Bathroom Renovations in Gerroa, Above Seven Mile Beach

A village at the end of the beach

Gerroa is small: a headland, a boat harbour at the Crooked River, a handful of streets and Seven Mile Beach running away to the south. The permanent population is modest and a sizeable share of the housing is holiday accommodation, weekenders or houses that have been in the same family for decades.

The building stock reflects that history. Old fibro and weatherboard shacks, some barely altered. Houses from the seventies and eighties. Rebuilds and substantial renovations on the better blocks, some of them very good. And in among them, bathrooms that range from original to last-renovated-in-1998.

Exposure is the whole story

Every recommendation on this page follows from one fact: there is almost nothing between the ocean and these houses.

Salt load is high and constant. Not an occasional sea breeze — a steady onshore delivery of salt-laden air that settles on every surface and stays there. It gets into screen rollers and hinges, under tapware finishes, onto fan grilles, and into the fixings holding a towel rail or a mirror to a wall. In bathrooms the effect is accelerated by heat and humidity on the inside face of the same wall.

Wind-blown sand. Fine sand travels, and it abrades. It also comes inside on feet, towels, boards and dogs, and it ends up in the shower waste, in the grout and under the vanity.

Humidity. Coastal air here is wet, which extends membrane cure times during the work and slows a room's drying afterwards.

Sandy ground. Subfloor conditions differ from the clay further inland, and drainage behaves differently. Worth looking at rather than assuming.

What to specify in a Gerroa bathroom

The principle is simple: reduce the number of things that can corrode, and improve the quality of the things that remain.

• A fixed glass panel with a walk-in return instead of a framed or sliding door. One wall channel, no rollers, no hinges, no magnetic catch, no bottom seal to perish
• Tapware with better base metals and a finish that survives salt. Brushed finishes also hide water marks better
• Stainless fixings everywhere something is fixed to a wall, into solid backing
• A fan with a coated or plastic grille, sized for the room and ducted to outside with a run-on timer
• Sealed cabinetry with a solid top and no exposed particleboard edge near the floor
• Mid-tone textured floor tiles with matching grout, because pale polished tile in a sandy house is a full-time job
• Epoxy or high-performance grout in the shower, for the mould and the staining
• A floor waste, so the room can be hosed out at the end of summer
• Hooks instead of rails, which need less wall and fewer fixings

Stopping sand at the door

The single most useful thing you can add to a Gerroa house is a proper outdoor rinse: a shower outside the back door with hot and cold, a drain that goes somewhere legitimate, a hanging rail under cover for towels and wetsuits, and enough screening to be usable. Guests and family will both use it if it is obvious, and every kilogram of sand it catches is sand that never reaches the bathroom.

The full detail — siting, plumbing, drainage, materials for exposed positions, screening and when approval is needed — is in the outdoor showers guide. Inside, the laundry is the room to set up as the wet zone.

Old shacks

Some of the original fibro and weatherboard houses here still have their first bathroom, and they are the most interesting jobs in the area. What to expect:

• Fibro linings, tested before anything is disturbed. Pre-1990 construction means sampling first, licensed removal if positive, and a clearance certificate before other trades return
• A timber floor on low piers, sometimes with limited subfloor access
• No membrane at all — tiles on a bed, or in places just painted fibro
• Galvanised pipework narrowed by decades of deposit
• A bathroom in a rear addition with a roof that was never designed to sit over a wet room
• Framing near the old shower that has been damp for a very long time

These need a full renovation, and done well they end up the best room in the house, because they usually have a window facing something worth looking at.

Holiday houses and the calendar

A large share of this village is let, and that shapes the program more than the design. Fewer moving parts, harder surfaces, a fan that clears the room without a guest touching anything, and a schedule written backwards from the first immovable booking with spare days built in. The approach is on the rental and holiday-let page and the stage-by-stage timing is in how the job runs.

Access

Gerroa's streets are narrow in places, and some houses are below or above the road. Material in, rubble out, and a skip that needs a permit to sit on a street all belong in the quote.

Costs

Old shacks with fibro and floor repairs sit toward the upper part of a tier; a tight-scope holiday-let bathroom in a sound house sits lower. Coastal specification adds a little to every job here and is the last thing worth cutting. The cost page has the broad guide tiers.

Nearby

We also work in Gerringong, Jamberoo, Kiama Downs, Minnamurra and Bombo, plus Werri Beach and Rose Valley.

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.