The ultimate guide to planning a bathroom renovation

Are you ready to remodel your bathroom?  Great!  Home renovations can be exciting, but they can also turn into headaches if you don’t have a good plan.  Before you start shopping for fixtures, here are a few steps you should take to ensure that your bathroom renovation goes smoothly.

1. Set a Budget

In an ideal world, we could all spend as much money as we wanted on our dream bathroom.  Realistically, however, most of us only have a certain amount of money to devote to remodeling.  If you start with a budget, you won’t have to scramble or cut corners toward the end of the project.

Once you know how much you can spend, make a list of the items you want to add or change in your bathroom.  Find approximate prices for these tasks and materials, then compare the total to your budget.

If everything fits in your budget, you are ready to get started!  If you are over budget, you will need to either reduce the scale of your project or postpone it while you save up the money to accomplish it.

2. Select a Style

This might seem like an obvious step, and you might already have a style in mind.  But sometimes what we think we want doesn’t always look as good as we thought it would in real life, and sometimes we realize that our design ideas clash with each other when they are put side by side.

A great way to focus your style options is to make a vision board.  Collect photos (either printed or digitally) of fixtures, tile, countertops, and cabinet colors that you think you would like in your bathroom.  Then lay them all out together.  Does everything coordinate well?  Does anything stick out (in a bad way)?  Make changes and try out different options until you love everything on the vision board.

3. Decide What You Can and Can’t DIY

Many people jump into a bathroom remodel thinking they can do all the work themselves just by watching how-to videos online.  Online videos can make many tasks look deceptively easy, however, and many of the creators have specialized tools and extensive training. 

We encourage you to go back to the list you made during the budgeting step and evaluate each task.  Think realistically about your own skills and dexterity, and consider the amount of time each item would take you to accomplish.  Also consider the cost of tools you might need to buy and the potential consequences if something does go wrong.  Then decide what you will do on your own and what you should hire a contractor for.

4. Purchase Materials and Get Started

Congratulations!  You are ready to get your bathroom renovation underway!  Be sure to clearly communicate the plan you made in the first three steps with your contractor.  With a great plan and a reliable contractor at your side, your bathroom renovation is sure to be a success!