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Bathroom Remodeling Your Project Management Options
By: Steve Gee

Managing a bathroom redesign project can be a nightmare

This is the tale of an acquaintance of mine who decided to handle the project management of her bathroom remodel by herself. She's a teacher and is very organised. She also has more opportunity to be at home than most of us so she was well placed to tackle the project, or so she thought.

My friend got herself sorted out by deciding what she wanted in her new bathroom and producing detailed plans on squared paper. When she had researched the fixtures, fittings and accessories that she desired and found the best prices available she turned her mind to finding and hiring contractors to do the job.

Listing the jobs to be done in the bathroom remodel.

My friend made many lists during the course of the remodeling project and one of the first was a task list to break the project down into smaller chunks.

* Remove existing bathroom fixtures.
* Legal requirements compliance.
* Design and styling of the bathroom.
* Walls, widows and other major building tasks.
* Interior walls finishing.
* Install plumbing.
* Install electrical appliances and wiring.
* New bathroom fixtures fitting.
* Wall tiling.
* Flooring.
* Remedial work.

Now that she had a task list she was in a position to identify the skills that her contractors would need to finish the job. So she made another list.

Skill requirements for bathroom remodeling

* Electrician
* Carpenter
* Plasterer
* Builder
* Glazier
* Flooring specialist
* Plumber

She could see from this that she would have lots of work just phoning around for a day or two. She used the telephone directory and the Internet to look for suitable workers to do the job. Then she visited her local bathroom showrooms and asked the staff. This strategy turned out to be the most effective way to find good people to do the job, as often the staff knew the contractors personally. She also obtained a few leads from her friends who had recently remodeled their bathrooms.

The time to start project managing had arrived

Making a plan of the project was the next thing to do and this is where it started to get difficult. Because there were so many people involved it wasn't easy to get everyone to agree to do things when my friend wanted them to do it. She wanted to get the project done during the school holidays when she would have more time but many of the contractors had children too and they wanted to go on holiday at that time.

At last she managed to get everyone to agree on a plan, they all knew what they were doing and when they should be doing it. My friend thought that she had done a great job but that was just the start of the problems.

Watch out the problems are coming

The Fitters stripped out the old bathroom items on time but the delivery of the new fixtures was late. The workers turned up on time to fit the new fixtures but they had to be sent away to come back when the delivery arrived. This had a knock on effect to the remainder of the project plan for the bathroom remodel and threw my friends carefully laid out plan out of the window.

You didn't really believe that project management was easy did you?

The delivery delay was just the beginning of the problems my friend had to deal with. The wrong washbasin was delivered and it was too big for the space allowed. The electric shower didn't work and it had to be replaced. The plumbing sprung a leak, which wasn't noticed until the plumber had left.

The problems went on and on and what should have been a 2 week project turned into a 3 month marathon and it still wasn't quite finished even then. My friend was at the end of her patients and she swore that she would never ever do anything like that again.

Get someone else to manage your project for you

You don't have to do the project management part all by yourself I'm pleased to say. I know it looks like a fun way to spend your summer holidays but project management is a difficult job that rapidly gets more complicated as more people are involved. Find and hire yourself a project manager to do all this for you. It might look an expensive option to begin with but it's a lot less stress and might not be that much more expensive by the time the project is finished.