We just remodeled two bathrooms and a powder room in recent months. I'm not a kitchen and bath designer, and this was my first experience with bathroom remodeling. I wanted to take advantage of the trade discounts I have with a number of vendors, so I did not hire a bathroom designer.
The contractor was recommended by someone I trust, and completed all three bathrooms, but I will not use him again for a number of reasons, and I will not refer him to my clients. We finally got the results we needed, but it was more difficult because the contractor was disorganized, and used to doing a lot by the seat of his pants.
I should have figured this out with the powder room, when he and I reviewed where the towel bar/ grab bar should go, with reinforcement within the wall, where the light fixture would be added, and so on, and then the crew arrived with none of that information. They added the light fixture on the wall, but removed the ceiling fixture, which removal was not in the plan, and I had to get them to bring it back (an antique chandelier which I had bought for the bathroom). They put the reinforcement in the wall in the wrong place, and I had to get them to open up the drywall and move it, so that the towel bar would be installed in the correct location. I used a fluted grab bar which was attractive, but strong enough that someone in the future could use it to pull themselves up if necessary, something I wish I had had in there a while back after my mother's hip replacement. The contractor and I agreed he needed a drawing in the future, drawings I was certainly capable of providing if I had realized he needed it.
Upstairs, by the time we were doing the second bathroom, I realized that even with one sink, it would be helpful to have a second outlet on the other side of the counter top, for charging electric toothbrushes, using hair dryers, etc. I wish I had thought of it in the hall bath.
I put grab bars both vertically and horizontally in the hall bath, but they are attractive curved ones which work with the curved lines of the light fixtures, oval mirrors, oval sink, and wallpaper. In the master bath, I have fluted grab bars, and rectangular mirrors, rectangular sink, and straighter lines in the light fixture. There are a lot of nice grab bars out there - don't assume that they have to be the ugly institutional ones. I'll post photos tomorrow.
We originally had planned to use spot resistant nickel fixtures in both bathrooms, until I realized that the nickel fixtures would not show up against the purple-gray tile of the master bath. I changed the master bath fixtures to chrome, but it was too late to return some of what I had originally purchased, so the Habitat ReStore was the beneficiary of two light fixtures and a grab bar.
The tile we had purchased (on sale at a high end tile shop which was a client of mine - I did the window treatments and cushions for a waiting room in their showroom) for the hall bath was "rectified tile" - meaning the edges were not rounded but very squared, and sharp to the touch if not totally even on the wall. I had forgotten that the grout size was supposed to be 1/16th of an inch for this type of tile, and my contractor, or at least his tile installer, did not know that, evidently, either. We had a number of tile pieces which had to be reinstalled as a result. The other tile, which was not "rectified" was easier to install, but I still had them do smaller grout than they would have otherwise, and it looks great.
Also in the master bath, there were pipes in the wall in the master bath which could only be moved part of the way, so the medicine cabinets ended up higher in the wall than planned. As a result, I decided to use mirror tiles around the mirrored medicine cabinets on that one wall, and that turned out to be very elegant. So problems can turn out to be an "opportunity for design improvement".
Lastly, we had decided to have the contractor remove the tub in the master bath during the week we had planned to be on vacation. Less stressful on our German Shepherds, who took a dim view of all the contractors going in and out without being properly greeted by them... but the contractor, who promised to get a lot of work done while we were out of town, instead pulled his crew off our job half the time we were gone, and I was very disappointed with the lack of progress on our return. I think it would have been better to board the dogs for the days of tub removal, and stay in town, or just have had the contractor work elsewhere for a week until we returned.
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