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Bathroom Remodeling Your Project Management Options

By: Steve Gee Caution - Project managing your bathroom remodel can be detrimental to your health.

My friend decided that she was going to have her bathroom remodelled and that she would manage the whole project herself. She is a capable person and thought that it would be fun and satisfying to run the project herself. What actually happened was quite different to how she imagined it would go however.

My friend did a great job preparing for the project. She made sure that she had decided exactly what would be going into the bathroom and how it was going to fit. She made accurate scale drawings of the new bathroom on graph paper square from all directions so that they could be used in discussions with contractors and to make sure that everyone knew exactly what they were doing.

Listing the tasks required in the bathroom remodel project

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 consider the list of skills that she needed for the bathroom remodel.

Bathroom redesign skill requirements

* Carpenter
* Builder
* Electrician
* Glazier
* Plasterer
* Plumber
* Floor covering specialist

The phone book and the Internet provided a lot of leads to appropriate contractors but my friend found that she got the best information from asking around the staff in the local bathroom showrooms. They not only seemed to know all the contractors in the area but they also know what they were good at and how available they were. This saved my friend a lot of time.

The time to start project managing had arrived

She now had to make a plan of what needed to be done when and arrange for the right people to be available to carry out the tasks at the right time. This turned out to be a lot harder than you might imagine with so many people involved. They all seemed to have something else to do at the times when my friend wanted them to work for her. Because she was a teacher she tried to arrange for it all to happen in the school holidays so that she would have time to supervise but this only made the planning more difficult.

Finally 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 good job but that was just the start of the problems.

Let the problems commence

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

Make no mistake project management is difficult

The delivery delay was just the start of the problems my friend had to solve. The wrong washbasin was delivered and it was too big to fit into the space allowed. The electric shower was faulty and it had to be replaced. The plumbing sprung a leak, which wasn't noticed until the plumber was well gone.

It seemed like there was no end to it in sight, the original 10 day project turned into 12 weeks and it still wasn't quite complete then. I don't think that my friend will be doing this kind of thing again very soon.

Get someone else to manage your project for you

If you've never done any project management before then think twice about managing the project yourself. Ask yourself whether you have the necessary skills, plenty of time and have enthusiasm in abundance. If you don't have all of these attributes then you should consider hiring a project manager to control your bathroom-remodeling project. If you still want to get involved in some way then pick a task that you feel confident in handling like painting for instance.