A bathroom renovation can be one of the most stressful and challenging renovation projects for your home.
However, with proper preparation and research, the rewards for you and your family can be tremendous.
Read on for the 8 Most Common Bathroom Renovation Mistakes:
1. Not Being Adequately Prepared
When you set out on your bathroom renovation journey, it’s crucial to have a clear vision of how the bathroom will look upon completion. You will want to ensure the design is cohesive to the overall style of your home.
Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram are excellent sources of inspiration that can help solidify your style and give you concrete ideas to pass on to your chosen tradesman. Create a mood board for the style ideas, colours, tiles, tapware suppliers, vanity cabinet makers, and materials you’d like to have in your new bathroom.
Do your research by reading blog posts on expected budgets, how long it takes to renovate a bathroom, the stages of a bathroom renovation etc., so you know what you’re going to be in for.
When renovating, it’s essential to have a plan. It doesn’t matter what your space is; a plan will help you precisely determine what you need to achieve your ideal space. Without a plan, mistakes can happen!
2. Mixing Your Style
You must have a clear understanding of the style you are trying to achieve and what materials, colours, and textures will best compliment your chosen style. It’s also vital to consider your existing home’s overall look, feel, and style and whether your new bathroom will complement or detract.
Understanding your style and then sticking with it is important; ensure consistency throughout your bathroom by avoiding style clashes. When walking between rooms, you should feel like they belong in the same house and not a collection of interior trends from different decades.
3. Getting The Layout Wrong
Each bathroom renovation will have different needs, purposes depending on who will be using the space. For example, families need lots of storage and wall space for towel rails and a bath for the kids. Conversely, elderly clients may need easy access to showers and baths or more room to move around freely and quickly access regularly used products.
Start thinking about what you need in your bathroom: bath, oversized vanity with double sinks, large walk-in shower with dual shower heads? Once you work out what you need (or want), play around with spacing them out with some masking tape to see how it will all fit together.
At this time, you want to consider your electrical needs early on; this includes lighting (ceiling, wall, strip lighting under vanity etc.), fans, heating, home automation tech, underfloor heating and most importantly, power points!
The layout design is a personal decision and varies significantly from one client to the next. There is no one size fits all!
4. Not Including Enough Storage
The bathroom is one of those rooms that runs the fine line between style and function. Like every other room in the house, good storage in a bathroom is essential if you want it to function well and keep it clean and uncluttered.
It can be easy to miss as it’s often not something that people don’t think about. However, you can avoid this mistake by taking time to plan your storage. You’re going to need storage for all your cosmetics, medicines, hairdryers, straighteners, towels and toilet paper.
The key is smart storage combining both eye-level storage and under-bench storage that will give you a home for everything you need to store without swallowing up too much precious space in your bathroom. Look to incorporate different-sized drawers in your vanity to accommodate items of various shapes and sizes. Recessed mirrored shaving cabinets with shelves are also great for all those daily products you use, don’t forget generous towel rails, and recessed wall nooks for extra storage.
5. Messing Up The Waterproofing
If you take one thing out of this article, let it be this. Don’t skimp on your waterproofing!
Waterproofing is one of the most common major defects that cause damage to your property. It’s so common that Fair Trading has now classed waterproofing as structural works, and any failure to the waterproofing is now classed as a structural defect.
In most states of Australia, waterproofing must be done by a certified waterproofing tradesperson, and they must give you a certificate and warranty after installation.
You don’t want to get through your significant bathroom investment only to have to rip it all out due to a waterproofing defect.
6. Poor Ventilation
The old bathroom fan can be often overlooked in the bigger scheme of your bathroom renovation, more specifically, buying an appropriately sized fan. Without proper ventilation in your bathroom, humidity gets trapped in the enclosed space, which is the perfect breeding ground for mold and mildew. Mold and mildew degrades paint, grout and metal, along with a host of adverse health side-effects.
It’s also nice to have a window that you can crack open to let fresh air in with the bonus of bringing lots of natural light into your bathroom.
Indoor plants not only look great, are super on-trend but also act as a natural dehumidifier and air toxin remover! Plants can also help remove mold from rooms by releasing phytochemicals that suppress mold spores and bacteria. Rooms with plants have 40 to 60 per cent fewer mold spores and bacteria.
Some common indoor house plants to use in a bathroom are; Snake Plant, English Ivy, Orchids, Spider Plant, Boston Fern, and Palms, to name a few!
7. Skimping On Fixtures
Usually, the fixtures and tapware are selected in the bathroom renovations planning stages, and the specifications and measurements are given to the tradies for installation at rough in. Choosing the wrong fixtures for the space can impact your bathroom completion and function.
If you’re having an above vanity basin, you will need a tall mixer, spout or have the wall mixer and spout high enough to reach the bowl. Consider what will be practical in your bathroom for all members of the family. If it’s the main bathroom, will a wall-hung vanity have enough storage for everyone?
Cheap bathroom fixtures will start showing their wear within 6-12 months of use, sometimes quicker in large families. Quality will always serve you well in a bathroom as the fixtures are touched and handled multiple times a day by all household members. Choose the best quality finishes on tapware and fixtures you can afford.
We recommend selecting well-known bathroom items, tiles, taps and brands from reputable plumbing hardware stores. And remember, measure twice and consider practicality.
8. Unrealistic Budget
Many people don’t spend enough time researching the costs before starting the bathroom renovation, causing setbacks like skimping on fixtures, making sacrifices on design, or, worst case, not finishing the bathroom.
It is essential to establish your renovation budget as accurately as you can before works start. Lighting, tile amount, product selections, tapware, towel rails, vanity styles, raw materials – it all adds up. The bathroom is also the only room in the house that uses every trade; plumbing, electrical, carpentry, gyprock, waterproof, tiler, painter and glazier.
Do your homework, work out an honest budget, and then decide on the must-haves, would-like-to-haves and can-live-withouts.
A good rule of thumb is the average bathroom renovation will cost around $25,000 to $30,000.
It’s recommended to add a buffer of about 10 per cent to the budget to pay for any unexpected costs that crop up during works.
Ready to Start Your Bathroom Renovation Journey?
At Banana Bathrooms, we love designing and building bathrooms using new and innovative products to turn your bathroom dream into reality. Banana Bathrooms takes the time in getting to know our customers on a personal level so we can provide and suggest the best products to achieve your dream bathroom. Visit our Showroom or Book your Free Design Consult and Quote.