Zero Progress Made on Master Bathroom Remodel

So the master bathroom remodel dilemma continues.  We are still waiting for the last of the Home Depot affiliated contractors to get back to us.  The other one was still out of budget and his work didn't seem that great.  They are primarily a cleaning company but also do remodels that they don't advertise anywhere because they get so much business from Home Depot.  They sent some pictures of projects they've done and they weren't very impressive.  

We've been a little disheartened about the whole thing.  Should we just try and do it ourselves even though we don't have the time or expertise to do it or should we scrap the whole idea?   I've been watching HGTV nonstop and for some reason they can gut three bathrooms and a kitchen for $50k, but it costs that much just for one bathroom here New Mexico.  Crazy!

This morning I got a text from one of the contractors who gave us a quote awhile back and I replied back honestly that our budget is about half of what he estimated and we're still waiting back for other estimates.  He said that he would rework the estimate and get back to me, so that makes me really hopeful.  It's funny because I had a dream the other night that my husband told me one of the contractors wanted to revise the estimate he gave us and I was so excited! LOL! 

So I decided to contact a couple of the other contractors and told them the same thing - sorry I hadn't gotten back with them.  Our budget is a hard $18k and we're waiting for other estimates. I pulled back a lot on what we wanted done and told them we would be willing to purchase and install the vanity and toilet ourselves if they could come back with a $15k estimate for the rest of the jobs. We'll see what happens!  Who knew things would be so complicated!

We did stop in DreamStyle remodeling while we were at the mall the other day and set up an appointment with them for tomorrow.  I know they will come in high, but I'm hoping if I tell them straight out about our budget constraints they'll work with us.  I kept bringing up costs during the estimates, but never said what our budget was so we'll see what they say.  

I need to put up pictures of the things we did around the house during my two year hiatus from the blog.  Albert was really busy redoing the guest bedroom/workout room and made us a little mudroom area out of hallway.