Oh, so many...but one that comes to mind right now is I wish someone had told me to *hook up*, not just resistance-test, the floor heat after installation and *before* tiling over it.

oh so many as well! mine on my mind now is to take my new tub out on the driveway or patio & test it for leaks while the weather was still good & the tub was still outside in the garage. I read that after it was too late (the tub was already in a place it would have been rough to get out of) though i got lucky & had no leaks.

oh - and i wish i'd had the patience to try new things on a trial piece of tile/kerdi/drywall/etc. - especially things that are hard to change if you mess it up - to get a bit of technique going, instead of just figuring it out as i worked. everything came out ok, so far, but i was soooo much better even the second time doing something than i was the first. that extra time & materials would have made my work better.

lisa

I wish...I'd either had the sense to realize or someone had told me (since I didn't have the sense to realize) how HARD the bottom of my new air jetted tub would be because we set it in a bed of mortar. I never realized how much flex was in the bottom of our porcelain covered steel tub and how much more comfy that was on my lower back. Sitting in my new tub is like sitting on a concrete slab.
Monica

To put my outlets inside of the cabinets - so that I could keep the hairdryer, electric toothbrush, and shaver plugged in and hidden.

My br re-model was recently finished and we will be doing the master bath in a few months...The one big, big thing for me that I wish I had known before even day one of the tear out is...to have all my decisions made on what I wanted in the new br. This includes vanity, tile, tub, fixture, vanity top...EVERYTHING !

This is what I plan to do before the next remodel and I know it will have to be alot easier on me. The men did great with the work, but I spent alot of sleepless nights and running back to stores to decide and re-decide.
This would also help me to trust my own opinion and not to change it everytime a sales person or contractor had a different opinion. I would realize now that the differing opinions were just that and not the correct ones and mine wrong.

I found that changing one item sometimes made me have to change more things, as they didn't go with the new decision.

This was truely a learning experience for me and one I hope to take with me for any future remodeling!

This is an excellent question and I hope to learn more from others too! Thank you for asking it! Margie

I wish someone had told me to do the bathroom before the kitchen, which is under the bathroom. May have to tear out parts of the kitchen ceiling to get to the bathroom pipes.

1. To take time off work and supervise onsite rather than rely on after-the-fact "need to redo this ..." phone calls and texts to the GC

2. Make the GC pull his sign out of the yard and permit out of the window every night. I have a small 1000sq ft 1-bath house, so moved in with my GF during construction. After 4 weeks a burglary!

3. Board my dog full time, no matter the cost. After 6 a new worker let my greyhound out the front door and then chased after her. Haven't seen her since.

4. Make the GC rent a dumster and USE it, rather than leave stuff behind / at the side of the house waiting for bulk trash pickup once a month!

#1 The best contractors in the world underestimate time - always plan on longer.

#2 The best planned remodel in the world costs more than anticipated - always add minimum 10% to your budget

#3 The best remodels are like childbirth - your memory for the worst of it will get a bit fuzzy

We're not done yet, but I'll say: don't let mistakes and problems slide until the end. Bring them up immediately, and make the contractor fix them then.

We had a mini-blowout with our builder early in the project, and she convinced us to "not worry, we know what we're doing, everything will turn out great." So we backed off, figured we have to trust them, and if they screw up, they'll just have to fix it. Now, near the end, lots of the kinds of things I was worried about have come out badly, and are going to have to be redone. If I'd listened to my gut, carefully inspected everything as we went, and forced solutions right away, we'd truly be within a few days of finishing, rather than having probably a couple of weeks of fixes ahead of us. At least, so far, they're agreeing to fix things, which is more than I've heard about from others. But a lot of this stuff shouldn't have been an issue in the first place.

I can't say I really know what the right balance between blind trust (which has a good chance of ending in disaster) and micromanagement (which has a good chance in driving your contractor to fire you) is. But I will say, we leaned too far toward the "trust" end of the spectrum....

That my custom glass shower door I had made would leak everywhere... I wish I would have faced my shower in towards middle of bathroom and made it 1' deeper and doorless... less to clean and no leaking, or not as much!
We are planning on reconfiguring it already and home is 2.5 years old. AND I wish I had paid alittle more and got a tub with more jets! LOL ...one thing I really LOVE is that I have 6 drawers in my vanity and hubby has 3, I hate cabinets with doors where things are lost in back never to see light of day again. I also have 2 floor to celing linen cabinets that are awesome!

These are great suggestions! Some, like what the bottom of the tub sits in, hadn't even occurred to me!

Just frome devouring this page yesterday (I'm normally over on the buying and selling page), I've learned:

1. Caulk not grout in corners

2. Vapor barrier under cement board don't use greenboard, and use 6 mil plastic and staple it.

3. 1/8 sanded grout lines and porcelain tile (I actually knew that one)

4. Kilz exposed studs during remodel if you see water damage (I may just replace them, though)

5. Bathroom vanity kitchen height (we're really tall)

6. Maybe I don't want a frameless neo angle shower, after alll...

7. Thermostatic shower control

8. Hinged drop down seat in snower

9. Tile baseboards, not wood (had already decided that one)

10. Get a Toto or American Standard cadet toilet, ADA height (again, knew about the ADA stuff because we're tall, but not what the good brands were)

11. Plugs INSIDE cabinet (that had never occurred to me!)

Thanks for the good suggestions and keep 'em coming!

I'm starting my bathroom and the one big plus was using PVC style wood trim. You see this more on the outside of the houses. No, it doesn't look like plastic but looks, cuts and acts just like real wood. I'll be using it for the beadboard around the room and to frame the door and window in the bathroom as well as baseboard. Takes paint well and does not react to water

If you put plugs inside the cabinets, doesn't that shorten the length of the wires you are using, ie. a hair dryer. Having the plug inside would use up half the wire that I would need to dry my hair. The wires are not that long....

That porcelein tile is near impossible to drill through to put in a toilet. (We ended up using a dam of clay and poured ice water in it as we drilled). I arrived home to a swearing husband because he still hadn't gotten one hole drilled after 2 hours. Thank goodness for Google. I found the answer in a minute.

Note- You know how men won't ask directions? Did it ever occur to him to Google the answer himself?

LOL. Don't stereotype! I Google for help all the time! Of course, it's normally after I've already started and become stuck ;-)

Another one, to keep it on topic: If you're using contractors, get as much in writing as possible. Even totally honest and competent contractors forget things and mishear things (and, to be fair, we do the same). Having it in writing makes it better for everyone.

LOL! I was joking, but sometimes he just lobs them in and I hit them out of the park! I try not to stereotype, but then he just fits the mold. Now I, myself, never do that. OK, yes I do. I couldn't help the dig since I got all kinds of, "You HAD to get the Cadillac of toilets," stuff. He had been steaming about the holes that he still had to drill until I got home! And yes, I usually do want the Cadillac...at a discount.

I agree, get it in writing...especially if it's a guy. Sorry, couldn't resist.

When you say get it in writing, do you mean write up a contract? Do contractors have their own or is there a website where I can pull a stock one off? Are good contractors ok with signing one?

Y'all will love this, yesterday I was talking to a potential contractor on the phone and I mentioned I already had the supplies list of everything I wanted to order already done (the vanity and tub are on costco.com and I'm a member) and he got mad at me and told he he'd have to charge me an extra 30% premium for the items I found and purchased because "that's how he makes his money". WTH!!!

He also told me I wasn't allowed to do any demo because "You'll saw through the headers and pipes." Um, no, actually, I'm smart enough not to fall through to the first floor, fella. Then he told me that he does not like the clients messing with "his" projects. I told him that since it was MY money that I'd have my nose in HIS project every damn day and we probably should not work together.

THen he started backtracking and wanted to come out and see the bathroom. Um, yeah, NO!

I think I found a good contractor!

He said he liked Toto toilets a lot-after reading this forum, I'm like, ok, you're hired. ;)

Seriously, the other thing I'm learning is that I have bad taste. Yes I do. HGTV calls it "specific taste". My husband and I have been arguing over what to put in the bathroom, and I finally realized that trying to put the taj mahal bathroom in a 40 yo colonial house just wouldn't work, so I actually gave him the whole designing part of the bathroom!

I'll oversee the contractor and answer questions, but he picks out the tile and the vanity and the tub. The ones he picked were what I call "boring", but since we're selling the house in 2-5 years,

I think he's got a much better eye for resale than I do. Someday, though, I'm going to have a kick-ass bathroom bad taste and ALL!

Our contractor also liked the idea of doing PVC baseboards and molding, thanks to the previous poster who mentioned that-my husband was like, what a good idea! I felt so smart...

I wish someone had told me_________.

not to spend too much money. In this market, it is like throwing money out the window...

1. Don't take the contractor's word on a tile person recommendation. Turns out he had worked with the tile person on just 2 projects (tile person of course picked ours to mess up on...). See a couple of projects the tile person has done, if at all possible.
2. Be home while work is going on...answer questions, keep covering up rugs and wood floors, etc.
3. Rent a Port a Potty for the workers. We didn't and as more and more workers came in and out, we should have.
4. Don't ever ever pay final payment on anything until you have double checked the work (in my case, had my DH check because he is much more observant).
5. Budget at least 10% above what everyone says the project will cost.
6. Be patient. If the plumber comes and the work isn't yet at the stage where he can work on your house, he may not be able to come back for a while if there is a lot of construction/renovation going on in your area.
7. Check and double check all your boxes of tile...are they the same die lot?? It really does matter.

What do you mean about die lot????

I just bought a whole bunch of black/white hex tile. I assume that they will be consistent. Do you really have to check all the tiles? Or is this just for tile with more color-y colors, or with variation, or that look like stone...?

Ugh, I really don't want to have to worry about this!

If you ask a subcontractor to do something differently than the way he wants to, you have to check on it while he's doing the work.

I specifically told my electrician that I wanted the fan in X spot, and he didn't like that. Guess where the fan is.

I specifically told my electrician to mount an outlet horizontally near the mirror. Guess what? Vertical.

I could throw a fit and insist that he rip these things out and do them my way, but I've decided to shrug my shoulders--and show up A LOT. "Hi again! It's me! What are you doing? Huh? Huh?"

i wish someone had told me to just shut up and spend the money for the quality i wanted instead of trying to save money. in the end, the crap went back and i put out the big bucks to get what i wanted.

i did soundproof the walls when they were open though. its one thing i think i'll enjoy most about the house...not hearng the running shower or flushing toilets!!

How did you soundproof the walls???

This is to clarify what I said about tile being the same die lot. Tile boxes have a bunch of numbers and letters on the outside. Be sure all the numbers and letters are the same from box to box. You don't have to open them and check each tile: just the outside. By mistake I got two boxes I had bought separately mixed up with a big order from Home Depot: each of the two boxes had slight variations in those numbers: one box mixed in fine; the second was off a shade and had to be ripped out (tile guy didn't notice the variation). Home Depot, by the way, delivered our order and the numbers/letters were all the same. I checked when it arrived. Hope this helps.

Have you seen this thread? Well worth the read.

Here is a link that might be useful: best bathroom remodeling decisions

Yeah, I found that thread the day after I originally posted my thread.

The mods should make it a "sticky" thread at the top, it's so good.