I spoke to my brother last night. He has just had a few minor repairs made to his bathroom.
It started with a leaky roof. Then the ceiling caved in. The floor was partly ruined. The plumbing needed some modernization. The bathtub was a little old fashioned. For some reason, he (or perhaps his wife) decided that the bathroom needed carpeting. (Who carpets a bathroom?)
Keep in mind that this is a guy that doesn’t make a huge paycheck, and his wife works as a schoolteacher and has some medical issues going on. They are putting one child through college, and paying for the wedding of another. They owe the IRS $6,000.
We completely renovated our guest bathroom: moved the tub and replaced it with a 72" pipeless whirlpool tub; plumbing moved by a plumber to accommodate changed layout (this meant jackhammering into the concrete); new lighting, electricity, paint, tiled floor that extends into the adjacent hallway; new sink and toilet; new fixtures, mirror, etc. In other words, damn near everything in the room was changed/replaced/upgraded. And that still cost less than $10,000 (and the vast majority of that was the tub and plumbers).
Yikes. I can certainly understand upgrading a bathroom (if you can afford it and it’s ugly) or making needed repairs, but… doesn’t seem like a good financial choice to go hog-wild.
I have one of the world’s ugliest bathrooms, it’s absolutely true. Upgrades are being made very, very slowly, as we just can’t afford to do anything else.
Long as the toilet works and there’s running water, I can’t complain about the Ugly! The ceiling isn’t falling in, so we’re good to go. (:))
I’m not clear as to where you’re directing your snark. Do you think they were overcharged? Do you think they needlessly gold-plated it? Whatever made this thing cost $41,000 isn’t clear, because carpet alone wouldn’t do that. Water and structural damage can however jack up the cost in the blink of an eye, depending on how long it was deteriorating. It just sounds to me like you already disapprove of their spending habits and you’ve found one more reason to do so.
Oh, and as far as it being “a room where you shit”, I don’t know about you, but in my house the shitting room gets first repair priority over anything that isn’t outright wrecking the entire structure. I’m not about taking a dump in the yard. Well, not my yard.
Your brother is being ripped off. I just had my whole kitchen torn down and renewed, including new plumbing, wiring, cabinets, equipment, tiles and painting, for 13.000 euro’s. (if the dollarcourse were normal, that would be 15.000 dollars).
Real-estatebrokers say you get about half of the cost of renovations back when you sell a house, depending on how recent they were made.
Is there still a way they could change contractors or so?
I’m neither snarking nor disapproving. I’m just astonished that so much money could go into one room, especially one owned by a middle class family. No, nothing gold plated (I asked specifically about that).
My brother is as astonished as I was. He was adding it up on a calculator while we were speaking. He added it up three times. In his own words, holy shit.
I suggested that he move my neice’s wedding to not only his house, but his bathroom. You know, make it all worth it.
What kind of work was necessary to fix the leaky roof and the caved-in ceiling? Are we talking about some new shingles outside and new drywall inside, or are we talking about replacing damaged structural members in the roof, walls, and ceiling? How large an area needed to be repaired?
How much of the cost was bathroom fixtures, i.e., the bathtub, per se?
When you say "[t]he plumbing needed some modernization, " do you mean that they purchased new faucets, or do you you mean that they had to rip out old pipes and re-plumb in order to meet code? Faucets and fixtures are cheap. Re-plumbing can mean opening walls and floors all the way from the bathroom to the main stack, and then putting the whole mess back together.
I have trouble imagining a simple remodeling costing $41K. However, if it turned into major roof repairs, plumbing repairs/remediation, and remodeling, $41K becomes a lot easier to imagine.
I don’t have many answers. I know that they got their roof repaired, and that was an additional $10,000. I know that they kept the old toilet, but got a new toilet seat. (No, not gold plated.) Everthing else was new.
FWIW, the house is about 20 years old. They’ve lived in it for 8.
$41,000 is about what they paid for their first house, around 22 years ago.
We just had a plumber come in and semi-modernize my boyfriend’s new store. In other words, he added hot water to the building, ran a bunch of pipe, hooked up four darkroom sinks that did not previously exist, gave us a spigot, put in hot water faucets in the bathrooms, etc. Quite a lot of plumbing when it was all said and done. Total cost including materials: $850.
(Larry’s done a lot of work for my dad before and must have given us one hell of a nice break - but still. I was shocked at how cheap it was.)
More than once, I’ve seen bathroom renovations go beyond $30,000 on those TV shows like Save My Bath!
I look at them and ponder why people need to spend several hundred dollars on a toilet - ultra low profile, custom colors, etc… - when the ones I got for free from the water department are actually the best toilets I’ve had since the days of the ten-gallon flush.
Those trendy vessel sinks are big money, and the fancy smooth-flow faucets where the water pops out of a hole in the wall are frighteningly expensive.
Today’s trendy glass and metal tilework? Serious dollarage.
And you can bet they’re not using any $18 per gallon paint.
I remodeled a half-bath in my house about a year ago, and it came in at under $200 for everything, including a new sink and toilet. Barring major structural damage or changes, or adding a jacuzzi tub, anything over about $5000 is lunacy.
I’ve never seen their house. I’m going for the wedding in June, and the first thing I want to do when I get there is take a massive dump. I want to know what it feels like to shit on a $41,000 room.
Any kind of leak in the bathroom can cause moisture behind the walls and lead to black mold. Good old black mold, it can kill ya!
Obviously I don’t know a thing about the OP’s brother, but I can see where things can add up quickly when you’re trying to fix an issue in a small space with little ventilation.
I rebuilt ours, a new shower, sink, toilet, floor, plumbing, and walls for probably $1200. I admit we showered on the deck for awhile but A) I ran hot water out there and B) it was kind of a turn on.
This summer, my stepfather, brother in law and I tore out tile, ripped up the subfloor, replaced the floor, put in a new sink and toilet, reused the tub, reconfigured the whole thing to a more workable bathroom, put down new flooring and up new drywall, primed and repainted the walls and added a window. For about $600.
It sounds like they pretty much gutted the thing to the studs, and probably had to replace a few of those, too. Structural damage is damned expensive to fix. And there’s a chance the contractor saw that he had a customer by the short hairs and decided to upgrade his bass boat. There’s one of those in every market, makes it tough for the rest.
Wow. We redid the bathroom (complete with ripping out the tub and replacing it with a shower), new sink, old toilet, new floor, paint, and decor for under 5K a few years ago. We did the ripping out–I got to use a sledge hammer–damn, they’re fun! (and then I put my foot through the floor by accident when we ripped out the old tile).
This is a bathroom that is so small, the new tiles only cost us $12. I had to buy 12 tiles, BIG tiles, but they were on clearance for $1/tile. The rest of the bath is a pedestal sink, a corner shower, free standing cabinet, mirror, medicine cabinet and new light fixtures. The biggest cost was the labor for the plumbing.
Sorry about the construction. I hope they get it paid off by the time they move! And I sure hope it looks nice.
The rest of the bath is a pedestal sink, a corner shower, free standing cabinet, mirror, medicine cabinet and new light fixtures. The biggest cost was the labor for the plumbing.