Imagine with me…. You’ve saved for years and planned for almost as long, to create the bathroom of your dreams. During all that time, you lived with the old pink, black, and white tiles in the house where your family has lived since you and your wife were married. The time has finally come, though, and you’re ready to begin that bathroom remodel in Bethesda, Maryland.
Since this is the only bathroom in your small home, you have waited to begin until you had gathered all the materials. To save money, you have collected them as they’ve become available on sale or on clearance (except for the toilet, which was a special order), and you’re going to do all the work yourself. All the boxes are sitting in the family room, ready to have their contents be installed as soon as the little room is stripped of its current fixtures and finishing materials.
So, you get up early, Saturday morning, to begin the demolition. After dismissing all non-essential personnel for the day, you put on all your protective gear, including the bug-man respirator, and dive into the bathroom. Working like a well-oiled wrecking ball, you methodically disassemble the entire room, down to the studs. The bubblegum-pink toilet joins the heap of shattered sheetrock in the back of the pickup truck in the driveway. As your son heads off to the dump, you and your wife wave goodbye to the monstrosities that you are now prepared to start replacing.
You head back inside, and your wife starts to unpack all the new fixtures while you put up the new sheetrock. As you tape and mud, she gets everything unwrapped and pulls the paperwork that came with each fixture. She then proceeds to get the wallpaper ready, and after you grab a mid-morning snack, you get the wallpaper hung. Small bathroom…doesn’t take too long, with the two of you working together.
After lunch, you’re ready to start installing the essentials. The tub has to come first, because of size and maneuvering room issues. It’s pretty much a direct replacement, with just a change in the color, so that goes pretty smoothly. Next, the sink has to go in, since the vanity wouldn’t fit past the toilet, if it went last. You run into a little difficulty with the sink, so it’s starting to get late before you’re ready to install the toilet.
This is the best part of your bathroom remodel—you splurged to get a special order, comfort-height toilet with low water usage. The best part about this one is that it fits in the bathroom. Since it’s such a small room, you had to get a special order so you could have the comfort height and compact design. You move the toilet into the bathroom, eager to get it installed, and you realize it’s the wrong toilet! This really cool special order is wrong! By now, it’s late Saturday evening, and the store isn’t even open, even if it were something they carried in stock. The family is all trickling home, and there’s no toilet to use.
So, maybe it’s not an everyday occurance, but mistakes in special orders are, by no means, a rarity. Rather than dealing with the headaches that pop up in almost every D-I-Y project, consider hiring a general contractor who knows many of the pitfalls to avoid. If you live near Washington, D.C. and are planning a bathroom remodel in Potomac or the surrounding area, contact D.R. Hartman Construction, Inc. (DRHCI) for a free, no-obligation quote. They have over 30 years of experience in the field and just may be able to help you avoid a weekend with a commode in your home.
Life is full of enough surprises, without the ones that make for late-night re-thinking. If you’re considering adding a new bathroom in Gaithersburg, at least get a quote from DRHCI. It can’t hurt, and it just may help a whole lot!
Leave a Reply