How many hours should it take to remodel my bathroom?

[Trevon Peracca]

I am trying to get a rough idea of how many hours it will take my contractor to remodel my bathroom so that i can get an idea of what i will be paying in labor.

I am most likely going to paying between $40-60 per hour

Details:

L:10ft, W: 8ft, H: 8Ft.

Tearing out old bathtub and wall tiles in bath tub area

Tear out ceramic tile floors

Paint vanity and install new countertop 

New fixtures

Frame walk in shower where the tub was

Frame bench inside shower

build trench drain

install recessed lighting in shower

tile shower up to ceiling

Install shower glass

tile bathroom floor

install new base boards

install new door

[J Scott]

If you don't know how long various things take to complete, I would highly recommend not paying your contractor by the hour.  It's always good -- especially when you're new -- to ensure that your contractor's incentives are directly aligned with your own.  When you pay a contractor per hour, your incentives are mis-aligned -- your incentivized to get things done faster (you pay less) and your contractor is incentivized to get things done more slowly (he gets paid more).

This is especially true when it comes to things where the time frame can be greatly affected by quality -- like tiling.  I know tile guys who can finish a bathroom in a day; I know other tile guys who will take two weeks for the same amount of work.  The guys that would take two weeks will do amazingly intricate and high-quality work, but if I were paying them per hour, it would be at a cost that I wouldn't incur even for my personal residence.

So, while I might say that tiling the bathroom is about 2 days work, if he's a quality tile guy, he could probably justify two weeks, which would put your cost at about 5 times what I suggest it should be.  Is that a risk you want to take?

A good contractor should be able to give you a fixed quote for a specific project like the one you've described.  If the project is so nuanced that the contractor can't/won't give you a fixed priced bid, then you need to understand why that is.