Where to Start When Remodeling Your Bathroom

Where to start when remodeling bathrooms–or kitchens, or any other rooms in your house–is usually a conversation to have with one of your friendly, local contractors. DIY is great–but remodeling a whole bathroom is a major undertaking.

Still, whether you do it all yourself or not, the process will usually follow a somewhat consistent order of operations. It’s good to find and consult a few bathroom remodel checklists before getting started.

First, of course, define your budget. You can work with your construction company to figure out what a realistic budget range is.

Your next step will be getting a good idea of how you want the room to look when you’re done, if you haven’t already. Of course, what’s possible will be determined by your budget; that’s why the budget comes first.

Time to get started. It’s a process of taking things out and then putting things in, so first remove everything that’s not nailed, screwed, or caulked down.

Then, before removing the tub, toilet and other fixtures, turn the power to the room off on your breaker box. If you can, it’s also good to turn off the water going to the bathroom; if you can’t, you’ll have to turn off the water to the whole house.

Next, it’s time to remove all the fixtures that are coming out. It’s remarkably difficult to place a new tub where the old one already is, so just go ahead and take out the tub, toilet, vanity, and/or whatever other fixtures inspired you to start remodeling your bathroom.

Before replacing fixtures, do whatever you’re planning to do to the floor and then the drywall. Do your painting while the room is still empty of fixtures.

Once the borders (floor, walls, ceiling) of the room are in order, you can bring the new fixtures in.

First of all, prevent floods! Once the water to the room is turned off, you’ll want to turn on every faucet until it runs dry and flush the toilet until it can’t flush no mo’.

The step-by-step removal of fixtures is beyond the scope of this article, but once the power and water are off and any remaining water is run, it’s time to start the heavy-duty demo work. Take a look at this demo guide to get an idea of what that entails.

One helpful way to find where to start when remodeling your bathroom is to consult a bathroom remodel checklist. You can find many different bathroom remodel checklists online; here’s one example , put out by the faucet company, Moen.

Just like we discussed at the top of this article, the first consideration on this bathroom remodel checklist is budget.

Budget. Mental picture of end-goal. Remove removables. Address floor, ceiling, and walls. Bring in new fixtures.



Of course, almost everything in life is easier said than done. Finding where to start when remodeling a bathroom (and finding a way to the finish) is one task of which that’s especially true. Reach out to Fitzpatrick to talk about what you have in mind and the best ways to make your bathroom dreams come true. We look forward to hearing from you!