After a long, hard day at work, all you want to do is head to your bathroom – your very own escape – and relax. Unfortunately, you can't pamper yourself and relax here because you are in as much of a hurry to depart this space as you were to leave your office. If your bathroom is dull and less-than-glamorous, it's time to re-do it. However, to avoid breaking the bank, you need to know how to properly budget for your remodel. Here are three rules that you need to follow:

1. Use the Value of Your Home to Create a Budget.

When determining a budget for your bathroom model, it can be hard to pinpoint a specific price or price range. Then, once you get going on the renovation, you can often spend far too much money in this one room. Sure, you want it to be beautiful and luxurious, but you don't want to spend an arm and a leg either.

So, how do you determine just how much you are to spend? How much is too much, but what is not enough? To avoid going overboard, a good rule of thumb is actually somewhere between five and 10 percent of the value of your home, according to Consumer Reports. So, as an example, if your home is currently valued at $300,000, you are looking at a remodeling budget of somewhere between $15,000 and $30,000.

2. Make Sure to Divide Your Budget Appropriately

Once you determine how much you will be spending on your remodel, you then need to decide how much of that budget is going to be used on what. For example, how much will you spend on replacing the flooring? How much for labor? How much to replace the countertops? On the Consumer Reports website, the National Kitchen and Bath Association (NKBA) suggests breaking down your budget so that only certain percentages of it go to labor, plumbing, flooring, etc. For example, 20 percent should be set aside for labor, 16 percent for cabinets and associated hardware and nine percent should be set aside for flooring.

3. Take the Time to Locate Good Labor

Based on the above breakdown, you are going to spend the largest chunk of your budget on labor. Therefore, you want to ensure that money goes to good use. In order to do this, request bids from multiple contractors and do not accept the bid from the lowest or first contractor without looking over all bids. It will take a single inept plumber to ruin your entire remodel. Keep in mind that there is a reason that labor makes up 20 percent of the budget, and this is to make sure that the entire job is done right. Contact a company like Clearwater Plumbing to learn more.

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