8 pro tips for your bathroom renovation

Renovating a bathroom is one of the best ways to simultaneously add value to your home and improve your feeling of wellbeing.

A luxurious bathroom adds a new dimension to your lifestyle and always proves a winner with motivated buyers. Typically, it will not just bolster the price of your property but shorten the time it spends on the market.

A bathroom renovation can be complex as you’ll have to consider several issues, such as potential layouts, styles, fittings and contractors. Here are seven pro tips to help you:

1. Find a good retailer: An experienced bathroom retailer will ensure you order everything you need. A good one is like a de-facto project manager. As you don’t build bathrooms every day, you’ll make mistakes. Your retailer should have your back. If you don’t feel you’re getting good customer service, move on.
2. One-stop-shop: If you don’t want to get too involved, hire a bathroom installer to coordinate everything. You should expect to pay a minimum 20% premium, but it should buy you peace of mind.
3. Build your team: If you want to manage this yourself, you can do this pretty easily. Hire one of the three major tradespeople on the project – a tiler, plumber or builder – and ask them to recommend others. Because a bathroom renovation has distinct stages, each contractor doesn’t often see the others, but they’ll respect their work.
4. Handyman (or woman) gets the job done: You don’t need a licensed builder for a bathroom renovation. An experienced handyman or woman will have more than enough skills. While they won’t possess a licence, make sure they have insurance for accidents, injury and breakages.  
5. Budget for the unknown: Put aside 20% of the project cost for potential problems. The worst you might expect is to discover the old bathroom leaked and water rotted structural timbers. Or, you might find you need to strengthen a wall to hold a heavier-than-expected shaving cabinet and mirror. Little things crop up, so keep some cash spare.
6. Who does the fit-out? Someone has to install the bathwares, such as shaving cabinet, towel rail, bath, and vanity. A plumber or builder should offer this service. But you need to delegate this task specifically. Ask each to include the fit-out in their quote. Some plumbers don’t offer this service.
7. Muscle-up:  You’ll save cash if you or a family member can help move large items, such as a bath, during the fit-out. Otherwise, a plumber or builder will hire an additional person for the day and that goes to your bottom line.
8. Soak it up: Save some cash at the end to splurge on fluffy new towels and stylish accessories to add the finishing touches. And don’t forget the bath soak!