Browse Forums Bathrooms and Laundry 1 Feb 02, 2011 8:27 am I don't have a large budget but would like to renovate my smallish apartment bathroom and separate toilet. I have emailed a few local bathroom reno companies in Sydney and all say for a basic reno the cost starts at around $18k! I'm not able to do the work on my own due to work commitments so i'll need to pay someone. I've looked around serviceseeking.com.au but can I trust these guys who don't have any licence details listed? Anyone got some advise? Cheers Scott Re: Is it unrealistic to renovate small bathroom for under $ 4Feb 02, 2011 9:29 am the bathroom is about 1.8 x 2.2 and the toilet is 1.8 x 1. Bathroom has shower, bath, vanity. I plan on keeping the same layout so no new plumbing just new tiles and fixtures. Re: Is it unrealistic to renovate small bathroom for under $ 5Feb 02, 2011 9:36 am I'm with B Star on this one...get your hands dirty! We saved a packet by gutting ours ourselves. Unless you're on a time limit, I'd bring the cost down that way. Keeping your same layout is also a good idea when you're on a budget. Re: Is it unrealistic to renovate small bathroom for under $ 6Feb 02, 2011 10:22 am We renovated a large bathroom for about the same amount. We were lucky though that my husband is retired so he was at home to co-ordinate all the trades. We were quoted $26k by one of the big bathroom guys. My brother helped my hubby rip out the old bathroom and get it ready for the plumber, tiler, etc etc to come in and do their thing. It took us 10 weeks but it was a large room - the tiler took 10 days! My hubby made up a shower cubicle in the laundry which worked fine. Good luck with your reno!! For info on our build: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=43093 Built the McLaren by Dechellis - slab down 22 Feb - handover 30 Aug 2011 - and gardens finished 9 Dec 2012!! Re: Is it unrealistic to renovate small bathroom for under $ 7Feb 02, 2011 10:49 am are you able to sub contract the work or is that out as well? Its certainly possible to do it for less but if you are handing someone the keys to the job they are basicaly going to work out worst case scenarios for each trade bill + profit for them. There logic is probably that a 5k, 10k and 18k bathroom will take them the same amount of co-ordinator for tilers, builders, sparky, plumber, etc... so they won't do anything less than 18k and even if they did they would probably maintain there dollar profit (e.g. 18k might have 15% margin so 2.4k profit if they did a 10k bathroom they would still add in 2.4k rather than 1.5k) Re: Is it unrealistic to renovate small bathroom for under $ 8Feb 02, 2011 8:26 pm sco77k the bathroom is about 1.8 x 2.2 and the toilet is 1.8 x 1. Bathroom has shower, bath, vanity. I plan on keeping the same layout so no new plumbing just new tiles and fixtures. Just a ball park figure about $10k and no more floors about $1000 not tile included vanity cost $500 plumbing $1000 Shower screen if you use the same recess $800 to $2000 Shower are tiling $1000 Electrician $500 new exhaust fan $300 Considering it is a small bathroom as described all of the above you can achieve good savings if you do coordinate tradies yourself I did not add extra fixtures since I do not know what you have in mind BTW the tiler can install bathroom fixtures rather than plumber and thus should cost you less Re: Is it unrealistic to renovate small bathroom for under $ 9Feb 03, 2011 9:16 am Also, ask friends/family if they know of anyone. Word of mouth is great. Obviously why your trying H1. I'm with B star though. Demolition is a major cost. Have you got some friends who would help. Throw a barby and beer party afterwards - because you will need it. Because you will be saving heaps on having the same plumbing. Spend a small amount of time and buy your own fixtures and fittings. Or you will pay a premium through a contractor for those also. Ask around for a plumber, electrician, tiler. Are you tiling to ceiling? if not, you will need a painter also. Stick with framed shower screen(cheapest you can get) , with pivot door if it will fit, single sink vanity basic (cheap but not nasty), a standard toilet (dual flush). From there apart from the trades, dont splurge too much on tapware because that will really chew your money. You can actually get some decent tiles for not a lot of money i.e. $25-$30/metre. And because it is a small bathroom even better. Look into subway tiles. They are really cheap but if done right, will look great. Good luck. Re: Is it unrealistic to renovate small bathroom for under $ 10Feb 03, 2011 9:32 am Yep word of mouth! We found a carpenter who was able to rip our bathroom from one of our rentals back to bare joists and refit from there up. He subcontracted out the waterproofing / tiling / plumbing but all up the whole kit and caboodle cost us a little under $10k. Our bathroom was approx 2m x 3.5m ish. It previously had a bath with shower over it and a pedestal basin. We ended up reconfiguring and got a shower, toilet, bath and vanity unit in. Wasnt the most roomy of bathrooms but it was functional! Dont be afraid to try smaller one man operations - ours turned out to be a gem! He worked seven days a week often till we kicked him out at 8pm at night until the job was done. Some things are worth waiting for. Re: Is it unrealistic to renovate small bathroom for under $ 12Feb 05, 2011 9:09 am thanks for all the advise! Going to get a few quotes and then see if I can rip out the old bathroom myself. kb46 toilet has to go! old old toilet that leaks and is made of wood! Re: Is it unrealistic to renovate small bathroom for under $ 13Feb 05, 2011 2:03 pm sco77k kb46 toilet has to go! old old toilet that leaks and is made of wood! Made of wood! Wouldn't that make it an outhouse! You'll definitely appreciate a new bathroom from the sounds of it! Don't forget to post pic's of the transformation for us to ooh and aahh over. Kylie Re: Is it unrealistic to renovate small bathroom for under $ 14Feb 05, 2011 3:47 pm you def can for under that, the only unknown thing is your plumber/sparky costs. But you can gut it (sledgehamer) take to tip, buy everything cheap on ebay! (I did - I saved thousands and got top of the range for everything!) even tiles, people often order way more than they need. You can do the tiling (there are short course avail at tafes to learn the tricks), painting is easy. Do a budget, do a price break down, you'd be surprised. Good luck! A thankful person is a happy person. [/color]My hobby design blog: http://aviewondesign.blogspot.com/ Re: Is it unrealistic to renovate small bathroom for under $ 15Jun 22, 2011 11:52 am We did our bathroom (gutted and started again) ourselves (except for plumbing which was the most expensive part) and it cost us around 4K all up. our bathroom is 1800 x 1500, If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no use being a damn fool about it. W.C. Fields Brought Established. Re: Is it unrealistic to renovate small bathroom for under $ 16Jun 24, 2011 7:29 am Our small bathroom reno cost us about $1500 - but we retained the shower base, toilet and vanity. Tiles, shower screen, bevelled-edge mirror, glass shelf, ceiling light/heater and accessories were all new. Apart from doing the painting myself, we hired people to do the rest. If we'd replaced toilet and vanity, we could have bought new ones for way less than $1000 and would then have had to add plumbing costs, but it would still have been a cheap reno. We did it just before selling our house (imagine 80s wire mesh glass in the shower screen, plus brown and apricot everything ). The transformation was amazing. Sometimes it doesn't take much effort to make a dramatic change. Re: Is it unrealistic to renovate small bathroom for under $ 17Jun 24, 2011 8:57 pm We ended up doing the Reno for just under 5k. I'll have to post some pics, we have since sold our unit and bought a house. The bathroom was the only part of the unit that wasn't renovated and once done we sold our unit in a week. Re: Is it unrealistic to renovate small bathroom for under $ 18Jun 25, 2011 3:24 pm Full reno of a roughly 3 x 2m bathroom for us just under $5k. Some tips that may help: * Ozito jackhammer drill (about $60 from memory, buy a decent $20 bit for it), you'll have a lot of fun smashing your current bathroom up * We resurfaced our bath (one of the biggest costs, around $600), did it because it was easy and renting it out after we moved on. Probably should have just gone frameless shower. * Look up discount tiles in your state, a lot of these places you can walk around and choose some good stuff. 600 x 300 white for about $15m2 * Bought a lot from the onsite home renovators auctions such as Graysonline * Use Servicecentral.com.au instead of the other one mentioned, you can get up to 3 quotes and always do for major trades such as Electrical, Plumbing etc and found some great tradies we still use today. Just try and be flexible for quoting such as early morning or evenings so they don't have to quote when they can be making money. Lots of videos on youtube if you did find some time to do some of it yourself. I learnt to put wall battens up, then put the plasterboard up, then tile etc Re: Is it unrealistic to renovate small bathroom for under $ 19Jun 25, 2011 6:48 pm notremaison Full reno of a roughly 3 x 2m bathroom for us just under $5k. Some tips that may help: * Ozito jackhammer drill (about $60 from memory, buy a decent $20 bit for it), you'll have a lot of fun smashing your current bathroom up * We resurfaced our bath (one of the biggest costs, around $600), did it because it was easy and renting it out after we moved on. Probably should have just gone frameless shower. * Look up discount tiles in your state, a lot of these places you can walk around and choose some good stuff. 600 x 300 white for about $15m2 * Bought a lot from the onsite home renovators auctions such as Graysonline * Use Servicecentral.com.au instead of the other one mentioned, you can get up to 3 quotes and always do for major trades such as Electrical, Plumbing etc and found some great tradies we still use today. Just try and be flexible for quoting such as early morning or evenings so they don't have to quote when they can be making money. Lots of videos on youtube if you did find some time to do some of it yourself. I learnt to put wall battens up, then put the plasterboard up, then tile etc Great advice there notremaison! Can I add some tips to this too? - Do as much of the demolition as you can (mentioned above in other posts) - it's kind of fun going crazy and getting out your frustrations on some tiles from the 70s (just make sure you wear proper protective gear). - Shop around for fixtures and fittings. I have expensive taste but a pauper's budget so I found out what I wanted and I used online websites, seconds outlets and retailers to help me get the best price. As an example I paid $20 for a $180 bottle trap because it was missing a rubber ring which cost me 50c to buy at Bunnings! - Don't get too complicated with your tile choice - KISS principle works here. IMHO the most beautiful bathrooms are the ones that use the space in a clever, simple and effective way and are timeless. - Be mindful of the the look of your home and renovate in the appropriate style. No point putting a country style bathroom into a city pad.. you get the drift. - When you find a good tradie, treat him/her like gold. Make cups of tea and always say thank you for a job well done. Good tradies are hard to find and are absolute treasures 2fk Re: Is it unrealistic to renovate small bathroom for under $ 20Jun 26, 2011 9:53 pm I promised myself i wouldnt spill this untill I had all my 'bits' for our renno, but hey I could sit here and see you spend hard earned when you didnt have to. To date we have spent a fraction of what people are quoteing here. Find your reece factory outlet. They are not easy to find and open at odd hours but to give you an idea.. we paid $300 for a concealed cistern wall hung caroma toilet, $350 for a freestanding kado lure bath, $250 for an ifo basin top, $50 for a 120x90 marbletrend shower base and the list goes on. As for tiles the grays auctions live auctions are a god send ..easily half price and their online auction are ok for tapware...but the reece outlets are better for price. finding a good tradie can be hard... but once you find one the rest follow. They know who is good and prefer to work with people they respect, and usually they ask a fair price. As a guide a good chippie is around $800 a day, tilers usually $80 psq depending on how complicated your job is. Good luck and remember ... its not rocket science ...its a bathroom the step up is 30mm and wanting it to be flat . how much does the concrete have to be lowered .we plan on removing bath and lenghten shower and adding seat. the old bath… 0 11839 if the original house is in good condition most of what you listed could be added in stages without the need for KDR and costs and disruption of having to live elsewhere… 1 13690 Hi all, We are looking to build a new two storey house in western Sydney. Can anyone recommend a smallish builder to go with? We are trying to stay away from the big… 0 12151 |