How the Job Runs, Stage by Stage, on the South Coast
What happens, in what order, and where a coastal job is most likely to slip. Written in working days, because that is how a program actually behaves.
Before anybody picks up a tool
The phone call
Five minutes. Which town, house or townhouse, which room, roughly what era the place is, and what has gone wrong. That is enough to know what to bring to the measure.
The measure
About half an hour at the property. Beyond the tape measure, the things being looked at are:
- The floor — slab or timber, and whether there is access underneath
- The linings — whether a sample needs to go to a laboratory
- The pipework — material, age, pressure, and where it runs
- Water supply — mains, or tank and pump, which changes what a shower will feel like
- Wastewater — sewer, or an onsite system with a rated load
- Ventilation — whether the existing fan goes outside or just into the roof space
- Access — the path from the street to the door, and where a skip can legally sit
- Corrosion — what the existing hardware looks like tells you how exposed the house is
The written quote
Itemised, with fittings named, tile allowance stated, a repair allowance for what the walls are hiding, and a program in working days. If asbestos testing is recommended, it is on the quote as a line, not a surprise.
Selections
Tiles, tapware, vanity, screen, toilet, mirror, lighting, fan. Locked before the start date. This is the single stage most in your control and the one that most often blows a program.
In the room
Days 1–2 · Protection and strip-out
Floor coverings and doorways protected, the path from the door to the skip covered. Then tiles, mortar bed, bath, shower base, vanity, toilet and wall linings come out. Noisy, dusty, and the most satisfying part to watch.
If testing has come back positive, licensed removal happens before any of this, with a clearance issued before the rest of the trades come back.
Day 2–3 · The look at what is really there
The room is bare, and this is the honest conversation. Soft joists, a termite-eaten bottom plate, a wall a long way out of plumb, pipework in worse shape than expected. Photographed, priced against the allowance, and agreed before it is fixed.
Days 3–6 · Carpentry and rough-in
Framing repairs, noggings and solid backing where rails or a seat will go, then the plumber and electrician open up the walls: new water lines, new waste, new circuits for lights, fan and any heating. Anything moving position moves now.
Days 6–9 · Sheeting and screed
Wet-area board to the walls. The floor gets a screed set to fall toward the waste, so water leaves the room instead of sitting in a corner. Falls are checked with a level, not by eye.
Days 9–12 · Waterproofing and cure
Membrane to the floor, up the walls in the shower, and around every junction, penetration and hob. Then it waits. Cure times are set by the product and the weather, and a humid south-coast week stretches them. This is the stage nobody should ever be talked into rushing. Detail is on the waterproofing and tiling page.
Days 12–18 · Tiling
Set-out first, so the cuts land where you will not look at them and the shower niche lines up with a grout joint. Floor, then walls, then grout, then time for the grout to cure before anything gets wet.
Days 18–22 · Fit-off
Vanity, toilet, tapware, screen, mirror, shelves, hooks, lights, fan. Silicone last, and it needs a day before the shower is used.
Days 22–24 · Clean, check, hand over
Final clean, a walk-through with the list in hand, the waterproofing certificate and any warranty paperwork handed to you, and the shower run for long enough to see the water go where it should.
Where a south-coast program slips
Wet weather. Not the trades' fault and not fixable by pushing. A humid fortnight adds days to the membrane cure, and tiling onto a membrane that is not ready is how a bathroom fails.
Laboratory turnaround. Asbestos sampling takes a few days to come back. Test early, at the measure stage, not the morning of the strip-out.
Special orders. A vanity made to a size, a screen made to a measurement, or a tile that has to come from interstate can take weeks. Order these first.
Travel. Trades servicing the area come down the highway from the north, and a half-day trade visit costs the same travel as a full day. Stages get grouped deliberately, which is why you sometimes see nobody for a day and then three people at once.
Owners corporation approval. Townhouses and units need consent where waterproofing is replaced, and committees meet on their own schedule. Start that paperwork before you set a date.
If it is a holiday house
Give us the booking you cannot move. The program is written backwards from it, with contingency days built in rather than assumed away, and the quiet months between autumn and spring used where possible. More on that on the rental and holiday-let page.
Afterwards
Run the fan for at least fifteen minutes after every shower. Rinse salt off outside hardware. Keep an eye on the silicone at the floor junction in the first year and say something early if it lifts — a bead of silicone is a five-minute job, and the thing it protects against is not.
The cost page has the guide tiers, and the questions and answers page covers the rest.
Renovation work is carried out in partnership with Coastal Renovation Group, a licensed NSW builder. Licence and insurance details are provided on request.
Call 02 4214 4021 or send the room details through.
FAQs
Questions people ask before they commit
How long will the bathroom be out of action?
For most main bathrooms, somewhere between three and a half and five weeks on site. Brick veneer on a slab with nothing moving sits at the short end. An older cottage with asbestos removal, floor repairs and new pipework sits at the long end.
What causes most of the delays?
Late selections, by a wide margin. If the tiles, vanity or tapware are not on site when the trade is, the job stops and the trade goes to the next one. After that it is what appears behind the old linings, and wet weeks slowing the membrane cure.
Can the work be fitted between holiday bookings?
That is how most short-stay jobs down here are programmed. You give us the first booking you cannot move, we work backwards from it with spare days built in, and selections are locked before the strip-out rather than during it.
Do I have to be home while it happens?
Not for most of it. You need to be reachable at the start, when the room is first opened up and anything unexpected is found, and for the handover walk-through at the end.
Free, no-obligation