Bathrooms are the smallest rooms in a house yet they're one of the most complex rooms to design, build and decorate. What makes a bathroom so complicated? Bathrooms have more fixtures per square foot than other rooms in the house although we often think a bathroom is a vanity with sink, toilet and bathtub or shower.
In fact we didn't consider how many fixtures this small bathroom had when the owner said they wanted to go with bronze hardware which costs about fifty percent more chrome hardware. Want to learn how many different products you have to buy for a small bathroom?
How Many Bathroom Fixtures are There?
Let's start at the back of this bathroom, with the bathtub. We were not able to get the twenty year old chrome nice and shiny so the new owner decided we should replace everything with bronze hardware. Here's the list of materials for the bathtub:
- We used the existing porcelain bathtub which was in good shape.
- We replaced the shower head, water control fixture, water spigot, drain lever and drain cover (total of 5 pieces) plus a new curtain rod.
- We used the existing toilet but replace the lever used to flush … bringing the total to 6 pieces of hardware.
- We purchased a new vanity but it came with white hardware. This meant we had to buy new door and drawer hardware in bronze, so we'll count these as “1 logical group” and that brings our count up to 7 pieces of hardware.
- In addition to the new vanity, counter top plus a new sink and new faucet bringing our hardware total to 8 pieces.
- Above the new sink went a white oval mirror plus a new light fixture, in bronze.
- Oops, we're not done yet. We also had to buy a bronze toilet paper holder plus 2 towel bars for a total of … 12 pieces of bronze hardware!
No one realizes that changing one piece of bathroom hardware might mean changing 12 pieces of hardware. The tough part was adding this cost to the budget after we had installed the new tile floor and wainscotting. Fortunately everything else … oops, everything except repainting the room after the owner saw the original paint color, fell within the original budget (vanity, counter top, sink, mirror and lights, ceiling fan/light combo.
Remodeling Takes a Team
When we realized how many design decisions needed to be made, we recommended adding an interior decorator to the project. Our customer, a busy business owner agreed to this suggestion and it made it possible to stick to the customers schedule of renovating 2 bathrooms, flooring and a punch list of minor projects.
Jennifer Myers got the project off to a quick start by pulling together a color design with tile, paint color recommendations, a vanity color and hardware to meet the customer's goals. My Handyman had overall project management responsibility and coordinated all other contractors for the project plus flooring working with B & C Floor Store.
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