How to check a bathroom renovator before you sign

30 minutes of checking before you sign prevents most of what goes wrong on a bathroom job. There are six checks below. The registration check comes first because it decides whether the rest of the paperwork is even lawful, so work down the list in order.

Everything here you can do yourself from the quote, the public register and one phone call. None of it needs a second opinion from another renovator.

1. Is the renovator registered, and in the right class?

Above the contract threshold the work has to be run by a registered building practitioner, and the register is public. It is kept by the Building and Plumbing Commission. A renovator, or a website, still naming the Victorian Building Authority is working from old information, which tells you when the marketing was written and how often it gets looked at.

What to check on the register:

1. The name on the register matches the name on the quote, including the company name and the ABN. A quote from a company whose registration sits with a different entity is a problem.
2. The class of registration covers the work. One class is unlimited and one is limited to bathroom, kitchen and laundry work. If your job pushes the bathroom into a bedroom, the limited class does not stretch that far. What the law requires names both classes and gives the dollar threshold.
3. The registration is current, not lapsed or suspended.

In Victoria builders are registered while plumbers and electricians are licensed. Anyone advertising a builder’s licence for this state has copied the wording in from somewhere else.

2. Who is actually on site

A renovator coordinates specialist trades and each one carries its own obligation.

Trade	What to ask for
Plumber	The licence number, and a commitment that the plumbing certificate comes to you rather than being filed away
Electrician	That the wiring is done by a licensed electrical worker under a registered contractor, and that the safety certificate reaches you
Waterproofer	Who applies the membrane, whether waterproofing is their own trade or the tiler’s extra, and which standard the quote names
Asbestos removalist	On any house built before 1990, who holds the removal licence and whether laboratory testing is priced in

Ask for those certificates to be handed over at completion rather than chased six months later. They are your documents and they matter when you sell the house. The permits and contracts guide sets out which jobs generate which certificate and how long the issuer has to produce it.

3. What is missing from the quote?

Three quotes on the same bathroom are only comparable once you have checked that each one contains the same work. The cheapest quote is often the one with the fewest lines.

• Waterproofing named as its own item with a rate, and the standard it is applied to written down.
• Tiling as a rate per square metre and a quantity, rather than a single lump described as tiles.
• Tapware, vanity, toilet and screen either listed by model or covered by a stated provisional sum.
• On a pre 1990 house, an asbestos testing or removal allowance, or a written exclusion.
• Frame repair allowance behind the shower, or a written note that it is excluded and will be priced if found.
• Making good: who repairs the hallway ceiling, cornice and paintwork where the plumber and electrician have been.
• Rubbish removal, and who lodges the council paperwork if a bin has to stand on the street. Those council fees move, so confirm the current one at the time you apply.
• Exhaust fan ducted out through the eave rather than into the roof space, which is how most of the older Narre Warren stock was originally built and why those ceilings sweat.

4. The contract and the deposit

The price at which a bathroom becomes a contract job, the two deposit caps and the warranty scheme that applies to larger jobs are all fixed by statute, and all of them are in what the law requires. Read those figures first, then read the document in front of you for the things the law leaves to you.

• The scope written out in full, including what is excluded.
• Start and completion dates, with a stated number of working days.
• Progress payments tied to stages of work finished, never to calendar dates.
• A variation clause that prices and signs off any change before the extra work happens.
• Who engages the building surveyor if a permit turns out to be needed, and who pays that fee.
• A defect list agreed at handover and a date by which it is cleared.
• The trade certificates named as things you receive at the end of the job.

A deposit above the legal cap, or a request for cash before the contract exists, is the clearest early warning available. And nobody can hand you a private ten year waterproofing guarantee that means anything, because the ten year figure people quote at you is a limitation period set by statute rather than a product warranty.

5. What should you ask on site?

1. Who is on site each day, and who is the single point of contact when something comes up.
2. What happens if the frame behind the shower is wet. On a 40 to 50 year old Narre Warren house the answer should already be allowed for.
3. Has the house been checked for asbestos, and if not, when.
4. Is the wall between the bathroom and the separate toilet carrying load, if the plan is to join them.
5. Who engages the private building surveyor if a permit is needed.
6. How long the membrane cures before tiling starts, and whether those days appear in the program.
7. When the shower screen is measured, and how long the glass takes to come back. How long a bathroom renovation takes sets out where both of those sit in the sequence.

6. What are the warning signs?

• A deposit above the legal cap, or a request for cash before a contract exists.
• No written contract offered on a job that clearly sits over the statutory threshold.
• A re grout offered as the fix for a shower that is wetting the hallway carpet. That is a membrane failure, and the signs of a leaking shower explains why the filler is not the problem.
• A promise that the job definitely needs no permit, given before anyone has looked at whether the wall is loadbearing.
• A claim to be accredited, approved or endorsed by the Building and Plumbing Commission, Energy Safe Victoria or the City of Casey. None of those bodies endorse builders.
• A quote that cannot be broken down into quantities and rates.

What we do

Every quote is written and fixed for the scope it describes, the work is done by registered and licensed trades, and you get a reply within one business day. Send the job through the quote form with the suburb and the age of the house. For the figures, see bathroom renovation cost in Narre Warren.

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