Bathroom renovations can be one of the most rewarding experiences of your life or it could be one of the worst. One of our readers recently submitted this nightmare story that I thought may help you out:
“Bathroom renovations can be a nightmare if you go into the project unprepared for what you may run into. One project in particular ran over us so fast that we just stood there a moment in shock and thought, ‘Okay, now what?’ We had taken on a project for an elderly woman who wanted her small bathroom renovated. It looked like a simple job of just updating her floor, vanity and tub surround. We were wrong!
The ceiling was a suspended tiled mess and the tiles showed water damage. The elderly woman assured us that the leaky roof had been fixed and the tiles were just stained from the earlier damage. She had extra tiles and just wanted the stained tiles replaced instead of a new ceiling. We started on tearing up the old vinyl flooring only to discover that the floor underneath was rotted through in places and so a new sub-floor had to be installed. That weekend it rained and we got a call that the bathroom was flooded.
Well, it was flooded all right but not from a busted pipe but a poorly patched roofing job that another contractor had done leaving the valley of the roof pouring a stream of rain water right into the ladies bathroom like a storm drain. So our simple bathroom renovations turned into a roofing job. We ended up repairing the roof, replacing the suspended ceiling and installing a new sub-floor before we could even get into the original project of replacing the vinyl floor, installing a new vanity and replacing the tub and shower surround.
Crawling around on the floor and removing that old flooring was not pleasant. After cracking my knuckles more than once I finally wised up and got a pry bar out to help and the project went much faster and I got to keep the skin on my knuckles that I had left. Now here I was again crawling around on the floor and beating in nails and wood screws with a hammer when it dawned on me, Why wasn’t I using my air finishing nailer for some of this work? ‘Huh, I could have had a V8!’, it was one of those moments. Bathroom renovations are NOT supposed to be this challenging!
When my wife was in college one of her professors used to say, ‘Work smarter, not harder.’ That statement has always stuck with me and while I was climbing around on the floor it pole axed me unexpectedly. Being prepared for anything when going into a small bathroom renovation is having the right tools, the right attitude and always looking out for the unexpected in life to jump out and bite you when you least expect it.”
Take this story as a lesson learned. When you’re working on bathroom renovations be sure you go into the project fully prepared. Do your due diligence to make sure you’ve got the right supplies and tools if you’re going to do the project yourself.
Related Posts:
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
