Small bathrooms and powder rooms
Small bathroom and powder room work in Berwick, including the separate toilet found in 1970s and 1980s brick veneer homes and tight village core bathrooms.
A small bathroom saves you money on tile and membrane and on nothing else. The trade sequence is identical and the same trades come through the door. Under four square metres, a fixture set out 50 mm off is visible from the doorway.
Most of the small room work in Berwick falls into two groups: the separate toilet in the 1970s and 1980s brick veneer belt, and the tight main bathroom in the heritage village core.
The Casey separate toilet
The brick veneer belt that rings the Berwick village core, built through the 1970s and 1980s on quarter acre blocks, almost always has one combined bathroom plus a separate toilet in its own cubicle. The cubicle is typically under one and a half square metres, tiled part way up with painted plaster above, with no basin and often no window. Three things get asked for:
- Refresh the cubicle as it stands, with a new pan, a new floor, tiling and a small wall hung basin if there is room for one.
- Convert it into a proper powder room by borrowing space from the adjoining hallway or linen press, so a basin fits and the door swing works.
- Remove the dividing wall and combine the toilet with the bathroom to make one larger room.
Option three needs checking before it is priced. In a 1970s brick veneer home the wall between the bathroom and the toilet may be carrying ceiling or roof load, and taking out a loadbearing element or changing the floor area puts the job into permit territory. The tests, and who issues the permit in Casey, are set out on what the law requires.
Anything in that belt built or last renovated before 1990 gets the wall sheet sampled before demolition. A separate toilet cubicle, tiled with a sheet lining behind, is one of the likelier places in the house to find the old material.
Small bathrooms in the village core
The Victorian, Edwardian and interwar homes along High Street and the streets north of it have small bathrooms on timber floors, with walls that are out of square and floor levels that were never flat. In a large room that unevenness disappears into the set out. In a small room it does not. Two consequences follow:
- Large format tile is the wrong choice unless the walls are packed and straightened first, which is real cost. A smaller tile with more grout lines absorbs the wind in a wall.
- A level entry shower or a linear grate means dropping the floor structure, which is carpentry rather than tiling. In a room this size that work can be a third of the job, so it is priced with a contingency rather than as a fixed line and a hope.
What is included
| Included | Not included |
|---|---|
| Strip out and removal of debris | Removal of hazardous material, quoted separately once tested |
| Plumbing rough in and fit off by a licensed plumber, with the compliance certificate | Floor structure repair found once the old floor is out |
| Electrical rough in and fit off by licensed trades, with the safety certificate | Repainting outside the room itself |
| Wet area sheeting, screed, waterproofing, tiling and grout | Council skip bin and asset protection fees, passed through at cost |
| Fixtures listed in the quote, installed and silicone sealed | Structural work triggered by removing a loadbearing wall |
Both certificates are handed to you at the end of the job rather than held by the trade who issued them.
Fitting the fixtures in
The set out is the whole job in a small room. These are the decisions that have to be made before rough in, because each one fixes a pipe position inside a wall.
| Decision | What it changes |
|---|---|
| Wall hung basin or a slim vanity | A wall hung basin needs blocking in the frame and frees the floor, a vanity gives storage and eats 400 to 450 mm of depth |
| Wall faced or back to wall pan | Sets the waste position, which cannot move later without opening the floor |
| In wall cistern | Gains around 150 mm of room depth and needs the wall built out or the frame modified |
| Cavity slider instead of a hinged door | Recovers the full door swing, which in a cubicle is often the only way a basin fits |
| Shower screen, if there is a shower | Measured off the finished tiling at $1,200 to $3,500, never ordered from the plan |
A rebuild that stays inside the existing walls is usually exempt from a permit, though that remains a building surveyor’s call rather than ours. In a room with no shower the membrane covers far less area than in a full bathroom, so the waterproofing line is smaller without the standard behind it changing at all. Where there is a shower, the wall heights are the same as any other shower and are set out on shower rebuilds and waterproofing.
What it costs
| Scope | Usual band |
|---|---|
| Separate toilet or powder room | $6,000 to $14,000 |
| Small full bathroom, including a shower | $10,500 to $21,000 |
Within those bands the variables are:
| Item | Rate |
|---|---|
| Vanity, supplied and fitted | $500 to $3,700 |
| Tile to the walls | $75 to $165 per m2 |
| Tile to the floor | $90 to $190 per m2 |
| Membrane | $50 to $85 per m2 |
A small room keeps the tiling and membrane lines low, but the trade attendances match a large bathroom, so the saving is smaller than the floor area suggests. Combining a separate toilet with the bathroom moves the job out of the small band entirely, because it becomes a full bathroom renovation with structural work attached.
Plenty of separate toilet jobs sit under both the registered builder figure and the warranty scheme figure, which means the scheme does not cover them. Both numbers are on the permit page linked above.
If the small room you are dealing with is a laundry rather than a toilet, see laundry renovations. For a fixed price in writing, send through the room dimensions and the year the house was built.