Home renovation - do the windows first or last?

In My Humble Opinion
1

My wife and I want to tear up the bathroom, replace the tub with a walk in and in general spruce it up. It probably means tearing up the entire tub area, including the window.

We want to replace multiple windows, including the bathroom, anyway. Simple question - should we replace the window first, and risk having the bathroom renovation mess up our beautiful window, or do the shower first, and hope the new window fits neatly into the newly renovated opening?

Just to complicate things, our long-time contractor is retiring, and he says he can’t recommend anyone in particular, since most of his experience with other contractors was fixing their mistakes.

Misread thread titles
2

TBH, I wouldn’t recommend a walk-in tub, because you’d probably have to remove that when/if you want to sell the house.

3

I should have said, replace the tub with a walk-in shower.

4

I would do the window first then finish the interior trim/tile around the window. You can make minor adjustments to trim easier than finding a custom window to fit.

5

I did that and it made life much easier (I’m retired) and saved a bit of space too.

Ask around for personal recommendations (as well as posted reviews.)

6

Do the windows first. They will be much tighter than the old ones, and so you will start saving on heating/cooling costs immediately. Especially meaningful if you have to wait a year or so to save up for the rest of the remodeling, in case it costs more than expected (it always does!).

7

This is what I would do as well. Depending on what sort of weather you are expecting, it seems smart to install the window and create a barrier to the elements before you get into doing the nice things inside the house. And then you can do all your trim work once your tub, tiles, and whatnot are installed.

But it’s also not a huge deal to do the reverse. If making the interior look exactly like you want ends up giving you a smaller window opening (for some reason) you can always just custom order the new window to fit the dimensions you’re dealing with after the interior renovation.

8

I would suggest window first, unless you anticipate surprises in the wall that might require a different size than you plan. I would strongly suggest getting all the windows you want to match appearance-wise at the same time - certain suppliers/manufacturers ‘update’ their designs, or go out of business. Ask me how I know subtly mismatched windows can be distressing…