This is part 2 in the Bathroom renovation series. If you missed part 1, read it here.

After we selected our contractor, the next step was to iron out how much we were going to spend on this project. The contractor had given us his initial estimate based on what we told him we wanted and it was over $15,000! We were shocked to the core. $15,000 was the very max that we thought we would possibly spend on such a tiny, tiny room in our house.

In actuality, $15,000 is an average price to pay for a bathroom renovation. It’s crazy, I know, but bathrooms are the most expensive construction project in your house (on a per square foot basis). In a bathroom, you have all the major “trades”: electrical, plumbing and HVAC. You also have intricate tile work, drywall, painting. The list goes on and on.

So, the smallest room in our house was going to cost AT LEAST $15,000 to renovate. And only about $4,000 of that was on materials. Bathrooms are very labor intensive, so if you choose a good contractor, be prepared to see what seems like a very, very large number for labor.

Also, be prepared for your contractor to not want to discuss the details of that labor number. It’s very common for the contractor to give you a lump sum number for labor without doing much in the way of breaking out what each piece costs. When we called our contractor on this, he said he used to break out the labor into individual line items but then he would get people nickel and diming him on each line item. He basically said that he gives a number for labor and it’s up for some negotiation but he was not going to get into each little item and start negotiating those.

After some thought, we could see his point and we left the issue alone. What we could control, however, were the materials. But instead of our materials expenditure going down, it continued to go up.

The initial estimate that a contractor gives you includes only “allowances” for each material item. For instance, he may give you an allowance of $900 for your vanity, sink top and faucet. This may seem like a lot of money when you first look at the estimate, but if you are anything like my husband and me, once you get out and start looking at materials, $900 for vanity, sink top and faucet turns into $2,000.

How can you keep your materials costs low(er)?

Decide what is most important to you and what you can compromise on. For us, the vanity was very important to us. Given the tiny dimensions of our bathroom, our only storage was going to be in our vanity. We had only 30″ in which to fit a vanity to hold all the toiletries for my husband and myself. I personally do not like vanities that only have a set of doors and a giant cavity under the sink. There is no way to really organize your stuff when all you have is that one big space. I wanted drawers in my vanity. We also wanted a vanity that was of very high quality since we would be using it so much. The one vanity that we could find to match all those requirements in the right size was about $1,300. We went back and forth about spending so much for a vanity but ended up going for it and are very happy that we did.

On the other hand, our initial idea of having heated floors quickly went out the window. We realized that this expense of $1,000 was not smart and heated floors were not a huge benefit in such a small space.

Be open to other ideas and other materials choices. When we first started the project, I had dreams of a shower done in all glass tile. It was very hard for me to let go of this idea but when we realized that the shower tile alone would cost us almost $2,000, I knew I had to move on to another idea. The tile design in our shower still turned out beautifully and I think if I had have held on to the idea of all glass tile, it would have been too much and too bold in our small bathroom.

Choose small areas in which to splurge. We did use some beautiful and quite expensive glass tile in our shower, but it was in small amounts. We put some nice glass tile in the back of the shower niche and we also put in 2 bands of glass and stone mosaic tile. It looks classy and elegant without being over the top. For all the tile in our bathroom, we spent less than $500.

How much did our bathroom cost?

I wish I would have been able to find an honest source of information on just how much a bathroom renovation would cost us. We were sorely mistaken in our initial estimate of how much it was going to cost us. So, to help all of you who are thinking of hiring a contractor to do your bathroom, I am going to disclose just how much the whole thing cost us and provide a bit of a breakdown of where the money went.

Permit: It will depend on your city but ours was about $500.
Labor: For us, this included plumbing (including moving the toilet over and moving the shower plumbing), electrical (including running a new circuit to the breaker, installing a fan and 2 recessed lights, and putting up the vanity light), HVAC (installing a vent for the fan), new window installation, expanding the shower, framing, pouring a shower pan (since we wanted the shower floor tiled), drywall, texturing, painting, tiling the floor and the entire shower, installing vanity, toilet, sink, faucet, shower controls, shower head, vanity light, new door and handle and frameless glass shower doors. In all, it was about $11,000 for the labor and construction materials (wood, drywall, cement board, screws, nails, pipe, paint, etc).
Materials:
Vanity: Our was a Ronbow wall-mount vanity = about $1,300
Sink top: Ours was a large, oversized Ronbow ceramic sinktop = about $600
Faucet: Delta Vero series center mount faucet = about $300
Toilet: Kohler one-piece compact elongated bowl = about $500
Mirror: Custom-made by the same company that did the shower doors = about $85
Vanity light: about $200
Shower doors: Frameless “Euro glass” with a door that opens inwards and outwards = about $1,300
Shower hardware (including shower head and control as well as the valve): Delta Vero series = about $500
Floor and main shower tile: Florida Tile Montana series = about $2/square foot.
Shower band tile (2 bands about 6 inches wide) = about $15/square foot
Shower niche tile (about 18″X18″) = about $25/square foot
Shower curb, niche surround and window sill tile (Emparador marble) = about $10/square foot
Total for all tile was right around $500.
Total for the entire bathroom, including labor and materials = $19,600.

I still can’t believe we spent so much on a 4′x8′ room. It boggles the mind.

Now, these are our materials choices and our expensive taste. If you go basic, basic, basic on everything you can probably do your bathroom (even with a good contractor) for $10,000. But, if you are looking at any upgrades at all, you are probably looking to spend at least $15,000 and probably more. A typical, nicely done bathroom will probably be about $20,000. I don’t want to burst anyone’s bubble. That’s just me being honest. It’s expensive.

Below is a series of pictures chronicling the transformation. Click on the thumbnail to see the larger picture.

Recently, Money Saving Mom posted a testimonial I sent to her regarding our paying cash for our recent master bathroom renovation. In the comments section, there were quite a few questions that people had regarding bathroom renovations and hiring contractors. I thought I would write a series of posts that covered the questions as best as I can. Please keep in mind, this is only from my experience. I am not a contractor, I have only undertaken the one construction project with a contractor and none of the below advice is meant to take the place of your own research and advice from more qualified sources.

When we moved into our house in 2009, we knew immediately that we would need to renovate our master bathroom. It had been left alone since the house was built in 1976 and was definitely an eyesore. Not only that, but the miniscule 3′X3′ shower leaked into our kitchen below. But, after having put more than 20% down on our house, we didn’t have the spare cash to sink into a renovation. We also had a 4 month old son and both worked full time. We couldn’t undertake the work ourselves.

On the day that I quit my job to stay home with our children (we had since had a baby girl), the company that my husband and I had worked for paid out a large bonus to its employees. My husband and I decided that it was now time to undertake the renovation.

We started by researching bathroom renovations and contractors online.  We met with at least 6 different contractors, showed them the bathroom and asked them our questions. Below is a sample of some of the questions we asked them.

1. Are you licensed?
2. Do you carry general liability insurance? How much?
3. Do you carry worker’s comp insurance?
4. Do you guarantee your work? For how long and how extensively?
5. Do you provide references in writing?
6. Will you provide me with written lien waivers?
7. Who will be in charge of the job once it starts?
8. Do you pull all the required building permits?
9. What professional organizations are you a member of?
10. Ask about how they work and how they will communicate with you about the job process and any complications.
11. How many projects like mine have you completed in the past year?

These are the questions my husband had on a piece of paper in front of him to ask each of the contractors. Here are some more questions I wish we had asked but didn’t:

1. Do you have employees or do you use sub-contractors?
2. What are your general work hours? How much notice will you give me before you or one of your employees/sub-contractors shows up at my house?
3. How will you protect my house and furniture from dust and what are your clean-up procedures on a daily basis? What is your clean-up procedure at the end of the job?
4. Where will you store your materials and where will you be doing any necessary cutting (such as tiles or wood framing)?
5. Will I need to make any provisions for my pets or will you be careful with doors when you enter and exit?

There were several contractors whose estimates were much less than the contractor that we decided to go with. Our main goal for our renovation, though, was quality work. We wanted this bathroom to last, with minimal problems, for at least 10 years and preferably 20 years. We needed the work to be top notch and we needed an honest contractor because we knew almost nothing about construction.

Some of the things we noticed about the lower priced contractor estimates:

1. They didn’t think they needed to pull building permits for our job.
2. They didn’t even consider (or in many cases, know about) the new EPA rules regarding lead paint in homes built prior to 1978.
3. Their estimates were very vague and they had large fees for “change orders”. What they basically do is keep their estimate vague and then charge you for each change that you make to your original contract. If you decide on a new tile, for example, or change anything about your contract, they charge you their change order fee.
4. They left out some of the important facets of a bathroom in their estimate such as toilet, faucet, vanity, or shower doors. You can bet these would have been change order fees for everything that you “added” to your bathroom renovation.
5. Some of them even wanted us to order the materials ourselves and have them delivered to our house. This was something I was not prepared to handle and wanted the contractor to do for me. All I wanted to handle was choosing the materials.
6. Some of the contractors would provide no help at all with materials choices or configuration options. They were just there to do exactly what we told them to do. The problem with that is we had no idea what we wanted to do! We had never done a bathroom renovation before whereas they had supposedly done many. I wanted someone who would help guide us towards what we wanted.

Some Basic Ways to Check Into Your Contractor Before Hiring Them:

1. Check their references. Call the reference and ask if you can come see their finished job. Ask them questions about how the job went, how the contractor handled things and anything that they wished had gone better.
2. Call the Better Business Bureau or check online.
3. Call your city’s building office and ask if they have heard of the contractor. Have there been any complaints or problems related to this contractor?
4. If you need more information, call one or more of the professional organizations that the contractor belongs to and ask about them.

In the next post, I will talk about just how much our bathroom renovation cost us.