First things first I would like to say renovating your bathroom or bathrooms is a big investment in your property. The word that is key to that is “investment”. So it’s important to treat this like any other investment not to make a mistake and ensure you make informed and responsible decisions, 

I’m talking about both financial and emotional returns here. You want to add value to your home and love the look and feel of your experience.  A professionally designed and fitted-out bathroom renovation can potentially INCREASE the VALUE of your property by far more than the investment of the bathroom renovation alone.

Below are my 5 mistakes to avoid when renovating your bathroom

1. Waiting To Long
2. Partial Renovation Is A Waste Of Money
3. Choosing The Wrong Tradesman
4. Ask The Right Questions
5. Choosing On Price Alone

However, getting it wrong, and making some or any of the mistakes detailed below, can potentially end up costing you much more than the money you spent on what you thought would be a wise investment.

The worst part of it is that it’s something you will use and look at every morning of your life and no one wants to wake up mad every day.

Sure, you can’t be expected to know everything there is to know and consider when planning your bathroom renovation. It’s not something you deal with every day but there are traps and pitfalls you must be aware of to help you every stage of the way.

Waiting Too Long To Renovate

This is a mistake we often come across because a bathroom renovation can rightfully be viewed as an expensive investment,

It is quite often put off where problems are patched up or sealed over with the view of prolonging the inevitable.

I understand in an ideal world we would just renovate the whole house when we felt like it but that is not practical.

So when is too long to wait to renovate? Well, I am glad you asked, so a little bit of rising dampness won’t bring down the wall.

It’s not only the localized damage to the walls, framework, and flooring in your bathroom.  It’s the termites that just thrive in a moist environment and spread quickly causing monstrous damage.  Also, mold is a major cause of debilitating allergies and illnesses including asthma, and eye, skin, and lung infections.

Doing The Partial Renovation Or Sealing

My biggest piece of advice when it comes to renovation mistakes is for owners who do partial renovations.

If you are doing it to sell my advice is do not unless it’s something that does not work.

When you renovate a bathroom all you will notice are the items left behind your eyes are drawn to them and they stand out more than ever.

Additionally, never leave any tiles when you renovate a bathroom if you plan to leave a floor or walls it’s almost always a bad idea. No decent bathroom renovation company would ever do a renovation where you keep any tiles on the wall that are existing.

Two reasons really, the first being trying to tile up to someone’s work can be a nightmare to get level or line up.

Secondly and most importantly reason you can not guarantee waterproofing or lift tiles.

An example is if you tile over tiles and the below tiles are drummy the ones above them will suffer the exact same drumming and movement.

Save your money and do not partially renovate if you know in a year’s time you will renovate anyway.

The issue with over the top of tile sealers is, that any movement, using the wrong chemical, or piercing of the grout will cause the leaks to happen again so there is no way to tell how long it will last.  

Choosing A Dodgy Tradesman 

Bathroom renovation can be attempted as a DIY project but it will take a lot of time, tools, and extensive research and planning. Even with over 30 years of experience every week we find new issues we have never seen before so it can be a daunting task when you do it yourself.

Below is a list of trades and skills your average bathroom renovation will or might need:

• Electrician
• Carpenter
• Plumber
• Plasterer
• Waterproofer
• Tiler
• Cabinetmaker
• Glazier
• Painter
• Asbestos specialist
• Stonemasons / concretes/renders
• And at times others are not listed

Due to the complex nature of bathrooms, many contractors come and go. Often leaving behind a trail of substandard renovations.

Ask The Right Questions

You’ve decided to renovate your bathroom and begun to get a couple of quotes but how do you know who to trust or what to ask.

If you are new to renovating your bathroom below are the important questions to ask any person renovating your bathroom in Australia.

1. When it comes to waterproofing what is your plan of attack (Expectations is at least 2 or 3 coats above Australian standards)
2. When did you start this business and what’s your background
3. How long will the bathroom renovation take roughly?
4. Will there be any hidden costs once you start the renovation and if they are what am I looking at spending?
5. What is the payment structure for the job?
6. Is there a schedule for trades or an expectation

The main questions are about waterproofing and hidden costs with any renovator.

You want to trust and believe you will be treated with respect and honesty not held to ransom by a company that only wants your money so they can move on.

CHOOSING YOUR BATHROOM RENOVATION COMPANY ON PRICE ALONE

Quite often when making a choice that requires significant investment the cost is what people look at. Price is an important consideration it’s the only way to gauge if you are being ripped off so it’s important to look at all factors.

Bathroom renovations are not cheap, it is always hard to explain completely but you have to factor in about 15 different components when it comes to someone giving you a price for a bathroom renovation.

Furthermore, this is why your bathroom will often cost between $15k to $30k as so much goes into covering every aspect of the cost.

Too cheap of a quote you have to ask how long have they been doing it and if they are experienced then they shouldn’t be cheap

You might get lucky and the lower cost is a renovator who undervalues their service or an up-and-coming renovator who is trying to get work it’s about assessing that and making the decision.

Always ask questions regardless of how silly you may think they are as you want to be happy at the end and that small questions might result in a big difference at the end.

For this Grafton bathroom renovation below the client really wanted a wall hung vanity but thought it would be too hard to install into the wall. Its awesome she asked because it was not that hard and the end result is amazing.

Final Thoughts

Finally, I want to say that is not an exact science, it’s doing a little bit of research and going with your gut and understanding that you are dealing with human beings, not robots so they might not always get it right great renovators are the ones that fix mistakes without fuss.

Thank you for reading our article, please remember all our advice is general in nature.

The team at Dream Bathroom Renovations have extensive knowledge of modern but practical bathroom renovations and is happy to assist with any enquiries you may have.

If you are looking for a bathroom renovation, tiling, laundry or kitchen renovation contact us at dreambrenovations@gmail.com or Ph :0477143308 today we cover a wide range of areas from Glen Innes, Inverell, Lismore, Grafton, Armidale and everywhere in between