What a full renovation actually means
Back to frame and slab. Tiles, mortar bed, bath, shower base, vanity, toilet, wall linings and old pipework all leave the building. What goes back in is a new room built in the correct order, with each stage inspected before the next one covers it up.
That order matters more than any finish you choose. A beautiful tile over a rushed membrane is a leak with a nice surface on it.
Stage one: find out what you have
Asbestos testing on anything pre-1990
Oak Flats, Mount Warrigal, Warilla, Barrack Heights and the older parts of Albion Park are full of houses with fibre cement sheet in wet areas and rear add-ons. Before anything is disturbed, sheeting is sampled and tested. A positive result means a licensed asbestos removalist does that part of the work and issues a clearance certificate before the rest of the job restarts. It is not optional and it is not a job for a builder's licence.
Floor type
Slab on ground. Standard in the estates. Forgiving to waterproof, unforgiving if you want to move a waste.
Timber on piers or bearers. Standard in the older stock. Flexible for layout changes because services run underneath, but it moves seasonally, so junctions and the membrane need to be detailed for movement.
The subfloor and the frame
Where an old shower has been leaking for a decade, the damage is underneath. Soft joists, a rotten bottom plate, rusted fixings. This is the single most common reason a quote moves, which is why the allowance for it belongs in the quote rather than in a phone call three weeks later.
Stage two: the rough-in
New water supply and waste lines, and new wiring while the walls are open. Galvanised pipe gets replaced, not patched. Anything moving position moves now.
This is also the moment to put in the things that are nearly free with open walls and expensive later:
- Solid blocking behind the walls where grab rails might go one day
- A dedicated circuit if a heated towel rail is wanted — see the guide to heated towel rails and towel storage
- A proper exhaust duct run to an external vent, not into the roof space
- A light at the mirror as well as one in the ceiling
- Conduit for an underfloor heating mat if that is on the list
Stage three: sheet, screed, waterproof
Wet-area board on the walls. A screed on the floor that actually falls to the waste, so water leaves rather than ponding in a corner.
Then the membrane: floor, up the shower walls to the required height, and carefully detailed at every junction, penetration and corner. Then it cures. Humid coastal weather can stretch that out, and pushing tiles onto a membrane that has not cured is how a two-year leak starts. The waterproofing and tiling page goes into the detail.
Stage four: tiles and fit-off
The set-out gets drawn before the first tile goes on, so cut tiles land in corners and behind the door rather than down the middle of the main wall. Then vanity, toilet, tapware, screen, mirror, fan, lighting and accessories, a final clean, a walk-through and the waterproofing paperwork handed over.
Design calls worth making early
Bath or no bath? With young kids, keep it — in the newer estates a second bathroom often means one room can lose the bath while the other keeps it. With the kids grown and gone, that floor area is worth more as a wide walk-in shower.
Level entry, now rather than later. A shower with no hob, a linear or point drain set correctly and a non-slip floor costs very little extra during a renovation and is a serious job to retrofit. See accessible bathrooms.
Storage you will actually use. Drawers rather than a cupboard, a mirror cabinet, a niche set at the right height. Most original bathrooms in this area have almost none.
Fittings chosen for the coast. Within a few streets of the ocean or the lake entrance, plating quality on tapware, screen hardware and rails is what decides whether the room still looks new in five years.
No engineered stone. Banned in Australia since 1 July 2024. Porcelain, sintered surface, natural stone, timber or a good laminate top instead.
What belongs in the written quote
- Asbestos testing, and the method and basis for pricing removal if needed
- A stated allowance for rot and structural repair, with a variation method
- Exactly which pipework is being replaced
- Fittings by brand and model, not "quality tapware"
- A tile allowance, with the price per square metre it is based on
- The waterproofing system and its cure time
- The exhaust fan model and where it discharges
- Waste removal, site protection and parking or access constraints
- A program in working days, not "about a month"
Paying for it, under NSW rules
A deposit on residential building work in NSW cannot exceed 10 per cent. Where the contract value is above the home building compensation threshold, that cover must be in place before a deposit is requested. Progress payments should be tied to completed stages, never to dates on a calendar.
Renovation work is carried out in partnership with Coastal Renovation Group, a licensed NSW builder. Licence and insurance details are provided on request.
For guide figures, see what it costs. For timing, see stage by stage.
Call 02 4214 4283 or send the room details through.
Other bathroom work
The rest of what gets quoted
| Ensuites | Project-home ensuites with a flexing acrylic base and a pivot door, reworked into a room two adults can use at once. |
|---|---|
| Small Bathrooms | Second bathrooms, powder rooms and narrow 1960s layouts where the set-out has to be drawn before anything is ordered. |
| Accessible Bathrooms | Level-entry showers, blocked walls for rails, non-slip floors and door widths that still work with a frame. |
| Laundry Renovations | Garage and internal laundries given real bench space, a tub that fits a nappy bucket and a dryer that vents outside. |
| Waterproofing & Tiling | The two stages that decide whether the room lasts fifteen years or five, done to the standard and photographed before tiles. |
| Rental Bathrooms | Hard-wearing, quick-turnaround bathrooms for investment houses and units, scheduled around a vacancy rather than a mood board. |
Keep reading
Questions people ask before they commit
How do I know whether I need a full renovation or a refresh?
Count the structural reasons. If water is escaping the shower, floor tiles are drummy, the pipework is original or there is sheeting that needs asbestos testing, the room needs stripping. If none of those are true and it is simply dated, new tapware, a vanity, lighting, a regrout and a proper fan will get you most of the way for a fraction of the money.
How long will we be without the bathroom?
Allow roughly three to five weeks on site for a single main bathroom. A slab-on-ground estate home at the quicker end, an older fibro house where the floor framing needs work and sheeting has to be removed at the slower end. Membrane cure time is part of that and cannot be hurried.
Can the shower or toilet be moved?
On a timber floor with access underneath, usually without much drama. On a slab it means cutting and re-coring concrete, which is the single biggest cost swing in an estate home. The honest question is whether the move actually improves the room enough to pay for it.
Is tiling over the existing tiles ever sensible?
Rarely in a room worth renovating. You inherit whatever the old membrane is doing, the floor rises at the doorway, and if the original tiles let go later the new ones come with them. It is a cosmetic fix sold as a renovation.
What happens if something unexpected turns up once it is open?
It gets photographed, shown to you and priced against the allowance already written into the quote. Rot under an old shower, a termite-damaged bottom plate or a wall well out of plumb are common enough that a quote without an allowance for them is not a finished quote.