What a full renovation involves here
The same five stages as anywhere — strip-out, rough-in, screed and falls, waterproofing, then tiling and fit-off. What differs in the Hills is the risk profile rather than the sequence.
Strip-out is uneventful. No asbestos, because the housing postdates it. No cast-iron waste at the end of its life. The frame is usually sound because the original waterproofing did its job. Most of what comes off the wall goes in the skip without anyone stopping to assess it.
Rough-in is constrained by the slab. The plumber connects to existing waste positions. Where a new fitting needs a different position, the options are cutting the slab or building the floor up to create fall — both expensive, both slow, and neither a good use of the budget in a house whose layout was competently planned to begin with.
The rest is finish work, which is where the value is.
The five things that date the room
The tile line. A 2000s bathroom is typically tiled to about two metres with painted plasterboard above. That horizontal break, and the paint that inevitably marks and peels at the junction, reads as "built to a price" more than any other single detail. Tiling full height fixes it permanently and removes a maintenance item.
The framed corner shower. Aluminium frame, pivot door, a shower base sitting proud of the floor. Replacing it with a fixed panel and a floor tiled continuously into the shower transforms how the room reads — and it usually reuses the existing waste.
The vanity. Builder-grade units are doors and a single shelf, which means a dark cupboard with a waste trap in the middle. Drawers, wall-hung, with the floor running underneath. See vanities and cabinetry.
The spa bath. Installed in enormous numbers through the 2000s and used for about eighteen months. It takes up floor, holds dust in the jets, and almost nobody misses it. Replace with a simpler bath, or remove it and take the space.
The lighting. A single downlight in the ceiling behind you puts your shadow on the mirror every morning. Light at the mirror is a rough-in decision and one of the highest-return changes in the room.
Working with the slab
The slab is not a limitation so much as a design brief. Keep the toilet, shower and basin wastes where they are, and the entire budget goes into the room rather than into concrete.
It also keeps the program tight. A job that does not cut slab has no jackhammer stage, no extra curing, and no dust event that reaches the rest of the house.
Where a layout genuinely does not work — and occasionally one does not — it should be an explicit decision with the cost visible, not something that drifts into the drawing because it looked better on paper.
Doing more than one room
Most Hills houses have two or three wet areas. The marginal cost of the second is well below the first: the trades are already attending, the skip is ordered, the waterproofer has set up and the tiles arrive in one delivery.
If both the main bathroom and the ensuite are due, price them together. The cost page sets out what that saves.
What twenty years of use actually does
Nothing structural, usually. But a bathroom that has run two or three showers a day since 2003 has worn in specific, predictable ways, and knowing them helps you decide what is worth replacing.
Grout goes first. Cement-based grout in a shower is porous and twenty years of soap and water will stain and erode it. Regrouting alone can lift a room noticeably, and it is worth knowing that before committing to a full renovation you may not need yet.
Silicone fails before anything else. The bead at the floor-to-wall junction and around the shower base has a life of maybe eight to ten years. Blackened or lifting silicone looks like a moisture problem and usually is not one — but left long enough it becomes one, because it is the last line before the membrane.
Tapware cartridges wear. A mixer that has gone stiff or drips is usually a cartridge rather than a failure, and replacing it is a fraction of new tapware.
Chipboard vanity bases swell. Builder-grade carcasses with a cut-out around the trap absorb water at the base over time. This is the item most likely to be genuinely past saving.
If three or more of those are true at once, a full renovation makes sense. If only one is, fix the one.
What a quote should name
- Fittings and tapware by brand and model
- The tile allowance per square metre, and who buys them
- Full-height tiling specified explicitly if that is what you want
- Waterproofing scope and cure time as its own program line
- Skip and disposal
- Making good where new meets old
- The variation method — even though it is less likely to be used here
- A program in working days
Licensing
Work is carried out in partnership with Coastal Renovation Group Pty Ltd, holder of NSW contractor licence 493393C, Class: Builder. In NSW, residential building work above a set value must be carried out by an appropriately licensed contractor, and plumbing and electrical work goes to separately licensed trades regardless of job size.
Check the number on the public register before anything starts.
Call 02 5944 1412 or send the room details through.
The rest of what we do
Questions people ask before they commit
What does a full bathroom renovation cost in Kellyville?
A main bathroom taken back to frame and refitted runs about $24,000 to $36,000 as a 2026 planning guide. Keeping the waste positions holds you near the bottom; cutting the slab to relocate drainage pushes you well past the top and is rarely worth it.
How long does it take?
Fifteen to twenty working days for a job keeping its layout — three to four calendar weeks. Because Hills houses rarely produce structural surprises, that estimate holds better here than in older stock.
Can I stay in the house?
Almost always. Most houses out here have an ensuite or a second bathroom, which makes living through a renovation far easier than in a single-bathroom home. If both are being done, stagger them rather than running them together.
Is the existing waterproofing any good?
Usually it was done to a modern standard, which is why these bathrooms are not failing. It still gets replaced in a full renovation — the membrane sits under the screed and tiles, so once those come up there is no way to leave it in place, and no reason to want to.
What actually dates a 2000s bathroom?
In order: the wall tile line stopping at about two metres with paint above it, a framed corner shower screen, a vanity with doors instead of drawers, a spa bath nobody uses, and a single ceiling downlight. All five are fixable without moving a pipe.