Adding vs. Remodeling a Bathroom: Which Is Right for You?
When you walk into your bathroom, does it feel like you’re stepping into a luxurious oasis where you relax and escape the day’s cares and worries? Or does it feel more like you’re squeezing into a 1960s-era nightmare? If the latter sounds more familiar, odds are you’ve already found yourself looking at contractors with experience handling bathroom remodeling projects. During your research, though, you’ve probably found yourself asking whether a bathroom renovation or remodel would be more or less valuable than adding a new bathroom to your home. After all, who couldn’t use a bit of additional bathing space?
Bathroom additions and bathroom renovations both come with a plethora of benefits homeowners can enjoy. This means that picking the right project often comes down to determining what exactly you need.
Adding a Bathroom
Sometimes, adding a bathroom to your home requires increasing its square footage by pushing out the concrete foundation. Far more often, however, homeowners choose to convert existing space—like an unfinished basement or a large, unused closet—into a new bathroom. These kinds of projects come with both benefits and drawbacks.
Pros
When adding a bathroom to your home, you often have more opportunities for personalization than you would during a standard bathroom remodeling project. That’s because you get to customize your new room from the ground up, choosing a layout, picking bathing fixtures, and determining the overall flow of your space. You can also invest in energy-efficient or eco-friendly features if you want.
Cons
As you’ve probably already guessed, a bathroom addition tends to be more expensive than a renovation or remodel. In addition to paying for brand-new fixtures and a new plumbing system, you’ll also need to pay a small army of plumbers and contractors to finish your space. Labor is often the most expensive part of a bathroom renovation, which means that lengthier additions will inevitably cost more.
Ultimately, a bathroom addition tends to be the favored project of homeowners who need more bathing space in their home. Otherwise, the costs of the project—even with the potential for creating a completely custom space—tend to outweigh the value.
Remodeling a Bathroom
Remodeling an existing bathroom can take several forms, from simply swapping out a few key bathing fixtures to completely gutting and recreating the existing space. For homeowners looking to maximize return on investment, a low- or mid-range bathroom renovation usually offers the best value. But how does this project stack up against a bathroom addition?
Pros
It probably goes without saying, but bathroom renovations are usually more cost-effective than bathroom additions (especially if both projects make use of similarly priced materials). A large part of this has to do with labor—remodeling a bathroom takes far less time than building one from the ground up, especially if the existing plumbing layout is maintained.
Just because it can be completed faster doesn’t mean that it won’t provide you with a stylish new space, though. In fact, swapping out a few key bathing fixtures can completely change the look of a bathroom.
Cons
A bathroom remodeling project may improve the useability of your space, but it certainly won’t provide you with more of it. Oftentimes, this isn’t a problem for homeowners—they don’t really need the extra bathroom, especially if their existing one is useable. However, if you find yourself living in a house with far more people than toilets, you may want to consider adding a bathroom to your property.
If you’re looking for a bathroom remodeling expert in the Richmond, VA, area, look no further than MR. FIX-IT™. Our team would be happy to create your dream bathroom, so contact us today to learn more.
