Ensuite renovations
Ensuite renovations for the double storey estate homes of Narre Warren South, and ensuite conversions in older Narre Warren houses. Written fixed price quotes.
An ensuite packs every service a main bathroom has into a footprint that is often under 4 square metres. The sequence is tighter, the setout has less tolerance, and there is nowhere to hide a fall running the wrong way or a tap centre sitting 20 mm out of place.
The two ensuite jobs in this postcode
Nearly every ensuite enquiry from 3805 is one of two jobs, priced and programmed differently.
The first is a strip out and rebuild in a Narre Warren South estate house. These are four bedroom double storey builds from the turn of the century boom, and the ensuite sits upstairs off the main bedroom with a 900 by 900 or 1000 by 1000 shower, a single vanity, a toilet, and a window or a fan. At 20 years and beyond the membrane is past its working life, so a good share of them have already let go. Because the room, the service runs and the window all still work, these run as same footprint rebuilds. The estate by estate detail is on Narre Warren South.
The second is a new ensuite cut into an older house. The brick veneer belt built through Narre Warren in the 1970s and 1980s came with one bathroom and a separate toilet off the hallway, and no ensuite at all. Adding one takes floor area out of the main bedroom or a walk in robe, runs a new waste to an existing stack or sewer point, and frames and lines a new room. A new ensuite carved out of a bedroom answers the permit question quite differently from a rebuild in place, which is why we check the position against what the law requires before pricing it.
What a strip out and rebuild covers
- Site visit, measure, and a check of what sits below an upstairs ensuite.
- Written fixed price quote against a written scope.
- Selections locked in and ordered before demolition.
- Demolition, with the bedroom carpet and the stair run protected.
- Plumbing and electrical rough in, including the fan duct.
- New wet area sheeting, substrate and screed.
- Waterproofing, then the cure time the product requires.
- Tiling, grout, fit off, silicone, clean and handover.
Upstairs raises the stakes
An ensuite over a living room or a kitchen gives a leak somewhere expensive to go. On an upstairs job the details worth attention are the floor waste and its fall, the puddle flange connection, the membrane turn up at the door threshold, and the junction where the shower wall meets the base.
An ensuite wall carries the same 1800 mm of waterproofing as a main bathroom, and the membrane itself goes on to AS 3740, current edition 2021. Where a flush entry ensuite is wanted, which is common in the estate houses because the rooms are small, the whole floor becomes part of the shower area and the falls and the membrane extent are set accordingly. There is more on how a membrane is built up on shower rebuilds and waterproofing.
Decisions that have to be made early
| Decision | Needed by | Effect if it changes later |
|---|---|---|
| Shower entry: hob, step down or flush | Before the quote | Sets the substrate build up and the floor falls |
| Screen: sliding, pivot or fixed panel | At rough in | Fixing points need noggins before the sheets go on |
| Vanity: wall hung or floor standing | At rough in | Wall hung needs framing and the waste set at a different height |
| Tile to ceiling or to 2100 mm | Before tiling starts | Changes tile quantity and the cornice or shadowline detail |
| Toilet: back to wall or in wall cistern | Before rough in | An in wall cistern needs a stud wall deep enough to take it |
| Heat, light and fan | At rough in | Cabling and ducting are buried in the wall and ceiling |
A wall hung vanity and an in wall cistern each buy visible floor in a small room, which is why both come up so often in the Narre Warren South ensuites. Both have to be settled before the wall framing closes.
What goes wrong in ensuites
The fan ducted into the roof space. Original fans in the older Narre Warren stock discharge into the roof cavity rather than through the eave, and the result is a sweating ceiling and a stained cornice. Upstairs the same fault is worse, because the moisture sits in the roof space directly above. Every fan we install is ducted to outside air.
A screen ordered to the wrong dimension. Made to measure screens are measured after tiling. Ordering early to save a week is how a job ends up with a 10 mm packer on show.
Silicone used as a fix. A perished bead in the corner with cracked grout beside it points at the membrane, and re siliconing hides that for a season.
Skipping the check underneath. The ceiling below an upstairs ensuite tells you whether there has already been a leak. Staining, a sagging sheet or a popped cornice nail is worth finding before the quote.
Living in the house while the ensuite is out
Most Narre Warren South houses have a main bathroom as well, so an ensuite rebuild rarely leaves anyone without a shower. That changes the way the job is sequenced. The ensuite can be taken out of service for the full run rather than staged, which is faster and cheaper than working around a single wet area, and the main bathroom stays untouched.
Two things still need agreeing before the start date. The first is the path in and out: an upstairs ensuite means every sheet of demolition and every tile comes up and down the stair, so the carpet, the treads and the handrail get protected and the route stays clear. The second is the order of rooms if the main bathroom is being done as well. Running them back to back keeps one working shower in the house at all times, and it costs less than two separate visits because the trades, the skip and the tile order all happen once.
What it costs
A same footprint ensuite rebuild usually lands at $14,000 to $25,000. Inside that band the movable parts are the screen at $1,200 to $3,500, the vanity at $500 to $3,700, and the wall tiling at $75 to $165 per m2. A new ensuite framed into a bedroom is quoted against its own scope and generally prices closer to a full bathroom renovation, because the room, the services and the linings are all new. There is a breakdown of the bands in the cost guide. Tell us the age of the house and which floor the ensuite is on when you use the quote form.