Bathroom renovations in Narre Warren South
Bathroom and ensuite renovations in Narre Warren South 3805, for the 1999 to 2008 estate homes where the shower has failed but the layout still works.
Narre Warren South shares postcode 3805 with Narre Warren, and the bathrooms could not be more different. This is the estate half: Berwick Springs from 1999, Cypress Hill and Hillsmeade from around the same time, then Amberly Park, Strathaird, Golden Grove and Silverleaf filling in through the 2000s. Those houses are now 18 to 27 years old, which is exactly the age where the original shower has failed while the layout, the plumbing runs and the window positions are all still fine. That combination makes Narre Warren South the easiest suburb in the area to renovate well for a predictable price.
What the estate stock looks like
The standard Narre Warren South house is a four bedroom double storey, or a large single storey on a 500 to 650 square metre lot, with a main bathroom, an ensuite off the master, and a separate powder room downstairs. The fitout is builder standard from the boom years: a moulded acrylic shower base or a tiled base over a sprayed membrane, a shower over the bath in the main bathroom, a two door laminate vanity with a vitreous china top, tiles to about 2100 mm in the shower and a 300 mm splashback elsewhere, and a three in one fan, light and heat unit in the ceiling.
Two things go first. The ensuite goes first because it gets used every day by two people, and in a double storey house the failure shows up as a stain on the ceiling of the room below rather than as damp carpet. The main bathroom shower goes next, usually at the base to wall junction or where the screen sits on the hob. At this age the original membrane is at or past the end of its service life, so a 2003 estate house that has never had its wet areas touched is well beyond the point where a tidy up is worth the money.
What these jobs usually involve
Because the wall positions, the window and the drainage points still suit how the house is used, the work is nearly always a same footprint strip and rebuild rather than a redesign. We take the wet areas back to the frame, re sheet, lay a new membrane to the 2021 edition of AS 3740, run it 1800 mm up each shower wall, tile, and reinstate the fixtures in the same positions with new tapware and a new screen.
These houses were built well after 1990, so the old wall lining is not the concern it is in the suburb to the north. The three common surprises here are a shower base that was never fully bedded, a waste that was set slightly high so the floor never drained properly, and a fan that was vented into the roof space instead of out through the eave. All three are cheap to correct once the room is open and expensive to live with if they are left.
| Room | Typical work in this stock | Band |
|---|---|---|
| Main bathroom | Strip and rebuild in the same layout, new membrane, new screen | $21,000 to $36,750 |
| Ensuite | Strip and rebuild, often the first room done | $14,000 to $25,000 |
| Powder room | New floor, vanity, pan and tiling | $6,000 to $14,000 |
| Laundry, done at the same time | Re sheet, waterproof, new trough and cabinetry | $5,000 to $20,000 |
Doing the ensuite and the main bathroom in one run costs less than two separate jobs, because the trades, the skip and the tile order all happen once. It also means the house has one working shower the whole time if the rooms are staged. The ensuite renovations page explains how we sequence that.
Two rooms at once changes the value of the job
A two room job in this suburb frequently passes the value at which a written contract, a deposit cap and a warranty scheme all come into play, which is worth knowing before anything is signed. Those thresholds, and the paperwork that follows each one, are on what the law requires.
Two practical points follow from it. The first is that the contract sum should cover both rooms as one scope rather than two invoices issued a fortnight apart, because splitting a job to sit under a threshold is a false saving and removes the cover. The second is staging. Where both wet areas are upstairs, the program has to keep one shower working, which usually means finishing the ensuite before the main bathroom opens up.
Access, parking and the skip
Narre Warren South is the easiest access of any suburb we work in. The estate streets are wide, most houses have a double width driveway and a double garage, and the setbacks are generous enough that a skip, a tipper and a tradesman’s ute can all sit on the property without going near the road. On most jobs here nothing needs to stand beyond the property line at all, which keeps council permit fees out of the quote entirely.
The practical constraints are different here. Many of these streets feed onto Narre Warren Cranbourne Road and get busy around the school run and the Casey Central trade, so deliveries are booked outside those windows. Some of the newer pockets have owners corporation rules on skip placement and work hours, so we check that before the bin is ordered.
What it costs
A single bathroom strip and rebuild in this stock generally lands in the $21,000 to $36,750 range, and an ensuite on its own in the $14,000 to $25,000 range. Upgrades that show up often in these houses are a frameless screen at $1,200 to $3,500 and a freestanding bath at $1,600 to $5,300 where the old drop in bath is being removed. The cost guide sets out what moves a job up or down. Send both rooms through the quote form together and you will hear back the next working day.