<p>“I suggest putting a grab bar in your shower no matter your age or health.” - I agree! </p>
<p>We actually do have rubber backed bath rugs by our showers. But somehow there are still times when there is some water on our floor and/or feet. It would never be as slippery as at the motel (with just a towel), but still a concern to me.</p>
<p>When we redid our bathrooms, I put in rock maple solid wood floors. Lovely. So far so good. About 5 years old.</p>
<p>talk to a tile pro - they have a measurable co-efficient of friction for different tiles so you can know how slippery it really is.<br>
Size matters. Smaller tiles with grout between means more “grip”</p>
<p>Get yourself over to gardenweb.com to find the bath/kitchen obsessed reflections of this college thred.</p>
<p>Thanks Igloo. Maple floors can indeed be lovely. I had not considered wood for the bathrooms, but that might work.</p>
<p>I love it. We have hardwood floor in the house. The bathroom floor flushes with the rest. No threshold. Clean line. Inviting warm feeling. I have mine unstained.</p>
<p>I would just suggest a dark floor, to hide the dirt. We installed light ceramic tile in our kitchen and I regret it. The floor has to be cleaned every two days(quick mop).</p>
<p>^I haven’t noticed doggy scratches on my brother’s cork floors. (Kitchen and family room.) That said, I wouldn’t use it in a bathroom. I really much prefer tile. Small mosaic type tiles work best in my experience - especially ones without a shiny glaze. You do not want non-vitreous tiles. Tiles with a friction rating of at least .70 are optimal.</p>
<p>I second the suggestion of heating the floor if you go with tile. It’s wonderful to step out of a shower onto a warm floor. Costco used to sell the mats, not sure if they still do. Bonus if you have a cat, it will be his new favorite place to hang out.</p>
<p>There’s a kind of oil-finished wood floor that reportedly stands up to water and abuse better than any other hardwood. It was completely new to me, but I’m considering it for our kitchen.</p>
<p>Their web site is <a href="mailto:ancestral@ancestralfloors.com">ancestral@ancestralfloors.com</a></p>
<p>I redid my master bathroom last summer and fall and used stone tiles that were textured. They’re in a mosaic type design and not slippery at all. I just use a hot water to clean the tiles. I had limestone tiles before that were horrible–water stained them and they looked awful. Plus, they were slippery. </p>
<p>There was a problem with our shower pan, which is why we had to replace the tiles. We redid all the tilework in the shower and on the floors and walls of the master bath. Managed to save the tub and cabinets under the sinks. The repair job was so messy and dusty that we had to move out of the master bedroom until the guys finished the work. While I hated the inconvenience, the new tiles are great.</p>
<p>Ok - last thing on cork floors from me, but our floor at work was sealed, and it still pits from high heels. It is warm, and kind of “giving” which would make it a great kitchen floor - not rock hard like tile …but I do not think this wears well, unless it is low traffic, no heels, and possibly no pets.</p>
<p>This weekend we decided to drive to the next town to look at a bathroom showroom there, a spin-off building from the local home/hardware store. I was shocked to see they are only open Monday to Friday, 9am-5pm. </p>
<p>I’d like to renovate our main floor bath first. My husband suggests that we’ll get much better prices if we do the master bath at the same time. (There is another full bath we could use if needed. Any thoughts?</p>
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<p>You may get some savings by doing two at once but it won’t be “much better prices”. I would, however, recommend doing both at once simply to prevent an additional future disruptive project.</p>
<p>I do think you would get some cost savings unless the person doing the work is doing everything without subs. If the contractor is hiring subs, it is easier to get one for a day or two to tile or paint or plumb or demo both rooms rather than to get one for just a few hours. Also you have more bargaining room on a bigger job. That being said, if you haven’t used the contractor before, you might want to test him on a small job before hiring him for the big one. Do you have a third bathroom to use while the other two are out of commission?</p>
<p>Once my son leaves for college, I will be redoing the remaining 5 rooms in our house - 2 bedrooms (paint, flooring, furniture, bedding, molding), office (paint, flooring, furniture, molding) and two relatively small bathrooms from top to bottom. Fortunately I have an amazing guy who did the rest of our house. I will do it all at once after careful planning. That is how we did our recent reno (kitchen, family room, LR, DR) in 6 weeks after a year of planning.</p>
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<p>We just finished a major master bedroom and bathroom renovation. I was also very unpleasantly surprised to find that outside of Home Depot and Lowes, all of the plumbing, tile or lighting places were only open M-F 9-5pm! Not very consumer friendly at all.</p>
<p>On renovating the two bathrooms at once to save money. Maybe…we have one general contractor tell us it was cheaper and one say that it’s not. I think the truth is somewhere in between. Some subs would be cheaper, some not…depending one how they charge. For example, some subs charge by the job, others by the hour. I would ask the general contractors that you talk to. It would probably be easier to get it over with at once. It’s not much fun to have people in your house day after day and if you think you are going to want to do the other bathroom sooner than later anyway, I would do it. </p>
<p>One important thing to remember is that many renovation jobs go over budget and if they give you ‘allowances’ it’s usually based upon contractor grade fixtures (read: the cheapest stuff available). Make sure you pick out what you want ahead of time and price that into the budget.</p>
<p>What MomLive said – get it over with! Esp. bathroom remodeling which is <em>almost</em> as big of a pain as kitchen remodeling. At least most people have more than one bathroom!</p>
<p>Even you do use a general contractor, make sure you are present when fixtures etc are going in. Two houses ago, we had one built. I would show up on plumbing day, or on tiling day, just to be sure what I’d ordered was being installed. On at least two occasions, the items I’d special-ordered were not being used. I kept hearing ‘yeah? We always use this one…’ (from the installer; not from my contractor) and I’d say, “That’s nice…but not in <em>my</em> house.”</p>
<p>The 9-5 home-store stuff makes me crazy. They want us to deal locally but they aren’t willing to accommodate working people? I can walk into Lowe’s at 8:45 on a Saturday night to get a new chandelier and have it up by midnight. It wouldn’t kill the local folks to stay open to 6 so we have at least some chance of buying from them after work.</p>
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The key to not exceeding the budget is to be sure to have EVERYTHING included at the QUALITY you want. For example if you want just average granite, that’s one price. Add some great movement & a fancy edge, up $$. Do you want a showerhead or a rain showerhead with jets in bronze? Ask questions about every # in the budget.</p>
<p>Many of the places that keep a showroom open only on weekdays will make an appointment with you for the weekend, especially if you are working with a contractor so that they know you’re serious.</p>
<p>Doing a master bath remodel right now. We are having travertine floors put in. Thanks for the tip on epoxy grout BB. I will ask the installers about it.</p>
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<p>Exactly. One general contractor even told me he wouldn’t give us a finalized budget numbers until I picked out everything I wanted but that really affects the budget. We went with a different contractor who didn’t require this. If I had to do it over again, I would have picked out everything first. I got what I wanted but we did go over budget. It was a frustrating experience.</p>