Updating a bathroom can be as simple as a new coat of paint and coordinated towels to gutting the bathroom and starting from scratch, or anything in between. A common problem when remodeling a bathroom is running over budget because you start out planning to change just a few features and then you keep adding more.
In fact a small bathroom remodel can involve 100s of decisions as often one change requires other changes.We'll look at just one bathroom remodel and show how the customer's initial requirements grew over the life of the project.
Customer Requirements Keep Growing
Here are the key changes made for this remodel of a small, master bathroom in a 3 bedroom condo. There were two key changes that affected the overall design:
- Saved money by replacing 4 foot wall of tile with chair rail made of tile.
- Opened room up by removing wall and using a new-angle, glass enclosed shower.
| Initial Requirements | # Decisions | Final Results |
| Tile floor | 2 | Unchanged from initial decorator recommendations (tile & grout) |
| Tile walls to 4 feet high | 4 | Changed strategy to tile chair rail to save costs (2 piece chair rail plus different tile below and above the rail) |
| Replace shower with tile enclosure | 5 | Removed wall and window; installed neo-angle, glass enclosed shower with tile walls & floor |
| New vanity & counter top | 2 | Stylish, chocolate brown vanity and counter top selected by decorator per customer requirements |
| Replace sink & faucet | 4+ | When we saw the bronze faucet (customer request), it was time to change other bathroom hardware to bronze which 2 to 3 times the cost |
| Replace mirror & lights | 3 | Had to repair walls behind flat mirror & wire for new lights |
| Update towel & toilet paper accessories | 5+ | Accessories bought to match new faucet |
| Paint bathroom | 3 | Picked different colors above & below the chair rail & decided to leave the trim white |
Hard to tell how big (or small) this bathroom is that is shown above. The shower looks like it would be hard to turn around in or for a woman to shave her legs.
Dimensions?
Brad Thomas
Classic Clawfoot Tubs
http://www.classicclawfoottubs.com/
Brad, The original shower has a 30 inch square pan. The new shower met the updated building codes for 36 inch base although admittedly you lose space with the angle cut-away … but I have to believe you’ve got as much/more physical space than original shower and visually, a room that feels much larger.