Bathroom Renovations in Smithfield

Smithfield grew as a family suburb, and its housing reflects it: a lot of lowset brick and tile from the nineties and 2000s, four bedrooms, two bathrooms, on a slab, laid out to a handful of project builder floor plans that repeat across whole streets. Renovating bathrooms here is generally the most straightforward work we do, and the decisions are more about scope than about surprises.

Two bathrooms, the same age, the same faults

The defining feature of these houses is that the main bathroom and the ensuite were built in the same week by the same trades with the same materials, and they have therefore worn out in perfect step.

That produces a specific problem for households. Doing one room makes the other look considerably worse than it did the day before, and it also leaves you having spent good money while the second room continues to be the one that actually leaks. We would rather quote both and let you decide than quote one and be back in eighteen months.

Where the rooms adjoin or share a plumbing wall, doing them in a single sequence is genuinely cheaper. Where they sit at opposite ends of the house, the saving is smaller and staging them is a reasonable choice.

The failures this era produces

The pattern is consistent enough to predict before we arrive. The framed shower screen has corroded at the bottom track, and the silicone under it has been redone at least once. The acrylic base has flexed and cracked, usually radiating from the waste. The vanity is a laminate carcass on a kickboard that has swollen at the base. The tapware is a chrome-plated builder’s spec that has pitted.

Underneath, the waterproofing of the period is variable. Where it was done well it is still doing its job. Where it was done to the minimum, the failure is almost always at the junctions rather than in the middle of a wall, which is exactly what you would expect: the flat areas were coated and the corners were not detailed.

Salt air, closer than people think

Smithfield is a few minutes from the water, and the northern beaches air reaches further inland than most people assume. It does not affect the structure of a bathroom, but it shortens the life of anything plated.

The visible result is tapware, towel rails, screen hardware and door furniture that pit and dull years before they should. It is worth spending on finish quality on those items specifically, and worth knowing that some of the fashionable finishes handle this environment considerably better than others. Where a household is choosing between spending on a fashionable tap and spending on the membrane underneath, we will always say the membrane, but the tap conversation is a real one here.

Slab houses, and what that fixes in place

Everything in these homes sits on a slab, which means the drainage points are where they are. Moving a toilet means cutting and re-pouring concrete, and while it is entirely doable, it is a cost that rarely earns its keep in a house whose layout was reasonable to begin with.

The good news is that these floor plans mostly do not need rearranging. The wins available are in what fills the room rather than in where the room’s fixtures sit: taking the bath out of a bathroom nobody bathes in, replacing a framed screen with frameless glass, and getting a proper set-out on the tiling instead of the one that came with the house.

Call 0468 047 067 or send photos of both rooms through the form and we will price them together and separately, so you can see the difference.