OT-Bathroom Renovation
 

Anyone ever gone through this? It sucks!!! We started almost 2 weeks ago and the plumbers are here today (finally). Boy do they make a mess!!! The bathroom is off the kitchen and my kitchen is absolutely covered with a fine dust. So much for cooking lunch... We're way over our original time frame and budget and they aren't helping when they say materials will be well under $100 total and cost me $175 for the initial stuff! On top of the $650 labor charge. They aren't even doing the finish work, just roughing in pipes. I can't wait til this is done!!! Lol who knew a simple bathtub would cause so much hassle. Sorry, just needed a bit of a vent.

We have gone thru the renovation of tiling our bathrooms before. Where we had one bathroom with no toilet for a week while we did the tiling ourselves. Thankfully we still had the other bath in the house touse during that time.

But, hubby wants to remodel our master bath. Its 14 yrs old. Has huge vanity mirrors - wall to wall on 2 walls with the 80's glamour lights over them. He wants to remove the mirrors and lights and put up framed mirrors, new lighting and then resurface the existing cabinets and keep the current countertops (cultured marble with the sinks formed in them).

A couple months (mid April) ago Hubby decided one day that it was time to start that remodel. We head out to some local home decorating stores to look for mirrors but didn't measure the walls first. (duh!) We didn't find anything that we truely loved, so we came back home and I was going to check into buying frames at a frame store and making our own. Same with lighting - the bigbox hardware stores did not have any lighting that jumped out at us, so I went home and looked online.

As I'm on my computer looking at lighting, hubby comes in with his heavy duty suction cups. I ask what he is doing, and he says he wants to see how easy it is to remove the mirrors. (whatver!). A couple mins later he calls me ans asked me to open the outside door. He removed one mirror already. Nothing like starting a project when you aren't even prepared to start!

I found lighting and ordered it, only to have it be backordered until June 1. We found frames and had the first mirror cut to size to go into the frames. Now here it is mid June - bathroom has one wall with no mirror. The lights have arrived and are ready to be installed. But... we are in the process of putting down brick pavers around our pool deck and that is taking up our free home improvement time so the bathroom project is still on hold. Talk about taking longer than expected. At least there isn't dust and broken up plumbing. I just have a bathroom that has one wall that needs drywall repair to it.

They're almost done! I hope...they told me at 3 it'd be another hour. I just can't wait to get them out of my house! They've been really unprofessional about things; they won't speak to me. My husband worked from home today, just in case but he hasn't gotten much work done. It's always something stupid that I'd know the answer to as well but they refuse to ask me anything or listen to anything I have to say. Incredibly aggravating...funny, when they wanted my credit card they spoke to me. It's been a very long day of listening to them grumble about how they aren't getting paid enough to do this job, they don't want to do it, they weren't happy with the quote, etc. I finally got fed up and said that it wasn't my fault they weren't happy with the quote. I signed a contract with them for a set amount and paid a deposit. If they weren't happy with what the partner is charging me take it up with their partner, not with me. And don't stand in my driveway on the phone in a very loud argument over price saying you won't do the work! Deal with it later. On the plus side I'd forgotten I made the most amazing beef barley soup last night with carrots, onion, celery, turnips and parsnips so yay for easy lunch!

THanks for posting prices. I was charged $695 just to replace a 4.5 ft length of copper pipe that leaked by Michael and Sons in Northern Virginia. I thought at the time it was wrong. They doubled the charge of a 3ft repair. I checked later at supply store the pipe would have only been $30 .

I am looking for another contractor for sure to redo my bathroom. And I'm not sick now and can go out and look and get bids.

What do you do for the "pan" at bottom of shower.Did you tile the bottom or use a prefab? My shower doesn't conform to the spec sizes I have seen.

LOL at the guy in a hurry to dig into another remodel project. As long as he follows thru and you get a bathroom back in the end.

Wow! And I thought our labor price was high! I can pretty much list out the price of everything so far for you if it'd help. The rest was in supplies we had purchased like the tub and surround, drywall, etc.

I almost wish I had gotten more contractor bids although I did get an apology from the owner of the company which made me feel a lot better. I was very offended by their language and behavior.

As for the shower, I have 2 different types. My shower upstairs is natural stone tile. It looks like they framed in the shape, on the outside they put dry wall and inside is stone tiles. They also framed in a small ledge or a lip so the water wouldn't leak out and covered that in marble. Then they took smaller tiles to cover the floor. The shower we just took out was prefab, it had a fiberglass (I'm guessing) tray at the bottom then the surround and doors. If you can afford it I really recommend the tile. Ours is just beautiful and I personally didn't like the door on the other one. I felt so closed in but exposed for some reason. I felt people could see in and also anyone could walk in the bathroom and I wouldn't have any clue-when showering your back would be toward the door. Guess I'm a little paranoid though.