Hi, my husband and i have a small bathroom to remodel that is in our bedroom. We don't know where to start. I talked to a contractor who I didn't like and won't do business with. But he said I would have to get blue prints first. The city doesn't have them and suggest I talk to the builder. My home is 25 years old and I can't find the builder. The demensions are 8.75" X 59 ". We want to maybe open the walls up. But we want to put in a whirlpool bathtub. I don't see to many tubs out there that will fit in a 59" wide space. They are usually 60" or they are corner tubs. Which I don't think will work either since the toilet is right next to the tub area. We have a $15000 budget. And I hate going into things like this not having any idea what I'm doing. Anyone have any words of wisdom?

 

wantatub, welcome to the DIY Forums.
The first thing you need to do is get a determination on the walls. They may be load bearing walls and if so, you will have to have new supports (beams) installed. Not much can be done as far as tub sizes. You are talking "specialty" items. That means you pay for what you want. You may be wise to have a designer or archetect look over your situation and advise you about your options. Good luck.

 

Whatever you do, do not tell contractors that you have $15,000to play with! Do you know what will happen if you do? Take one guess.

Regarding your 59 inch width. This is somewhat of a problem, but not an insurmountable one. Tubs are designed so that only the flange portion that is up about 18 inches, sticks out at that 60 inch size. The rest is well short of that. This mean that when the tub is set, you would carry the tub in the bathroom so that the drain end is down by the floor, with the rear of the tub upward.

You then have to remove the amount of wall material off the back wall of the tub (the 59 inch direction), so that when you start to lower the rear of the tub to be level with the front, that it clears the wall material. *I* have done this very job! How I did it was I took the tub out in the living room and placed it against a wall and mimicked my planned maneuver, by raising and lowering the rear of the tub and drawing the arc on the wall in pencil, and measuring from front to back. Then I marked on the living room wall just how high up I needed to remove wall material from so that the oversize tub would drop in place with minimal wall surface removal.

Doing bathrooms to me has been a walk in the park, as we have put dozens of these in in total gut and remodel and relayout of bathrooms in college rentals. (The job I mentioned though I personally pulled off for someone I know).

Ask more questions if you like.

 

What should I tell the contractor as far as a budget?. Or should I get a designer who will hire his own plumber and contractor to carry out his design?

We were thinking we should tell the contractor $10,000 and expect it to go over that. Do you know approximately what a designer costs?

 

We asked him to come out prior to getting the money and instead of doing what I wanted (the back bathroom remodel)...he decided he wanted to tear up my front bathroom and living room and build an addition on the back of my house...so yes...we are very weary of the contractors. This was after he told me how much he doesn't like working with women because we could never make up our minds! That was a good experience though because it scared the crap out of me and I'm proceeding with caution.

 

You should get at least 3 estimates. Tell each contractor what you want accomplished, NOT how much you want to spend on it. Make sure each has the same info. Then look at the estimates and compare.

 

Ya, what MD said.

Best bet is to make a list of what you want to see happen...
replace vanity,
whirlpool tub,
tile floor,
tile walls,
etc. etc.

Ask for estimate based on that. make sure they tell you what their plans are. Some might want to tear the whole thing out to the studs and start fresh, another might decide to leave the walls and just refresh the paint or whatever.

Don't ever tell them how much you have to spend. If it comes in under your budget, ask them how much to upgrade the new tub, or what about fancier tiles. Upgrade incrementally.

 

When I was in Texas, and 25 years ago, I got the job of turning one of the two master bedrom closets into a bathroom. I did the entire job myself, single-handedly....design, carpentry, plumbing rough-in, electrical, and all the fixtures. (I may have asked the local master plumber who helped out me and a partner I sometimes used, for advice on technical things) I was very proud of this little compact job. To pull this off I made line drawings. Several. And let the owners choose one of the layout choices. They settled ona plan where I came into the bedroom some, but not a lot ontop of using up the space in one of the closets. Put in a 45 degree door. When the door swung inward, it missed hitting the toilet by the curve in the toilet bowl! When the glass shower door opened it missed the door casing by about 1/16 inch. To get to the vanity, you went between the toilet and the shower wall. Above the vanity and toilet wall I put in an operable window for light and ventilation. The area you had to towel off out of the shower was plenty of room and I even simulated the movements for the owners, as I had the floor all chaulked out where everything was to go, before I actually started. I had everything drawn on the plywood floor in advance so they knew just what they were getting.

Under the house (crawl space) I came face to face with a full length diamond back rattle snake skin that shed it's skin up some old abandoned vent pipe hole that went up into the house. I told the lady what I found and said I hope the snake isn't in the wall. She got a real ***** look on her face.

I did this whole job for quite cheap. I was in my infancy and thought all this was rather fun and challenging. I would do lots of remodel jobs and sit late at night at my huge mahogony table overlooking the Gulf, smoking tons of cigarettes, while I drew out various plans to scale for the various things I built for people when I lived down there for 7 years. Now I think of all this stuff as a chore. The novelty has worn off...and I dont' smoke either...for 21 years.

In my previous post, I made it sound like the 59 inches was some big deal in a way. Well, duh...what was I thinking? That is what a bathroom winds up being with a 60 inch tub at the back of the bathroom and you finish off each end-wall with 1/2 inch sheetrock. So therefore, this is standard. Nothing out of the ordinary at all. The bathroom I contended with I think was like 57 1/2 inches or something as it had walls upon walls, and I did not want to remove any more than I had to (the landlords were tightwads...that is why they used my cheap services), in order to get the old tub out (which had broken!) and get the new tub in.)