We did get ballpark amounts and one detailed estimate from full service contractors, but the hubby took one look at the numbers, choked and said "hell no"... and I did want to tackle the tiling myself no matter what, which at least one full service place said "no bueno we do it all ourselves end to end" to anyways. All three full service estimates came in at $22-$26k! I'll break down what our actual costs wind up being in a later post!
Plumbing
I got estimates from three different plumbers, like you're supposed to. We had chosen a plumber/electrician combination first (they're friends and work together on jobs) who had done a quick electrical job for us last summer and initially gave us a good price. But there were some issues with their estimate... I was the one who wrote up a detailed list of what items/tasks he vs. us would be responsible for, and he was like "oh, most of that wasn't in that one number I gave you..." and then we thought his next number which this time did include the floors, walls & shower stall was really high. Some more back and forth, and then he wanted to add $1500 to the estimate for putting the second valve in the shower (which I was mentioning right off the bat to everyone and was in the drawings I gave him) so at that point I was like "thanks but no thanks" and went with a different plumber (Keller Plumbing) who was great at answering my questions, especially when I called him to ask if the $1500 was a reasonable amount for a 2nd valve! He did give me a price break because one of his friends referred him to me.
Billy Keller & his two helpers came out and did a great job with the rough in. His estimate was detailed, and he told me right off the bat that if he could tear out a section of wall in the foyer he could replace the entire plumbing stack from basement to 2nd floor. Those guys worked their butts off for two whole days to get all the new lines run from the basement to the 2nd floor and all new plumbing installed in the bathroom. They did a great job cleaning up after themselves, and they were working until 6:30pm the second day to get it all done.
Electrical
Again, I got three different estimates. After I had to break up with the plumber/electrician combo we chose originally I was able to get our close second favorite electrician, Chris Buttlar. He and his helper did a good job with the electrical lines to the new bathroom, though I have yet to confirm with him that the floor heat is actually on its own circuit now. (Eep?) The wall guy we got did have a criticism though that he did not replace ALL the old wire in the walls. He left the wires that ran to the outlets & switches in the bedrooms on either side of the shared walls. But Chris did make an extra stop out to work on one of the boxes when the wall guy found the insulation on the old wires was crumbling, and to change out the box for the floor heat thermostat because it needed a "mud ring". (Partly my fault, I didn't have the floor heat system in hand when Chris came out to do the electrical so he didn't know the exact size/specs of the thermostat.) In addition to the bathroom work he also installed regular 120v and a 240v outlets in our garage so we can plug in and charge up all of our electrical toys... (our second car, 2 bikes, and a hover board).
Floor/Walls/Shower Stall
We debated about trying to tackle doing the floor, walls and shower stall ourselves. I did wind up getting estimates from three different people though... they actually were all handyman types who will do most bathrooms start to finish, but were willing to give me estimates for just those items. One of them was going to be too busy (had a kitchen job lined up that had him booked until MAY) but was willing to send me a ballpark estimate for comparison purposes. Out of the other two, I liked one better (he was recommended by a friend who checked his references) but he wasn't going to be able to work on it until the end of March due to other jobs & vacation. The third one, Broderick Complete Contracting, was the cheapest and was available much sooner, though I thought he had kind of a condescending tone when discussing the work scope with me. He seemed to do a good job though, and spent almost 4 full days getting everything installed, mudded and sanded. As someone who has an eye for detail and some perfectionist tendencies, I do think his shower stall installation was a little on the sloppy side, and he didn't want to waterproof as much of the bathroom as the other guys were going to. But having not done any hands on work with the Schluter shower system myself, I don't know how finicky it is to get correct and neat so not sure how much I can say about how exactly good/bad the finished product is. Everything seems to be covered and waterproofed, even if the corners and walls aren't exactly 100% square and even.
I suggested to him to use some string to lay out the floor heating wires but he just jumped right in with the heating wires. Well, he had to redo the layout 4 times and still managed to violate almost every rule in the installation manual. I spend 2 hours the next day using some paracord to mock up an alternate layout, and redid the layout myself and wound up meeting most of the rules. Not sure if I put too many bends in the wire, but more zig zags used up more wire and I was able to avoid the areas the contractor wasn't able to do. So there is that. The resistance reading is still acceptable, though the megaohmmeter test wasn't done prior to installation, so hopefully nothing really went wrong with installing and ripping out the wire FIVE times.
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| Heating wire as contractor left it |
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| Heating wire after I redid the layout |
