An ensuite is a wet room of two to four square metres opening off a bedroom, usually with no window. In most Berwick homes with one there is a second bathroom down the hall, which is what makes an ensuite easier to live through than a main bathroom rebuild.

Confirm that second bathroom before you set a start date. Without it, a three week program in the only shower in the house is a different proposition.

Which Berwick ensuites we are asked about

The post 2010 estates on the Clyde North and Officer edges, meaning Minta Farm, Berwick Waters and Alira, were all built as house and land packages with an ensuite, a main bathroom and often a powder room as standard. Nothing in those ensuites has failed yet. The work there is about the room being too small to use properly: a 900 mm acrylic base with a framed pivot screen that opens into the vanity, builder grade tapware, and a bank of storage that was never there. Widening the shower, swapping the acrylic base for a tiled hob and putting in frameless glass changes how the room works without touching the plumbing runs.

Timbarra is the other end of the range. Those houses went up from 1990 onward, so an ensuite there is on its original membrane or its second at best, while the layout and the plumbing are still perfectly sound. That makes the job a strip out and rebuild in the same footprint. Shower rebuilds and waterproofing has the service life figures behind that.

Upstairs ensuites in Parkhill, Bryn Mawr, Eden Rise and Bellbird Park add three things to the scope: protecting the stairs and the landing for the whole build, getting the old screed and tiles down without damaging the carpet, and a flood test that matters more than usual because a leak upstairs ends up in the ceiling below.

What the job involves

Site visit. We measure the room, check what is behind the wall sheet, and look at where the waste runs and whether the fan is actually ducted outside.
Written fixed price quote with the inclusions listed line by line.
Selections locked before any demolition starts.
Bedroom protection. The ensuite opens off a carpeted room, so the carpet is covered and a dust barrier goes across the doorway before the first tile is lifted.
Strip out to the frame and the floor structure.
Rough in for the new positions, including the fan duct run.
Blocking behind the vanity, the screen fixings and the towel rail.
Wet area sheeting, then screed with the falls set to the waste.
Waterproofing, with the shower walls taken to full membrane height and a cure period before any tile goes on.
Tiling and grout.
Fit off, electrical certificate, silicone and clean.

How do you make a small ensuite work?

Change	What it costs you	What it gains
Remove the framed pivot screen, fit frameless glass	Glass is dearer than a framed unit	The room reads larger and nothing swings into the vanity
Swap the acrylic base for a tiled hob	Extra screed and tiling, plus a longer program	A shower floor that matches the room and no lip that collects grime
Borrow 300 to 400 mm from the adjoining robe	Robe joinery has to be rebuilt	Usually the only way to get a 1200 mm shower into a builder specification room
Wall hung vanity	A wall hung unit needs blocking in the frame	Floor tile runs under it, which makes a small floor look continuous
Move the door to a cavity slider	Framing and a new head	Recovers the full door swing, which in a three square metre room is real space

Borrowing space from the robe is the one that needs checking first. If the wall between the ensuite and the robe carries load, or if the change alters the floor area, you are into permit territory rather than a straight refit. The tests are on what the law requires, and the answer comes from a building surveyor rather than from us.

Where do most ensuites fail?

An ensuite with no window and a fan that vents into the roof space will grow mould on the cornice and lift the paint above the shower within a few years, while the tiling still looks new. That fault is standard in the 1970s and 1980s brick veneer belt and it turns up in plenty of newer homes too. Every fan we install is ducted to outside air, and in a room with no window that is not optional. Fan and light circuits are wired by licensed trades, and the safety certificate is issued for the work.

What goes wrong

The shower is widened but the waste is left where it was, so the falls run across the tile at an angle you can see. Move the waste at rough in or keep the shower where it is.
A frameless screen is ordered off the plan rather than measured off the finished tiling, and the gap at the head does not close.
The old membrane is left in place under new tiling to save two days. It is already the thing that failed.
Selections change after rough in. In a room this small, moving a vanity 200 mm can mean re opening the wall.

What an ensuite renovation costs

An ensuite renovation usually lands in the $14,000 to $25,000 band. A same footprint Timbarra rebuild sits at the lower end because nothing moves and the room is small. Widening a shower into a robe, moving the door, or an upstairs ensuite with full stair protection sits at the upper end.

The parts that move the number most:

Frameless or semi frameless glass: $1,200 to $3,500
Vanity supplied and installed: $500 to $3,700
Wall tile: $75 to $165 per m2
Floor tile: $90 to $190 per m2
Waterproofing: $50 to $85 per m2, which in a room this size is never where the savings are

An ensuite quoted below the warranty scheme threshold is not covered by that scheme, which is worth knowing rather than assuming. The figures are on what the law requires.

If you are renovating the ensuite and the main bathroom together, the two jobs share a mobilisation and a single tiler visit, so they are cheaper run as one program. That scope is covered under full bathroom renovations. To get a fixed price in writing, send through your details with the estate name and the year the house was built.

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