Choosing Products
There is always the trap of buying cheap and nasty products. It is wise to remember that although buying this way can save you money in the short term, it will more than likely end up costing you in the long run. This is the reason a top quality bathroom costs as much as it does. Products that come with long warranties are made with better materials and to a more exacting standard. An example of this could be as follows:
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Cheap ceramic tiles only have a ceramic glaze over a poor quality biscuit base, which can quite often absorb water at cut edges and even at the uncut edges. This causes the tiles to discolour and therefore can make your bathroom look unattractive.
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Porcelain tiles (especially ones that have square edges (rectified), are made with more expensive material and are much more hard wearing. There is more involvement when laying a porcelain tile, but the benefit outweighs the cost.
Trade requirements
When renovating a bathroom, trades that work in this field on a regular basis are a high priority, due to the high level of detail required to get the best results.
Bathroom renovations can require as many trades as what you would use to build an entire house, for example:
• Carpenter (structural work)
• Plumber ( sewer and water supply)
• Electrician (lights and exhaust fans etc)
• Plasterer
• Cabinet maker (vanity and shaving cabinet)
• Brick layer (if you change window)
• Tiler
• Shower screen manufacturer ( shower screen and mirror)
These trades generally need to come to site more than once to complete their job.
When a plumber comes to site he may only have two hours of work to do (the roughing in of pipes etc). He needs to drive to the site unload, do the work, pack up and drive to the next job. It can mean that he spends more time unpacking and packing up his tools and driving around than he does actually working.
He accordingly needs to charge for this. It is more time consuming than if he goes to a new home site or extension as he is there for a whole day and gets much more done.
This can go for all of the trades, but is especially true for tilers. If they are matching grout joints from the floor tile to the wall tiles, they can only tile the floor first.
They must then come back to do the walls, and then to grout all the tiles.
As there is also a lot of cutting of tiles in a bathroom, a tiler may only lay 5 to 10m2 in a day in a bathroom, compared to being able to lay 40m2 of floor tiles in a large area in the same time.
Of course, there are ways to do a bathroom cheaper, like using a handy man who does everything himself. The problem with is he will not be an expert in all the trades and therefore the finish will suffer. He may not be licensed to do the plumbing or electrical (which is illegal).He will most likely not be a licensed building practitioner which a tradesmen must be if the works are over $5,000.
If you chose a company with employed trades and office staff, you have a much better chance of quality service. The job is more likely to run smoothly, as there is staff dedicated to product purchasing, arranging the trades and overall customer service.
Always be aware that with quality comes cost, and the above are all factors that contribute to the costs of a high quality bathroom renovation.
After some advice?? Give DNA Bathrooms & Kitchens a call on 1300 727 651.