Beaconsfield is about seven kilometres east of Berwick and it is the one suburb in our area that is not in the City of Casey. It sits in the Shire of Cardinia, which changes who issues a skip bin or asset protection permit and where you look up local requirements. Everything else about a bathroom renovation is set by state law and is the same as it is in Berwick, but the council detail catches people out often enough to put at the top of the page.

The 2021 census counted 7,267 residents. The suburb grew as a farming township after the railway station opened in 1877, and it was known as Little Berwick before the name Beaconsfield was adopted in 1881. That old town is still legible along Old Princes Highway, and it is the reason Beaconsfield has a housing mix that Berwick’s newer estates do not.

The two halves of the suburb

The railway line is the dividing line, and the housing either side of it is different.

Where in Beaconsfield	What was built there	What that means for a bathroom
North of the line, along Old Princes Highway	Victorian, Edwardian and interwar cottages on narrow frontages, weatherboard more often than brick, timber floors, low ceilings	The bathroom was added long after the house, so the room is narrow, the floor is rarely level and the linings have been changed more than once
Rising ground towards Upper Beaconsfield	Larger blocks, houses set well back, longer and steeper driveways	Skip access and delivery planning matter as much as the room does
South and east of the line	Post war and 1970s to 1990s brick on regular blocks	A combined bathroom with a separate toilet next to it, the same arrangement found right across Casey
Infill subdivision, 2000s to now	Newer detached housing on smaller lots	An ensuite and a main bathroom to builder specification, so an upgrade rather than a rebuild

Blocks in the old town are small by outer south east standards and many houses sit close to the street. Beyond it the land rises and the blocks get larger.

The old town cottage bathroom

This is the job that makes Beaconsfield different from the rest of our area. A nineteenth or early twentieth century cottage was not built with a bathroom. The one it has now was added later, usually by enclosing a back verandah, converting a sleepout, or taking a bite out of the smallest bedroom. The result is a room that is too narrow, with a bath the full width of one end, a shower over it, and a vanity that blocks the door swing.

The useful answer in these houses is rarely a bigger bathroom, because there is nowhere for it to go without extending, and extending puts the job into a different registration class and a different permit conversation. The answer is a better use of what is there plus a second toilet somewhere else. Taking the bath out and building a properly sized shower turns an unusable room into a working one, and a powder room under the stairs, off the hallway or in a corner of the laundry takes the pressure off it. Small bathrooms and powder rooms covers both halves of that.

Two things make the cottage work slower than it looks. The floors are timber and often out of level across the room, so a level entry shower or a linear grate becomes framing work rather than tiling work. And the wall linings have usually been changed more than once: lath and plaster, later fibre cement, later again plasterboard, sometimes all three in the same room. In a cottage that predates 1990 the sheet gets sampled before anyone opens a wall, and the handling rules are on what the law requires.

The post war and later stock

South of the line the work is more predictable. The 1970s and 1980s houses have the combined bathroom and separate toilet arrangement found across Casey, with coloured tile part way up the wall, a steel bath the shower sits over, and an exhaust fan that vents into the roof space instead of outside. The fix is the same each time: remove the dividing wall to the toilet where the plan allows it, re duct the fan to outside air, and rebuild inside the existing walls.

The 1990s and 2000s houses are at the age where the original shower has run out of service life, and that is usually what prompts the call. Where the rest of the room is sound, shower repairs and waterproofing is a smaller job than a full rebuild and is worth pricing first.

Access and parking

The old town streets are narrow, frontages are tight, and a fair number of houses have a single width driveway or none at all. A skip usually has to go on the street or the nature strip, which needs the relevant permit from Cardinia Shire. Cardinia also takes an asset protection bond where the work could mark a kerb or a footpath, and it revises its fee schedule periodically, so both lines are passed on at whatever the shire charges rather than marked up. South of the line the driveways are wider and the skip goes on the property.

The level crossing and the station car park set the traffic pattern in the mornings, so material deliveries to the old town are booked outside the peak rather than into it.

Price bands

A cottage bathroom rebuilt inside its existing walls usually sits in the small bathroom band at $10,500 to $21,000, and a powder room added elsewhere in the house is $6,000 to $14,000. A standard rebuild in the post war and later stock is $21,000 to $36,750. Where a timber floor has to be re levelled or re framed, the job moves up, which is why that line is priced separately rather than buried.

Permits and registration

A building permit, where one is needed, comes from a private building surveyor you engage. That holds in Cardinia Shire just as it does in Casey. A cottage wall you want to move is more likely to be carrying load than the same wall in a project home, so that question is settled before the job is designed rather than after it is priced. The permit tests, the registration threshold and the contract rules are all on the permit page linked above, and they are set by state law rather than by the council.

Send the address and the age of the house through the quote form and we will tell you which of the two Beaconsfields you are in.

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