just went through this as well when dealing with a slab leak. Work was terrible and the folks who put her new bathroom in took several times to get it right. Again, just be prepared for it not to be in budget and for problems and delays.

[hufnagel]

2 weeks is a lie.
3 weeks is a lie.
4 weeks is barely close to right.
expect the unexpected will screw up the time table.
if you find something is wrong and/or sketchy when you finish the tear out, fix it. blow the deadline to do the job right.
make sure whatever help you get/hire knows, you want it right... not RIGHT NOW!
you WILL see every minor flaw and fuck up for the rest of your life... even if no one else ever does.
you WILL have days where you do 10 minutes worth of work and can't do anything else. It's called tile. Let it sit and set up properly before you do your next steps, or you WILL fuck it up.

That's about all I remember from our laundry and bathroom remodel (which was only supposed to be the laundry room, but as I said the unexpected popped up and well, the bathroom had to come out too!)

[Dagga Boy]

2 weeks is a lie.
3 weeks is a lie.
4 weeks is barely close to right.
expect the unexpected will screw up the time table.
if you find something is wrong and/or sketchy when you finish the tear out, fix it. blow the deadline to do the job right.
make sure whatever help you get/hire knows, you want it right... not RIGHT NOW!
you WILL see every minor flaw and fuck up for the rest of your life... even if no one else ever does.
you WILL have days where you do 10 minutes worth of work and can't do anything else. It's called tile. Let it sit and set up properly before you do your next steps, or you WILL fuck it up.

That's about all I remember from our laundry and bathroom remodel (which was only supposed to be the laundry room, but as I said the unexpected popped up and well, the bathroom had to come out too!)

A lot of truth right here.

[Rich@CCC]

Just another $0.02 to throw in there.

At least in my area, STAY AWAY FROM Lowe's and Home Depot installations. Buy your materials from them, sure. NEVER HIRE AN INSTALLATION THROUGH THEM!

You will get screwed!!!!

The people they send out don't care and have probably never done the specific job you are looking for. You should see the mess I am trying to clean up for my Mother. She bought laminate flooring and had it installed through Lowe's. They priced the finish trim with the installation. The trim work is absolutely unacceptable by any standard and after inspection about 100sqft of the flooring has to be replaced because of the trim installation. I have spent many, many hours on the phone trying to get this taken care of and still have no idea when it will be fixed. I'm about 2 minutes from filing a small claims suite on this.


BTW, This is one of at least a dozen stories I could tell you along the same line. Electricians being sent out to do plumbing work. Estimators showing up without a tape measure or pencil. Etc.

[txdpd]

With the housing boom in DFW, if you don't already have a relationship with a good work crew, you're really rolling the dice without a contractor. There's such a shortage of labor that there's little incentive to take single jobs, complete the work or fix mistakes, and there's little in the way a repercussions for doing shoddy work. Biting the hand that feed them a snack is a lot different than biting the hand that feeds them meals.

[hufnagel]

speaking of stores... consider a tile shop for your tile needs. I went to a local tile store and found they had much better selection, better products over all, pricing was a little higher but not astronomically, their staff spent a couple hours total talking with me about my project, helped recommend what products to use for install, HOW to use said products correctly, and overall added positively to the project. I'm not saying every one will be like that, but it's worth a look.

[Cookie Monster]

Good advise to have 10 to 25% more saved than the estimate. You always find stuff.

[hufnagel]

If the OP wants, I'll tell the laundry/bathroom story.
It involves turning a door into a window, a window into a door, a floor out of level, a cracked joist (from when the house was originally built too!), a rotted sub floor around a toilet, rotted sub floors from leaking washing machines (even before I moved in!), and moving or touching every mechanical system in the house (water, gas, electric, DWV.) A 3 week project became 8 weeks, and we literally got it finished the day before our big annual Halloween party. I lost count of the number of times we'd peel back a layer and find more shit wrong and have to fix it.

[Darth_Uno]

True, we also have in our contracts a phrase along the lines of “price reflects assumption of suitable existing structure and mechanical systems. Contractor is not responsible for repair or replacement of unsuitable existing components found during project”.

Believe me, I’ve seen it all. You start tearing into the walls and you never know what you’ll find.


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