Bathroom & Ensuite Renovations
Full bathroom and ensuite renovations — waterproofed properly, finished cleanly, and done in weeks rather than months.
- Typical timeline
- 2–3 weeks
- Permits
- Rarely, unless drains move
- Live in during work
- Yes, if you have a second bathroom
What's Involved
Bathroom, done properly.
Bathrooms are small rooms where the expensive mistakes happen out of sight. Membrane, slope, venting and blocking are all invisible the day you hand the room back, and all of them decide whether it still looks right in ten years or starts staining the ceiling below in two.
- Full strip-out, disposal and floor protection through the house
- Membrane waterproofing to floors, curbs and all wet walls
- Tiling including large-format, niches and mitred corners
- Vanities, tubs, glass enclosures, faucets and fixtures
- Extraction fans ducted to the outside, never into the attic
- Licensed plumbing and electrical with GFCI protection
What Moves The Price
Where the money actually goes.
Three things account for most of the variation between one bathroom quote and another. Knowing which of them applies to you is most of the budgeting.
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1
Tile size, layout and pattern
Labour, not material, is where tile cost lives. Large-format needs a flatter substrate and more setting time; herringbone and mosaics multiply cuts; a full-height feature wall is a different job from a tub surround.
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2
Whether drains move
Keeping the toilet, tub and vanity in place is straightforward. Moving a drain means opening the floor, re-sloping the waste line and an inspection — and in a condo or on a slab, that can change the project entirely.
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3
Glass and fixtures
Frameless glass is templated after tiling and made to measure, so it carries both cost and a lead time. Thermostatic valves and wall-mounted fixtures need rough-in decisions made before the walls close.
Timeline
How a bathroom project runs.
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Strip-out
1–2 daysEverything out to the studs and subfloor, so we can see what we are actually dealing with before committing to the finish schedule.
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Rough-in and inspection
2–3 daysAny plumbing or electrical changes, blocking for grab bars and vanities, then inspection before anything gets covered.
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Waterproofing and tile
4–6 daysBacker board, membrane, flood test where appropriate, then floor and wall tile with proper cure time between stages.
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Fixtures and glass
3–4 daysVanity, toilet, faucets and lighting fitted, then the glass enclosure once it comes back from templating.
Worth Knowing
What goes wrong in bathroom projects.
Not a sales pitch — these are the three failures we get called in to fix most often. Ask any contractor you are considering how they handle them.
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Waterproofing done cheaply or skipped entirely
A tiled wall is not waterproof. Without a proper membrane behind it, water reaches the substrate and the failure shows up as a stain on the ceiling below, long after the warranty conversation would have been easy.
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The fan vented into the attic
Extremely common and genuinely damaging. Warm wet air dumped into a cold attic condenses, soaks the insulation and grows mould. The duct has to terminate outside the building.
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A floor that does not fall to the drain
In a curbless or wet-room shower especially, slope is set before tiling and cannot be fixed afterwards. Water that pools is a slope problem, never a grout problem.
How We Work
Four steps, no surprises.
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01
Walkthrough
We come to you, measure up and talk through what you actually want out of the space — and what it realistically costs.
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02
Fixed quote
A written, itemised scope with a fixed price and a start date. Nothing begins until you have signed it.
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03
The build
One project manager, one schedule, dust protection up and a tidy site at the end of every day.
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04
Handover
We walk the finished job with you, fix the snag list, and leave you the warranty in writing.
Bathroom Questions
Answers before you ask.
Can a bathroom really be done in a week?
A straight swap of fixtures in the same positions, sometimes. A proper renovation down to the studs cannot — membrane, mortar and grout all need cure time, and rushing those is exactly how bathrooms fail early. Two to three weeks is realistic.
Should I replace the tub with a shower?
If it is your only full bathroom, keeping a tub is usually the better resale decision, particularly for family buyers. In an ensuite or second bathroom, a larger glass shower almost always gets used more. It depends which room this is.
Does the plumbing need replacing too?
Not always, but a strip-out is the cheapest moment to find out. If we open the wall and find galvanised supply or a badly vented stack, we will show you and price the fix — replacing it later means retiling.
Why do tile quotes vary so much?
Because most of the cost is labour, and labour depends on layout. The same square footage can double in price between a simple stack bond and a herringbone with mitred outside corners. Compare the pattern and the prep, not just the tile.
Other things we do
Want a real number for your bathroom project?
Free walkthrough, fixed written quote, no obligation to go ahead.