I’ve taken you through a hypothetical Bathroom Renovation Project over the last few weeks and shared with you the raw side of bad craftsmanship and poor quality work…
Unfortunately, there can be more to the story before the project is finally complete.
Once the new walk-in shower is completed with the new tiling I could take a proper look around the space and look for any errors. Because of the slightly disastrous first half of the construction, it’s important to make sure any mistakes were caught in good time so they could be fixed as soon as possible.
You notice the shower dimensions look off, so you measure it. Turns out – the shower was made too wide! There’s no reason for it to be too wide, as we needed extra depth for the shower niches.
If you haven’t already – fire the contractor.
Another area to look at is the threshold strip and surrounding trim work. If there are gaps between the door frame and the strip, this isn’t correct. And the door frame and surrounding trim work has been completely battered! Sadly this shows poor quality work.
Fire the contractor.
The trim work by the entrance has been completely battered. Worse still – it hasn’t been filled in and re-painted!
Next is the shower valve. It’s the wrong one.
Where did this one even come from?! If you or your designer ordered new fixtures for the entire bathroom, there’s no reason for this to be incorrect unless he checked the products wrong against the order documents.
Fire the contractor.
The next thing to notice are the robe hooks. They are completely wonky, and not straight as per the drawings. Even still, why would they have been hung wonky… Surely you would use a level to check you had hung wall-mounted fixtures correctly?
Not this time apparently. Fire the contractor.
The robe hooks visually as quite clearly wonky… Put it with a level on top and it’s waaaaay off!!
These little details like robe hooks make all the difference to the design of a space because they are the finishing touches and bring the whole design together. It’s frustrating when the simple items can’t be installed correctly when there is no reason for silly errors (which is exactly what these are now!)
Next – the mirror.
It’s not centered on the vanity.
Fire the contractor.
By this time, understandably I’m feeling frustrated and annoyed. Surely you would install the mirror center to something – like the sink and vanity unit? While these details are like second nature to us designers, sometimes they can be missed by contractors, but very detailed drawings were provided well before any work started on this bathroom project.
Another thing…
The contractor drilled a hole in the custom vanity. The reason the vanity is custom is to accommodate the existing plumbing already there and the small space.
(Do I even need to mention that this is completely unnecessary?!)
There’s no reason for this hole to be drilled into the custom vanity. Unfortunately, this is another example of poor work carried out by the contractor.
Fire the contractor.
Have I shared the time that a contractor called me screaming about not having enough tile (that he ordered) because he didn’t have enough? No?! Then you’re in for a treat! I’ll be sharing all the details in the next article post of this series!