Frak Me

Well the Home Depot Home Services visit that was rescheduled from last Wednesday happened today.

Oh.My.Lord.

Her estimate for redoing the powder room (7′ x 3′) was $7,800. This included tiling the floor, a new vanity/sink/faucet, and texture & paint the walls. Clearly I need to learn how to do all these things and do them myself. (And then totally change professions and become a handyman. Yowza.)

The tile I priced at Home Depot was $42.50 for a case of 10 tiles. I would need 3 cases, so $127.50. Now I realize that does not include installation, but she told me that there was a $1,600 minimum for tile. So I’m basically paying $1,475 for installation??

I found a vanity that I liked online for $438. Again, that doesn’t include installation, and also doesn’t include the sink or faucet. But still. She included $850 for a vanity, and a separate price for the sink & faucet that I didn’t see.

I’m glad I had done some homework before she came.

I think I will still get some estimates from somewhere else (I’ve found some home remodelers online) because we’re interested in doing several things spaced out over time and it would be good to find a reliable source. We just don’t have the time to do everything ourselves. But I’m going to think about what I can do (like install a sink? how hard can that be?)

She did give me some good tips. The initial estimate (which was over $9,000) included a $500 carpentry charge which is the minimum for carpentry. This was for some built in shelves above the toilet. I know they are cheap to make and my father-in-law can do it, but I hate to keep asking him to do stuff like that. (He did shelves in Courtney’s whole walk-in closet for $150). She said either Container Store or Aaron Brothers (framing) had the kind of shelf I want that I could get the right length and then install myself.

We looked at the kids bathroom (to see if tiling the two together would be cheaper, if the minimum could be applied to 2 rooms. It couldn’t.) There are little mold spots on the grout, and she explained how that means there is a big mold spot on the sheetrock behind the tiles, and the mold is coming through from the back. It doesn’t come through from the front. So she explained how to scrape out the grout, grout with an epoxy style grout, and that keeps water from getting behind the tile. Eventually we’ll have to do in that bathroom what we did in our master (take down the sheetrock & start from the studs) but not yet.

Oh, the first estimate also included $880 for them to remove the one light fixture from the bathroom before painting. Seriously. She said "Did you install that light?" I said that I did, and she said if I took it out before the workers got there, they wouldn’t have to charge me any electrical, but if not, they had to charge a $380 permit fee and a $500 minimum electrical charge. CRAZY!!

Moral of the story – question every single charge. She was very nice about telling me how I could make it cheaper. It just couldn’t get cheap enough for me. (My budget is $1,200. It’s a tiny freaking bathroom.)