Laundry renovations
Laundry renovations across Narre Warren and Narre Warren South, from a trough and bench swap to a full strip out with new waterproofing, tiling and cabinetry.
A laundry is a wet area, so the same floor falls, membrane and licensed trades apply. What changes is the priority list. Storage, bench length and somewhere to put the washing are what a household actually uses, and they are the first things a cheap laundry job leaves out.
The two laundries in Narre Warren
The 1970s and 1980s brick veneer belt uses an external laundry layout: a room at the back of the house with a door straight out to the yard, a single 45 litre stainless trough in a steel or laminate cabinet, taps on the wall above it, a concrete or vinyl floor, and often a wall cupboard over the washing machine. That room doubles as the back entry, so it takes mud, dog bowls, shoes and the bin. After 40 to 50 years the cabinet has swollen at its base, the vinyl has lifted at the trough, and the floor falls to nothing.
The estate houses built south of there do the opposite: an internal galley laundry in the passage between the garage and the kitchen, no external door, a laminate bench with a drop in trough, a floor waste, and overhead cupboards. Those rooms are a bit over twenty years old now. Cabinetry is normally the first thing to go and the bench is next, and the floor waste is often the only fall anywhere in the room.
What a laundry renovation covers
- Site visit and measure, including the appliances you intend to keep.
- Written fixed price quote set against that scope.
- Selections locked in: benchtop, cabinetry, trough, tapware, tile and door.
- Demolition of cabinetry, bench, trough, floor covering and any wall lining being replaced.
- Plumbing rough in for the trough, washing machine stops and any change to the waste position.
- Electrical rough in for power, lighting and any new circuit an appliance needs.
- Wet area sheeting where linings came off, floor substrate, and screed where there is a floor waste.
- Waterproofing to AS 3740, allowed to cure.
- Tiling, cabinetry install, bench, trough, tapware, fit off and handover.
A laundry that keeps its existing cabinetry and takes only a new floor and splashback is a much shorter job. The quote names which of these steps are in it.
What has to be decided, and when
| Decision | Needed by | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Appliance layout: side by side or stacked | Before the quote | Sets bench length, trough position and the plumbing |
| Front loader or top loader | Before the quote | A top loader cannot go under a bench |
| Trough: drop in, undermount or cabinet | Before cabinetry is ordered | Changes the bench cutout and the cabinet carcass |
| Benchtop material | Before cabinetry is ordered | Stone is templated after the cabinets go in, laminate is not |
| Floor waste: keep, add or leave out | Before the quote | Changes the screed, the falls and the membrane extent |
| External door: replace or leave | Before the quote | A new frame in an external wall is a different scope |
| Drying: line, rail or condensing dryer | At rough in | A vented dryer needs a duct path, a condensing one does not |
Appliances are the decision that stops jobs. A bench built around a front loader will not take a top loader later, and a stacked pair needs a wall that can carry the bracket with power in the right place. Measure the machines you own before the quote, rather than the ones in the catalogue.
How much of a laundry gets waterproofed
Less of a laundry is waterproofed than a bathroom, and how much depends on the room in front of you rather than on a rule of thumb. Three things settle it: whether there is a floor waste, whether the room is enclosed, and what the wall junctions behind the trough and behind the machine look like. A room with a floor waste is treated as a shower floor would be, with the screed falling to the waste and the membrane taken up the wall junctions. A room without one usually needs the wet junctions sealed and the floor left to a sealed finish.
That is settled at quote stage against AS 3740, current edition 2021, and written into the scope, so the tiler is not deciding it on the day. Shifting the external door, or opening the wall into the room beside it, is the point at which what the law requires starts to matter, because that is structural work rather than a wet area refit.
Laundries in the older Narre Warren stock are among the last rooms in the house to be relined, so the sheeting is sampled early and the result goes into the quote.
What goes wrong
The washing machine outlet. An old laundry often drains the machine over the edge of the trough. A renovation is the moment to put in a proper standpipe and trap, because a hose hooked over a trough is what floods a floor that has no fall.
No fall to the floor waste. Where a floor waste exists, the screed has to run to it. A flat tiled floor with a waste in the middle just parks the water somewhere else.
Cabinetry ordered before the trough is chosen. The bench cutout and the carcass both depend on the trough type, so a change of trough after the order means a new bench.
A thoroughfare planned as a room. In the older houses the laundry is the back entry. A cupboard door swinging into the traffic path, or a bench that stops the back door opening fully, gets discovered the week after handover.
Power points behind the machines. Once a front loader is pushed back into place, a point behind it is unreachable. They go beside the machines.
What it costs
A laundry renovation generally lands at $5,000 to $20,000. The range is wide because the scope varies more than it does in a bathroom: a bench, trough and floor refresh sits near the bottom, while a full strip out with new cabinetry, stone, a relocated waste and a new external door sits near the top. Floor tiling runs $90 to $190 per m2, wall tiling $75 to $165 per m2, and waterproofing $50 to $85 per m2 over whatever area the standard calls for.
Doing the laundry alongside the bathroom shares the demolition, the waste removal, the trades’ set up and the tiler’s day, which is why the two are so often quoted together. One skip, one tile delivery and one mobilisation across two rooms is the single biggest saving available on a job this size. See full bathroom renovations and small bathrooms and powder rooms, or list both rooms in the quote form.