15 Days, One Bathroom: A Real Renovation Timeline, Day by Day

You will often hear that a bathroom takes “two to three weeks.” Almost nobody shows you what those weeks actually contain — which days are loud, which days look like nothing happened, and where the schedule can slip. So we logged one of our own projects, day by day, exactly as it went: a full 4-piece renovation in Kanata, planned at 15 working days.

Below is the whole thing — including the day we lost to an inspection, the hidden leak under the old shower, and the morning the glass did not show up. Because that is what a real renovation looks like, and knowing it in advance is the difference between a stressful three weeks and a predictable one.

The project at a glance

• Project: Full 4-piece bathroom renovation

• Size: Medium — roughly 8 × 6 ft

• Location: Kanata, Ottawa

• Planned duration: 15 working days

• Scope: Walk-in shower, new vanity and toilet, wall and floor tile, Schluter waterproofing system, new lighting

  
  

Day 0 — Before Anything Gets Loud

No demolition yet. We arrive, walk the space with the homeowner, protect the hallway floors, and stage the bathroom for teardown. It is the quietest day of the project — and the last day the old bathroom exists.

[PHOTO: the old bathroom from the doorway. This exact angle gets repeated on Day 15.]

Day 1 — Demolition

The old bathroom comes out in a day: tile, vanity, toilet, everything inside the shower. And immediately, the first honest moment — under the old tile, the substrate is in poor shape and will need replacing too.

Why this matters: this is normal, not alarming. You cannot fully assess what is under a 20-year-old bathroom until it is open. The question is never “will we find something?” — it is “does your contractor tell you when they do?”

Day 2 — Open Walls, Old Secrets

Walls and floor in the shower zone are fully opened. The plumbing works, but it is old — so we show the homeowner and suggest replacing part of the supply lines now, while everything is accessible, rather than tearing open a finished wall in a few years.

The find: under the old shower pan — a small, old leak. By the look of it, it had been there a long time; from the outside, completely invisible. We have documented where that road ends when it is ignored: another Kanata bathroom where a slow leak quietly rotted the entire subfloor. Caught here on Day 2, it is a footnote instead of a disaster.

Day 3 — Plumbing

Rough-in day: new supply routing for the walk-in shower, the mixer valve relocated, connections prepped for the vanity. None of this will ever be visible again — which is exactly why it gets done carefully now.

Day 4 — Electrical

The electrician runs new wiring: mirror lighting, the exhaust fan, an extra light inside the shower. The old wiring was checked while the walls were open, and part of it needed to be replaced — so it was.

Day 5 — Inspection Day (a.k.a. the Slow Day)

Plumbing and electrical are ready, so nothing gets closed up — today we wait for the inspector, who arrives in the afternoon, checks everything, and signs off with no issues.

The honest part: waiting cost us most of a working day, and the schedule shifted. That is the reality of permitted work — inspectors come on their timetable, not yours. It is also non-negotiable: the inspection is your proof that what is inside your walls is done to code. (When permits and inspections are actually required in Ottawa — we broke that down here.) A contractor who “saves you time” by skipping this is saving themselves, not you.

Day 6 — Walls Go Back Up

With the inspection passed, the walls close: cement board goes on, every surface gets prepped for waterproofing, and the base for the shower niche is built in.

Day 7 — Waterproofing: The Layer You Will Not See — and Should Not Skip

The Schluter membrane goes on — walls, shower zone, every seam and corner banded and sealed. This is the least glamorous day of the project and the most important one. Alexander’s rule on site: this is the one day nobody rushes.

Why this matters: after tomorrow, tile covers all of this. There is no “we will fix it later” behind tile — the membrane has to be right today, because no one can inspect it afterward. It is the invisible half of what you are paying for in a properly built walk-in shower, which is exactly why we photograph it before it disappears.

[PHOTO: the full shower in orange Schluter membrane — the signature shot of the whole series.]

Day 8 — Layout Day

Surfaces checked for flatness, floors and walls finalized — and then the tile gets dry-laid before a single piece is set. This is where cuts and symmetry get planned, so the finished walls look deliberate instead of accidental.

Day 9 — Tile Begins

Tiling starts with the main shower wall, because every other line in the room follows from it. The first day is always the slowest — setting it straight matters more than setting it fast.

Small course correction: in one spot the layout got adjusted to avoid a sliver-thin cut at the edge. Ten minutes of re-planning versus a skinny tile strip you would notice every day for years — an easy trade.

Day 10 — Tile Continues

The shower is nearly wrapped — one wall and part of the floor to go. A quiet, productive day. Not every day has a plot twist; most of a good renovation is exactly this.

Day 11 — Walls Done, Floor Begins

Main wall tile complete, floor underway — including the shower floor, set with a proper slope to the drain.

Why this matters: a shower floor is not judged by how it looks — it is judged by where water goes. The slope toward the drain is built in millimetres, and it is the difference between a floor that dries and a puddle that never leaves.

Day 12 — Grout

The tile gets its cure time, then grout goes into every joint on walls and floor. This is the day the room stops looking like a job site and starts looking like a bathroom.

Day 13 — The Glass Does Not Show Up

The plan said fixtures. The shower glass had other plans — the delivery slipped a day. So instead of losing the day, the crew pivots: trim goes in, and the vanity and toilet positions get prepped.

The honest part: this was not a workmanship problem — glass deliveries run on the supplier’s calendar, not the site’s, and supply hiccups happen on almost every project. What matters is whether the crew has a productive Plan B for the day or just goes home. Ours did not go home.

Day 14 — Glass, Fixtures, and Suddenly It Is a Bathroom

The glass arrives and goes in, followed by the toilet, vanity, plumbing hookups, and the mirror. This is the most satisfying day of any project — the room transforms in hours. After the glass is up, it already looks finished.

Day 15 — Final Checks and the Walkthrough

Everything gets tested: supply lines, shower, drain, lighting, fan. Full cleanup, then a room-by-room walkthrough with the homeowner. Fifteen working days after the first photo — same doorway, very different view.

[PHOTO: the finished bathroom from the same doorway angle as Day 0. The before/after pair that carries the article.]

What Actually Decides Your Timeline

Notice what moved this schedule and what did not. The work itself ran on plan. The variables were the things around it — and they are the same on every project:

• Inspections — they come on the city’s schedule, and they are worth every hour of waiting.

• What is found when walls open — here it was old pipes and a small leak, handled same-day because the homeowner was shown, not surprised.

• Supply — custom glass, special-order tile, and imported fixtures move on their own calendars.

One thing worth being precise about, because homeowners rightly count days: both delays happened inside the 15 working days, not on top of them. Day 5 was a working day spent on the inspection instead of construction, and Day 13’s glass gap was filled with trim and prep work. The project still handed over on Day 15 because the schedule had room for reality built in — and that is the real work of planning a renovation: not promising a fantasy number, but building a calendar that survives contact with a real house. As a rule of thumb — the same ranges we publish on our service pages — a 3-piece bathroom typically runs 2–3 weeks, a 4-piece like this one about 3, and a larger custom ensuite 3–5 weeks.

Want Your Renovation to Look This Boring?

“Boring” is the goal — a schedule you can see, photos when something unexpected turns up, an inspector’s sign-off on what is inside your walls, and a walkthrough at the end. That is the standard behind every bathroom renovation in Ottawa we take on (step by step on our How It Works page), across Kanata, Nepean, Orleans, Barrhaven, and Stittsville. A free in-home estimate comes with a real timeline for your actual bathroom — not a brochure number.

Book a free estimate: 613-883-0018

Fifteen days, four honest hiccups, and no surprises left unexplained — every one of them was shown to the homeowner the day it happened. That is the whole method, and now you know exactly what the middle of a bathroom renovation looks like.