Bathroom renovations in Sydney

As a labour-only guide including GST, a small bathroom starts around $24,000 and a larger room can reach $48,000 depending on scope. Fixtures and tiles are chosen and bought by you, and Rick can supply them at trade cost if you would like.

Your quote is fixed and itemised, so the number you see is the number you pay unless you change the scope. There is a full breakdown, including optional extras and worked examples, in our bathroom renovation costs guide.

Because of what is in it.

A bathroom renovator's licence and the HIA insurance that protects you cost thousands in lodging and council fees before a single tile goes down. Bypass them and the quote drops. Same with a $600 off-the-shelf shower screen instead of a glazier measuring your finished room, or a $600 waterproofing job instead of an $1,800 one.

None of that shows on a quote template. All of it shows up later. Our scope is itemised specifically so you can hold it against the others and see what has been left out of theirs.

No. Your quote is a fixed price, and it already carries allowances for the unknowns we have met over 17 years of renovating Sydney homes.

What genuinely sits outside it: council or strata application fees, asbestos in an older home, concealed damage behind walls or beneath the floor that could not be seen at quoting, structural surprises, and any change you make to the agreed scope once work has started.

If a variation comes up, we price it and get your written approval before we do the work. Plenty of companies quote low and then hit clients with large variations once the room is demolished and they have no choice. We would rather tell you the real number on day one.

An accurate quote needs a clear scope that every contractor is pricing against. If your brief is vague, or each company gets slightly different information, none of the numbers coming back represent the same job.

Nail down four things before you invite anyone in. Define exactly which room or space is being renovated. Decide whether it stays within the existing walls or the room gets bigger. Confirm whether plumbing, electrical, lighting, doors and windows stay where they are. Confirm the products to be installed.

With those fixed, every contractor can estimate the labour accurately, the quotes become genuinely comparable, and your decision comes down to value and how you feel about working with them.

Either way works. Most clients choose their own fixtures and tiles and we guide the selection so everything works together, using free 3D design software so you can see the scale and layout before anything is bought.

If you would prefer not to source it yourself, Rick will supply everything at trade cost through our supplier accounts, which is usually well below retail. We coordinate delivery either way so it arrives on site at the right time.

One condition: everything needs to be on site before we start. A late or faulty client-supplied item stops the job, and a wrong-sized one causes fitment problems that have to be resolved before we can continue.

A deposit of 10% secures your start date, then the balance is paid in staged progress payments tied to completed milestones. You never pay for work that has not been done, and the schedule is set out in your written contract before anything starts.

The stages are: deposit, demolition, rough-ins completed, tiling completed, fit-off done, handover.

Under NSW home building rules the deposit is capped at 10% for contracts over $20,000, and progress payments must be linked to work actually completed.

Most take 14 to 28 days from demolition to handover, with the majority finished around three weeks. The timeline depends on the size of the room, whether the layout is changing, and how much preparation the existing structure needs once it is stripped.

The time is not spent laying tiles, it is spent waiting. Screed and render need to cure. Waterproofing needs multiple visits with drying time between coats: one for the floor, one or two for the walls, then grout, then silicone. Your custom shower screen can only be measured once the tiling is finished, and then it has to be made.

You will get a written timeline with your quote.

Because a complete renovation physically cannot be done properly in two weeks.

Waterproofing, screeds and adhesives have manufacturer-specified drying times that cannot be compressed, and trades should not be working on top of each other to squeeze a schedule. Any company guaranteeing two weeks for a full strip-out is cutting a corner somewhere you cannot see, usually behind the tiles.

Our projects take 14 to 28 days because we build bathrooms to last decades, not to hit a marketing claim. Cheaper and faster usually means paying twice.

Yes, and nearly all our clients do. Your water and electricity stay connected throughout. Only the bathroom itself is out of use.

We protect floors and furniture with proper foam matting and taped walkways, photograph the property before we start, and clean the site at the end of every day. There will be dust and there will be tools in your home, but you will not be moving out.

Most clients use a second bathroom or an ensuite for the two to four weeks of the build. If the bathroom we are renovating is the only one in the house, tell Rick at the consultation.

We can sequence the work so the toilet is reconnected as early as possible, and plan the tiling and waterproofing window around you. Plenty of clients arrange a shower at a family member's place, a gym or a neighbour's for that stretch. It is shorter than most people expect.

No. You will meet Rick, and sometimes Rob. They are the directors, they are licensed, and they are the ones who will build your bathroom.

It is written into our contract that you deal directly with Rick or Rob for the whole project rather than through an account manager or a customer service team.

Rick and Rob are on the tools at your site, supported by our own team rather than a rotating cast of unknown subcontractors. Everyone on site is licensed, insured and introduced to you at the start.

Your property is protected with floor and furniture coverings, the site is tidied at the end of every day, and you get a progress update each evening so you always know what is happening tomorrow.

Yes. Nu-Trend is engaged as the sole principal contractor for your renovation, run by licensed builder Rick Karagiannis, and we carry the whole job from strip-out to final fit-off.

You deal with one company and one point of contact, not a list of separate trades you have to chase and coordinate yourself.

Our own employees are the demolition team and the carpenters. The plumber, electrician, tiler, waterproofer and painter are engaged as subcontractors because each must hold a licence in their own trade. A builder cannot sign off on a plumber's or an electrician's work. Every one of them is licensed and separately insured.

Yes, and we would encourage you to check. Every licence on your job can be verified yourself through the NSW Fair Trading licence check.

• Builder, kitchen bathroom laundry renovator: 217859C
• Plumber, drainer, gasfitter, LP gasfitter: 217859C
• Electrician: 377606C
• Waterproofer and tiler: 283897C
• Plastering: 302022C
• ABN: 89 478 782 763

We carry $20 million public liability insurance through HIA and hold HIA Home Owners Warranty. We are members of the Housing Industry Association and the Master Builders Association. All work complies with AS/NZS 3500:2018.

Yes. For residential building work over $20,000 we take out Home Building Compensation cover through iCare before work starts, and we give you the certificate.

This is the scheme formerly known as Home Warranty Insurance. It protects you if the work cannot be completed, or defects cannot be fixed, because the builder becomes insolvent, dies, disappears or loses their licence.

A certificate is issued for each job and given to the owner before any deposit is paid or any work commences. That is a legal requirement, and it is worth checking that whoever you hire actually does it.

Waterproofing is built into every bathroom we do, never treated as an optional extra, and it is the single step that decides whether your bathroom lasts twenty years or two.

We install a complete system that exceeds Australian Standard AS 3740, developed over years of trial and error. A two-layer membrane goes directly onto the subfloor and is left to cure before the sand and cement bedding is laid. Once that is dry, a further membrane layer goes on top, creating a sandwich rather than a single coat. Water stop angles are installed where the shower floor meets the wall.

The work is carried out by a licensed waterproofer, and we photograph the finished membrane before any tiling goes down so there is a permanent record. On completion you receive a certificate of compliance along with the photographs.

Most bathroom failures we are called to inspect trace back to this one step being rushed, subcontracted to whoever was cheapest that week, or skipped where nobody would see it.

We stop and show you.

After demolition we inspect the plumbing and electrical, run a CCTV camera through your pipes and check the room is square. Anything we find comes to you with a quoted solution before we proceed.

If we discover illegal plumbing or electrical work from a previous renovation, we report it with a quoted fix. If we suspect asbestos in an older home we stop work, and where it is likely we would ask you to have a tester attend before we start. Licensed removalists handle anything substantial.

What you will never get is a surprise on the final invoice.

We can, but we recommend against it, and we will explain why before you decide.

Tiling over old tiles means building on top of old waterproofing with no way to know how much life is left in it and no way to guarantee against a future leak. The adhesion methods used are also unreliable. A primed surface may hold for months, but tiles laid this way commonly crack or detach over time.

Stripping back to the substrate and re-waterproofing costs more upfront. It is the only way we can stand behind the work with a 10-year guarantee.

Honest answer: no renovation can increase your actual water pressure. It is set by Sydney Water at the mains in your street, and nothing done inside a house or apartment changes it.

What we can do is make sure your fittings are not making it worse. Some water-saving fixtures restrict flow badly, and choosing the right tapware and shower head can create a noticeably stronger flow. But that is an effect of the fittings, not a change in pressure.

We would rather tell you that straight than promise something plumbing cannot deliver.

Three: a ceiling-mounted heat, fan and light unit, electric underfloor heating, or in-wall heating installed behind the tiles, which can also replace a heated towel rail.

Underfloor heating makes most sense in a larger room with real exposed floor area, and it needs a dedicated circuit which adds to the electrical cost. In a compact room a heated towel rail usually delivers more comfort for less money, and keeps towels dry between uses.

We will recommend what suits your room size, layout and budget during your quote rather than upselling the most expensive option.

Usually yes, and we will always do our best to conceal the pipework inside the wall.

Occasionally it cannot be moved, because of a single-skin brick wall, undersized piping or a strata restriction. We assess this during your on-site quote, and anything affecting the outcome is listed on your written quotation so there is no disappointment on handover day.

Stripping the room back to the building's framework and building an entirely new bathroom. Flooring, walls, waterproofing and tiling all installed new, along with plumbing, electrical, fixtures, ventilation and painting. It can include changing the floor plan to create a different layout.

That is a different thing from a refresh, which replaces what you can see and leaves what you cannot. A refresh is cheaper and it is sometimes the right call, but it is not what we do, and it will not carry a 10-year workmanship guarantee.

Yes, and we have done a lot of it since 2009, including second-storey bathrooms where a leak becomes the neighbour's problem.

Apartments add constraints a house never has: strata approval, waterproofing that protects the unit below, shared services, and lift and lobby protection during demolition. Because we are licensed plumbers as well as renovators, relocating fixtures within a building's constraints is handled in-house rather than subcontracted.

We prepare the strata pack most committees ask for. There is more detail on our apartment bathroom renovations page.

A like-for-like bathroom renovation generally does not, as it is usually exempt development.

Approval can be needed if you are altering the building structure, moving external walls, or adding a window or skylight. Strata properties need owners corporation approval regardless of what the council requires.

We will tell you exactly what applies to your job at the consultation, and handle the paperwork.

Yes, and it is usually the cheaper way to do it. The trades, the site setup and the project management are already in place, so combining the two costs less than running them as separate jobs months apart.

We also convert laundries into bathrooms, and combine adjoining rooms to create a larger space. See our laundry renovations page for what that involves.

That is most people, and you do not need anything decided before you book.

Rick will talk through layout, tile selection and fixtures during the consultation and give you the designer's perspective without you needing to engage one separately. We create a simple 3D mock-up of your room so you can see scale and layout before anything is bought.

It is not as detailed as hiring an interior designer, but it is considerably better than working from sketches on paper, and it costs you nothing.

Ten years on our workmanship, written into your contract. That sits on top of the cover you already have by law in NSW — six years for major defects and two years for minor ones under the Home Building Act — so the guarantee runs well past the point most renovators stop answering the phone.

It covers our work: a loose towel rail, grout letting go, hinges failing. It does not cover wear, misuse or damage. Anything you bought carries its own manufacturer warranty, which passes straight to you.

You contact us, we inspect, and we rectify any covered defect. We are your sole point of contact.

Because Rick and Rob own the business and did the work themselves, there is no chasing a departed subcontractor or arguing about who is responsible for what.

At handover we leave you with every certificate and warranty, so you have a complete record for your own files, for strata if you need it, and for a future buyer.