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Managing your own bathroom remodeling project This is the tale of an acquaintance of mine who decided to handle the project management of her bathroom remodel by herself. She's a teacher and is very organised. She also has more opportunity to be at home than most of us so she was well placed to tackle the project, or so she thought. My friend got herself organised by deciding what she wanted in her new bathroom and drawing detailed plans on squared paper. When she had researched the fixtures, fittings and accessories that she wanted and found the lowest prices available she turned her mind to hiring contractors to do the job. 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 that she had a list of tasks she was ready to identify the skills that her contractors would need to complete the job. So she made yet another list. Bathroom redesign skill requirements * Electrician * Carpenter * Plasterer * Builder * Glazier * Flooring specialist * Plumber The phone book and the Internet gave her a lot of leads to appropriate contractors but my friend discovered 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 knew what they were good at and how available they might be. This saved my friend loads of time. The project management begins She now had to make a project plan of what needed to be done when and arrange for the right workers to be available to carry out the jobs at the right time. This turned out to be a lot more difficult than you might imagine with so many people involved. They all seemed to have something else to do when my friend wanted them to work for her. Because she was a teacher she tried to arrange for it all to be done in the school holidays so that she would have time to supervise the project but this only made the planning more difficult. In the end she came up with a project plan that everyone was happy with and she was pleased with herself for a job well done. Little did she know what was to come. Watch out here come the problems The new stuff didn't turn up on time and the contractors that arrived on time to fit it all had to be turned away. They weren't able to return at the time when my friend needed them to. She was left without a bathroom and a project going nowhere and this was just the start of it. Make no mistake project management is difficult That was just the start of the saga. It seemed that everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. The wrong toilet turned up, it was too big and the wrong colour. The vanity lights were faulty, the shower doors didn't meet and the plumbing leaked. My friend was almost in tears a number of times. The problems went on and on and what should have been a 2 week project turned into a 3 month marathon and it still wasn't quite finished even then. My friend was at the end of her patients and she swore that she would never ever do anything like that again. Find someone to manage your remodeling project for you You don't have to do the project management part all by yourself I'm pleased to say. I know it looks like a fun way to spend your summer holidays but project management is a difficult job that rapidly gets more complicated as more people are involved. Find and hire yourself a project manager to do all this for you. It might look an expensive option to begin with but it's a lot less stress and might not be that much more expensive by the time the project is finished.
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Steve writes for www.bathroomsremodeling.this-info.com and has just remodeled his own bathroom Project managing your bathroom remodel
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