Every year, Remodeling Magazine conducts a very thorough nation wide poll on the cost verses value of various renovations in your home.  They then dedicate nearly an entire issue to report the research.  Riggs Construction & Design is one of the companies that they ask to participate in this poll every year.

It’s a very comprehensive report that breaks down geographic areas and three “grades” (high, medium and low end) for each renovation.  When it comes to bathroom remodeling, however, the reader should recognize the wide range of scope and scale.  So to put an average price tag, even in three ranges, seems impossible.

A bath renovation can be as simple as re-grouting and caulking the tile in the tub area that takes a few hours and minimal materials, to adding a master bath suite complete with multiple body sprays in the walk-in shower and a mini kitchenette that will enable you to prepare breakfast.  You never have to leave the sanctity of your master bedroom suite until it’s time to leave the house.  That can run into six figures in a heartbeat!

So when Remodeling Magazine’s questionnaire asks the question “how much?”, I’m never sure what to answer.  It’s like asking how much a car cost.  Is it a Ford or a Lamborghini?

We at Riggs have designed and built plenty of both but the norm is somewhere in the middle.  The challenges in bath renovation are multiplied by the materials and trades needed for a bath renovation.  If the renovation is internal you won’t need roofing, siding or concrete but every other trade is incorporated and it’s all in small packages that require much more time per square foot to install.  For instance, a drywall contractor has to make four trips to hang, tape and sand his work but each trip is only one to three hours of work so all that travel time has to be accounted for.  Electric and plumbing can be the same problem.  Both trades have to make two trips, one for the “rough-in” before drywall and finishes and one at the very end.  The plumber may make a day out of the rough-in but the finish is about three hours and the electrician may only have three hours for his work each time.  That’s why a small bath renovation can seem so expensive even if you are looking for a Ford.

Some clients just want a fresh bathroom with re-grouted tile, a new vanity and top and updated electric including GFCI outlets and a better bath fan.  Others want everything to be new which entails stripping the room of all finishes including plaster and starting from scratch.  The biggest desire by most of our clients is the need for a larger bathroom with a tub and shower, in-floor heat and much larger vanities with two sinks and lots of counter space.

Space can be a challenge because most homes have a couple of bathrooms back to back and are your basic 5’ x 8’ “shotgun” bath that consists of a 30” vanity, 34” toilet space and a 32” wide tub.  To increase its size usually requires making a bedroom smaller, losing a closet or even less desirable, one of the two baths.  A closet and bathroom are valuable real estate in any home!   Of course, if you do increase the size you are now affecting other rooms which means drywall or plaster work, flooring, woodwork, painting and a host of other additional costs that aren’t really attributed to the envelope of the bathroom.

One popular solution that many clients find attractive is converting one of the baths into a three quarter or half bath and using the additional space in the other one.  That can increase the cost considerably because now you are doing two bath renovations but it’s what our clients want.  The “empty nesters” are willing to sacrifice an entire bathroom or even a bedroom to get the master bedroom/bath suite they have always dreamed of.  After years of child rearing, college tuitions and mortgage payments they now have discretionary income or savings that they can justify making their home into their castle.

Wherever you might fit into the spectrum of bath renovations, don’t get caught up in the “average cost” or what your friends paid for theirs because in most cases a bath renovation is customized to your home layout and your wants and desires.  My rule of thumb has always been: decide what you want, research all the options and pick a good design/build firm to work with you to realize those dreams.  This is true for a home maintenance agreement, bath renovation or adding a second floor, kitchen and whole house renovation.

Tom Bathroom Remodeling Bathroom Remodeling, cost versus value

Need verses Want Remodeling

When the great recession hit in 2007 -08, Riggs Construction & Design was rolling along with a nice annual revenue which represented about 50 jobs each year.  Maybe 30 of them were small jobs for past clients and friends of the company, and the rest were within a range of $50,000 to $400,000 each.  Just about every year, just two jobs would generate at least $1,000,000 in revenue.

Today, times have changed.  While I didn’t haul out the books to get exact numbers, 2009 brought a much larger number of jobs completed, but each with a smaller price tag.  Overall, we did about 80 jobs and it took our 6 largest jobs to reach the one million dollars mark.  We knew this last year was going to be down in volume and we expect next year to be as well so we were prepared for it and are doing quite well, thank you.  But it speaks volumes about what the remodeling indsutry is dealing with - and that is a need verses want mentality in the market place.

Three years ago people <i>wanted</i> a new kitchen blending into a family room addition with a master suite above.  Today, they <i>need</i> upgrades and repairs done.  It could be based on the need for new windows and more insulation to keep their utility bills down as opposed to wanting the latest and greatest style.  Whole house remodeling and additions were popular before the crash because people could stay in the neighborhood and still get what they wanted.  Now they are settling for scaled back projects like a new kitchen and a face lift in the powder room.  Many of our projects are repairing damage that is worse than it would have been if caught early.  But people are even deferring some projects like caulking, painting and weatherproofing until the damage becomes so obvious that something has to be done.

Some clients did choose to do large remodeling projects last year but as the numbers above suggest, they are fewer in number than I’ve seen in forty years.  I’ve seen some “slow” times before but never for this extended period of time and very few economic prognosticators are calling for this economic situation to end any time soon.

Moving towards a smaller scale, need-based project type calls for a different system of production for remodeling projects - and at Riggs we’ve responded to that shift well.   Our average sized job used to take a crew of three carpenters a month to get under roof.  Then, while the mechanical trades, drywall work, hardwood flooring and painters were getting it ready for our trim carpenters; our framing crew would be working outside on siding, exterior trim and a deck or other such structures. Although our Mission Statement and dedication to our clients hasn’t changed, we’ve learned to become much leaner and efficient on smaller projects. Now, many of our projects take one or two men a week to demo and make ready for the other trades and they are moving those trades in and out at a much faster rate.  A schedule for projects such as kitchens or bathrooms is much faster paced, but the same trades are needed as would be for a huge addition.

We have the same project managers and crew as we’ve always had and they have adjusted to this new type of work very well.  I think they all long for the bigger projects where they get the opportunity to form lasting relationships with our clients and all the trades aren’t piling on top of one another; but they know that need verses want remodeling is the driving force in the market and will be for some time to come.

Tom remodeling