I personally would never use Home Depot, or Lowes for a project like this. They just sub-contract to local people. The issue is that you have no control over who actually comes to do the work.

There is certainly something to be said for having a large company to back the work, but from my (admittedly small number of) data points, I find that in general, the bottom of the barrel tend to work for my local Big Box stores.

Find someone who has had similar work done and get a recommendation from them.

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Don't use them. Its one of those "you get what you paid for" kind of things when it comes to contractors. More on reddit.com

I had my bathroom redone last year. Rip out tub, tiled shower, fixed glass shower panel, wall-mounted double vanity which required adjusting the plumbing and reinforcing the wall, tile floor, installing light and mirrors…in total I paid just over $13k. Before and after - not including the glass partition Prices went up a bit after I signed the contract. Also Midwest. Western suburb of Chicago. More on reddit.com

We did. Work wasn't too bad, but pay attention. They didn't secure the subfloor correctly, so the first time we walked on teh new tile floor we could see it moving. We told them where to get the tile (we had purchased it) and they pulled it all up and laid an additional layer of plywood down. I also had to stop them from just tiling over an open junction box they found (the vanity had flipped from one wall to the other and the the previous owner (had to be him based on finished), an electrical contractor who owned his own company, had left live wires behind a fiberglass shower wall. We called in an electrician to fix it correctly. Basically, you'll get less experienced contractors, but HD/Lowes is weilding a big stick on your behalf (enough customer complaints and their business dries up). We think our contractors mostly did apartment maintenance; the floors & electrical were a bit alarming, but we caught it and were pretty happy with the results. If you aren't as aware of whats right, it might be better to stick with a more experienced contractor; though I've seen crappy work from them too. EDIT: I should note, we split the work, because I didn't want them messing with my Plaster (1876 house); they wanted to cover it all with 1/4 drywall, I didn't want to give up a 1/2" of space (2 wall) and have learned to love the solidity of old plaster More on reddit.com