Managing Your Bathroom Remodel

Thinking about remodeling your bathroom? On the fence about whether you need a professional contractor or not?

Managing your bathroom remodel is a challenge, which is why many professional contractors don’t even get it right. But if you’re not used to all the moving parts and personnel involved in a bathroom remodel, you might want to read this first before you decide to take the reins yourself.

Who’s in Charge?

While many homeowners are tempted to tackle their bathroom improvements solo, anything more than the bare basics can quickly turn into a massive headache. That’s where professional contractors come in.

And as it turns out, hiring a contractor is often cheaper than managing a remodeling project by yourself.  Especially if you prepare accordingly. That’s because contractors often earn discounts for bulk purchasing materials that just aren’t available to the average buyer.

Professionals have also undergone thorough training, so you can be sure home remodeling contractors want to see your bathroom remodel succeed as much as you do.

Managing Your Remodeling Team

Remodeling a bathroom needs many more experts than you might think—various tradesmen, designers, project managers—there are a lot of moving parts that can be daunting, if not impossible, for most homeowners to oversee (while still keeping your sanity).

Here are just a few of the pros that a good contractor will manage for you…

Electricians. Like any room in your home, your bathroom’s walls are filled with electrical wires. An incorrect hole here or there can cause disaster, even floods or fires in your home. Bathrooms are even more tricky since the room is so small, and acts as an intersection of multiple water pipes and electrical wires.

Electricians might need to install brand new outlets with your new floor plan, which is a lot trickier than it sounds.

Plumbers. Plumbing isn’t just “pipes and water.” Good plumbers have years and years of experience, and installing new pipes and water fixtures is best left to a professional. Like electrical work, this is an area where you really, really shouldn’t do the work yourself unless you know what you’re doing.

Cabinet professionals design, you guessed it, custom cabinets and tweak stock models to better suit your needs. Cabinet pros properly fit pieces in your bathroom to fit the rest of your project’s floor plan.

Tile professionals are experts at the tiny cuts needed for truly extraordinary tiling, and are adept at preparing your bathroom floor for tons of foot traffic. The best tile pros can even install heated flooring.

Carpenters are often necessary to make tweaks and additional upgrades in bathroom projects, such as trimwork around the bathroom.

Save Time, Save Your Sanity

Managing your bathroom remodeling team by yourself is like taking a second (and third) job. Professional contractors have all the pieces in place already—designers, project managers, tradesmen—and can strike material deals to save money on your project.

While some homeowners can and do manage their own remodeling projects, for each success story there are dozens of horror stories due to cost overruns and damages that professionals know how to avoid.