What to Look for When Hiring Professional Bathroom Remodeling Contractors

What to Look for When Hiring Professional Bathroom Remodeling Contractors

Are you going to be remodeling one of the bathrooms in your home in the near future?

If so, you might be thinking about trying to take on the job yourself. There are many homeowners who attempt to remodel their bathrooms on their own in an effort to save some money.

Remodeling a bathroom is definitely not an easy job, though. Unless you know exactly what you’re doing, you could end up biting off way more than you can chew when you start ripping your old bathroom apart.

Instead of taking the DIY approach, hire bathroom remodeling contractors to help. They can provide you with the bathroom of your dreams, complete with gorgeous bathroom countertops, while sticking to the budget you give them.

Just make sure you bring the right bathroom remodeling contractors on board for the job. Here are 10 things you should look for in bathroom contractors.

Brings Tons of Experience to the Table

You wouldn’t hire a 19-year-old mechanic who just started working in a garage to rebuild your engine. So why would you hire a contractor who just started working in your area to remodel your bathroom?

One of the very first things that you should look for when you’re searching around for bathroom remodeling contractors is experience. Ideally, you want to hire a contractor who has been remodeling bathrooms for at least a few years now to take on your remodeling job.

When you start speaking with different contractors in your area, ask them about how long they’ve been in the business. More specifically, ask them how long they’ve been running point on bathroom remodeling projects.

Try to find a contractor who can offer a wealth of experience to you. It’ll prevent you from running into any major issues during your remodel. It’ll also help you sleep better at night when you know you have an experienced contractor by your side.

Knows Your Area Inside and Out

In a perfect world, the bathroom remodeling contractor that you hire should be familiar with your immediate area. Whether they have an office in your city or not, they should have at least some experience working in homes in your general vicinity.

Why is this important?

Well, for starters, it’ll let you know that they won’t have any trouble getting to your home on time during your remodeling project. The last thing you want to do is hire a contractor who lives an hour or two away and have them struggle to make it to your home on time every morning.

But it’s also important because there are all kinds of rules and regulations in your specific area pertaining to bathroom remodels. So the contractor that you hire to work on your bathroom will need to be familiar with everything from the local permitting process to the various zoning ordinances set up by your municipality.

That’s not to say that you can’t hire a contractor who typically works outside of your city. Good contractors educate themselves with regards to local rules and regulations before they get to work.

But by going with local contractors, you’ll ensure that you don’t have to worry about them wasting time (and money!) while they familiarize themselves with your area.

Holds Both a Business License and Business Insurance

Whether you’re remodeling a bathroom, a kitchen, a basement, a garage, or another area of your home, you should not, under any circumstances, work with a remodeling contractor who doesn’t have both a business license and business insurance.

A business license will let you know that bathroom remodeling contractors are legit. It’ll show that they’ve taken the right steps to register their business and taken the necessary training courses to work on homes.

Business insurance, on the other hand, will protect both you and the bathroom remodeling contractor that you hire in the event that something goes wrong during your remodel. If someone is injured or something is damaged in the middle of a remodel, you won’t have to worry about paying for it out of your own pocket.

There are, unfortunately, so many nightmare stories out there about terrible things that have happened to homeowners who agreed to work with a contractor who didn’t have insurance. Make sure you ask to see proof of insurance before hiring a contractor to do any work in your home.

Offers Creative Bathroom Remodeling Ideas

Do you know exactly what you want your new bathroom to look like once it’s all finished? Then you might not need a contractor to provide you with any great ideas for making the most of your space.

But there are many homeowners who aren’t 100 percent sure what they want to do to bring their bathrooms up to speed. They also have questions about what’s possible based on the size and current setup of their bathroom space.

If you fall into this category, you should look for bathroom remodeling contractors who are willing to offer you creative and innovative ideas for your bathroom remodeling job. They should bring great ideas to the table right from the beginning.

Not all bathroom contractors work in this way. There are many contractors who rely on homeowners to tell them what to do once they arrive at their homes. But you should try to find one who doesn’t mind rolling up their sleeves and coming up with ideas alongside you.

Uses Only High-Quality Materials

The average bathroom remodeling project costs just north of $10,000. And there are some instances in which people will pay $25,000 or more to have one of their home’s bathrooms remodeled.

If you’re going to fork over that kind of money for a bathroom remodel, you need to make sure your bathroom contractor is going to use the most high-quality materials possible. You want your bathroom to look and feel as high-end as it can when your contractor is all finished.

As far as your countertops are concerned, bathroom contractors should use either granite or quartz. Granite and quartz countertops are some of the most beautiful countertops in the world and will really shine in your new bathroom.

But your bathroom contractors shouldn’t stop there. They should also offer you high-quality bathroom cabinets, plumbing fixtures, lighting fixtures, flooring, and more. Ask to see the selection that contractors offer before you start working with them.

Comes Highly Recommended by Other Homeowners

One of the simplest ways to find the right bathroom remodeling contractors for your home is by seeking out recommendations from other homeowners. If you have a neighbor who recently remodeled a bathroom in their home, talk to them about whether or not they would recommend their contractor.

You can also speak with family members and friends about the bathroom contractors they have worked with in the past. They might be able to tell you about a great contractor who worked on one of their bathrooms.

If nothing else, you can also turn to the internet for help. You can Google the words “bathroom contractors” along with the name of your city and find a long list of contractors in your area. Those contractors will most likely have reviews that have been left for them by past clients.

Read through as many reviews as you can to get a good overview of different contractors. The reviews will let you know if you should consider hiring certain companies to remodel a bathroom for you.

Additionally, you can check out the websites for those companies who seem to have positive reviews to see some of the work they’ve done in the past. Reputable bathroom remodeling contractors should have photos of past projects available for you to check out.

Communicates Effectively

While all of the different qualities that are listed here are important in one way or another, you could make the argument that good communication trumps them all. The bathroom remodeling contractor that you hire needs to be able to communicate clearly and effectively with you from the start.

You and your contractor are going to be communicating early and often during your remodeling project. You’re going to sit down at the beginning to talk about what you want your bathroom to look like and continue talking throughout the duration of the project as you make changes and tweak your original design.

You shouldn’t necessarily expect your contractor to be available to you 24/7. That’s not fair to them. But you also shouldn’t have to spend days and potentially even weeks at a time trying to track them down.

When you call your contractor, they should either pick up for you right away or call you back within a reasonable amount of time. They should also reach out to you if they ever encounter any issues so that you’re not left in the dark about them.

Make sure you and your preferred contractor have a good rapport from the beginning. It’ll make a huge difference as you move forward with your remodeling job.

Establishes Deadlines and Sticks to Them

When you’re remodeling a bathroom in your home, it can be a huge inconvenience. It can force you and your family to share other bathrooms in your home and make it difficult for you to do something as simple as taking a shower in the morning.

With this in mind, it’s very important for your bathroom remodeling contractor to finish off your bathroom remodel as quickly as they can. You don’t want the job to drag out for months and months at a time.

Your contractor should be prepared to provide you with a list of deadlines at the start of your remodeling project. From there, they should stick to those deadlines and hit each and every one of them without fail.

If they aren’t able to pinpoint exactly how long a project will take, they’re probably not going to be the right contractor for the job.

Strives to Keep Your Home as Clean as It Can Be

As we just mentioned, completing a bathroom remodel can prove to be very inconvenient for you and your family. It can make it tough for you all to share the remaining bathrooms in your home.

It can also leave your home looking like a big mess if your contractor doesn’t take steps to clean up after themselves. There might be dust, debris, and more all over the place throughout your remodeling project.

Ask bathroom remodeling contractors how they plan to limit the mess that they make in your home. They should have a clear-cut plan as far as how they’re going to keep your home as clean as it can be when they’re working in it.

This will make your entire bathroom remodeling project a little bit less stressful on you and your family.

Stands Behind Remodeling Work With a Warranty

One of the last things you should ask prospective bathroom remodeling contractors is what kind of warranty they offer on their work. You want to know that the contractor you hire stands behind the work that they do.

Some contractors will be more than happy to offer you a one-year warranty on the work that they do in your home. Others will be hesitant to offer you any warranty at all.

Stay away from contractors who are unwilling to set you up with the peace of mind that comes with having a warranty. You could very well end up paying a fortune to make costly repairs to your new bathroom if they don’t do a good job.

Hire the Right Bathroom Remodeling Contractors Today

There is so much that you need to consider when searching for the right bathroom remodeling contractors for your home. It can be very overwhelming trying to narrow down your search.

But as long as you keep all of the qualities listed here in mind, you shouldn’t have too much trouble finding the right contractor for your home. It’ll allow you to get the bathroom you’ve always dreamed about in no time.

Just remember that choosing the right contractor won’t be the last tough decision you need to make. You’ll also have to pick out everything from the right paint color for your new bathroom to the right countertops.

Read our blog to get all the information you’ll need to pick between granite and quartz countertops for your new bathroom space.