Compact Bathrooms, Finished Like Big Ones

Bathrooms we take on

Seven kinds of wet-area work, from a full main bathroom down to a laundry hidden in a cupboard. Nothing structural beyond the room, no kitchens, no additions.

The Eastern Suburbs bathroom problem

Sydney's east was built early and built tight. Between the Federation semis of Randwick, the red-brick interwar walk-ups lining Coogee Bay Road and Bondi's back streets, and the Victorian terraces of Paddington, the typical bathroom is somewhere between three and six square metres. Plenty are smaller.

Those rooms also carry baggage a newer suburb never sees:

• Concrete encasing the waste pipes in older flats, with floors built up in thick mortar beds that hide what is underneath
• A shower over a bath squeezed into a room never designed for a shower at all
• Walls of solid double brick, which are wonderful for sound and terrible for recessing anything into them
• Salt-laden air that pits chrome, rusts cheap screws and grows mould on any ceiling without proper extraction
• An owners corporation that has to sign off before a tile comes off

None of that stops a beautiful room. It just means the design has to be solved before demolition rather than improvised during it.

Where the luxury actually comes from

A premium bathroom in a big house gets its feel from space. In a compact one it comes from fewer interruptions. Every visible edge, hob, frame, grout line and protruding cabinet makes a small room read smaller. The work is removing them.

One continuous floor. A frameless fixed panel and a floor that runs level into the shower — no hob, no step — lets the eye read the whole room as one surface. On an older slab that means reworking the falls, which is where careful waterproofing earns its place.

Things off the floor. A wall-hung vanity and an in-wall cistern expose the full floor tile underneath. In a 1.6 metre wide room that visible strip of floor makes a surprising difference.

Storage inside the wall, not on it. A recessed shaving cabinet or a tiled niche gives back the depth a surface cabinet steals. Where the wall is solid brick, we build a thin stud lining to create that depth rather than chasing into masonry.

Fewer, larger tiles — or, deliberately, a small handmade tile laid with intent. Both work. What never works is a busy mid-size tile with contrasting grout in a narrow room. The tiling page covers set-out.

Light from more than one direction. A single oyster light in the middle of the ceiling casts a shadow on everything. Light at the mirror plus a soft ceiling source changes how large a room feels.

Strata, heritage and the approvals nobody enjoys

Most of our work east of the city sits inside a strata scheme. The membrane and the slab under your tiles usually belong to the owners corporation, not to you, so renovating a unit bathroom means asking permission first. We prepare a clear scope, a waterproofing specification and insurance details in the form a strata committee expects — that usually shortens the wait rather than lengthening it.

Houses bring their own paperwork. Parts of Randwick, Waverley and Woollahra council areas sit within heritage conservation areas, and anything visible from the street — a new vent through a front wall, a skylight on a visible roof plane — can need consent even when the bathroom itself does not.

What the old buildings hide

Anything built before about 1990 gets an asbestos test before demolition. Fibre cement sheeting behind the tiles, vinyl floor underlays and some old adhesives are common findings in 1950s to 1980s flats, and removal is separately licensed work.

In timber-floored semis and terraces the usual finding is different: decades of slow leaks softening joists under the old shower. We allow for looking properly once the floor is open, and we price any repair before it is done.

Where we work

Randwick, Maroubra, Coogee, Bondi and Bondi Junction, Kensington and Paddington, plus Clovelly, Kingsford, Bronte, Tamarama, Queens Park and Woollahra.

Who does the work

Renovation work is carried out in partnership with Coastal Renovation Group, a licensed NSW builder. Licence and insurance details are provided on request. Check the licence on the NSW Fair Trading register yourself — it takes less than a minute and shows the class, the expiry and any disciplinary history.

We have no reviews to show you yet and have not invented any. The honest test of this business is the drawing and the quote you receive after a measure.

Call 02 5121 7922 or send the room through. The cost guide has rough bands if you want a sense of budget before you talk to anyone.