Bathroom Renovations Chester Hill

A suburb of repeated plans

Chester Hill sits on the north-western edge of the Canterbury-Bankstown area, running up against Sefton and Villawood. Much of it was built out in the 1950s and 1960s, a good deal of it as planned estate housing, and the result is unusually consistent: street after street of single-storey homes drawn from a small number of plans.

For a renovator that consistency is useful. By the time we walk in we have a fair idea of the room dimensions, whether the floor is likely to be slab or timber, where the stack is, and which wall the sewer runs behind. It shortens the measure and it makes the quote more reliable.

What it does not tell us is the condition behind the tiles, which is why we still open a conversation about what happens if the strip-out finds water damage before we hand over a price.

The households, which matter more than the houses

Chester Hill has one of the strongest multi-generational household profiles in the district, with large Vietnamese, Arabic-speaking and Chinese-Australian communities among its residents. In practice that means a three-bedroom house drawn in 1958 for a family of four is now home to six or seven people across three generations.

A single bathroom and a separate toilet cannot carry that. So the briefs we get in Chester Hill skew heavily toward adding capacity rather than improving appearance:

A second shower, wherever it can go
A second toilet kept, not lost, when the main bathroom is done
A ground-floor bathroom an older parent can use safely
A laundry that can keep up with a household's worth of washing

Appearance still matters. It is just not the reason the phone rings.

The three options we usually put on the table

Renovate the bathroom and keep the toilet separate. The conservative answer for a large household. You get a properly built bathroom, you keep two rooms, and nobody is queuing for the one toilet. Covered on the full renovations page.

Renovate the bathroom and line the old toilet as a powder room. Add a compact wall-hung basin, re-line and re-tile. The separate toilet stops being a cold cubicle and becomes a second usable room for a small fraction of a bathroom budget. See small bathrooms.

Add a shower elsewhere and leave both existing rooms alone for now. Where the budget will only stretch to one thing, a new second shower usually changes daily life more than a better main bathroom does. See ensuites.

The Chester Hill laundry

Worth its own mention because it comes up here more than anywhere else we work. The original arrangement is a concrete trough on steel legs in a back room, one tap set, a painted concrete floor and a single light. For a household washing every day it is the weakest room in the house.

A galley rebuild along one wall — machine, dryer, tub in a cabinet, continuous bench, overhead cupboards to the ceiling, a floor waste and ventilation that actually works — is a modest job with an outsized effect. The laundry page sets out what goes into one.

Council

Chester Hill is in the City of Canterbury-Bankstown. Renovation inside an existing bathroom generally needs no development application; adding a bathroom, changing drainage or altering structure can. We tell you which applies before you commit to anything.

Next step

A free measure, half an hour, evenings and Saturdays. Rough bands are on the price guide.

Renovation work is carried out in partnership with Coastal Renovation Group, a licensed NSW builder. Licence and insurance details are provided on request.

Jobs we quote in Chester Hill

Full Bathroom Renovations	The original bathroom and the separate toilet next to it taken back to brick and rebuilt as one usable room.
Ensuites	A second shower and toilet carved out of a robe, a sleep-out or the end of a long main bedroom.
Small Bathrooms	Narrow post-war rooms and tucked-away powder rooms reworked so the floor space finally earns its keep.
Accessible Bathrooms	Step-free showers, grab rail backing and turning room, for grandparents living in the same house.
Laundry Renovations	Back-of-house laundries and old back-verandah tubs rebuilt for a household that washes every day.
Waterproofing & Tiling	Membrane to the current standard, floors set to fall, and a tile set-out worked out before the first cut.
Rental Bathrooms	Hard-wearing, quickly turned-around bathrooms for investment houses, duplex halves and granny flats.

Full Bathroom Renovations

The original bathroom and the separate toilet next to it taken back to brick and rebuilt as one usable room.

Ensuites

A second shower and toilet carved out of a robe, a sleep-out or the end of a long main bedroom.

Small Bathrooms

Narrow post-war rooms and tucked-away powder rooms reworked so the floor space finally earns its keep.

Accessible Bathrooms

Step-free showers, grab rail backing and turning room, for grandparents living in the same house.

Laundry Renovations

Back-of-house laundries and old back-verandah tubs rebuilt for a household that washes every day.

Waterproofing & Tiling

Membrane to the current standard, floors set to fall, and a tile set-out worked out before the first cut.

Rental Bathrooms

Hard-wearing, quickly turned-around bathrooms for investment houses, duplex halves and granny flats.

Questions people ask before they commit

Our Chester Hill house is one of a row of nearly identical homes. Does that make it cheaper?

It makes it more predictable, which helps. We know the likely room sizes, the probable floor type and where the drainage usually runs before we arrive. It does not make the price lower on its own, because what sits behind the tiles still varies house to house.

The whole family lives here. Can we get a second shower in?

Usually yes. In this housing the space normally comes from the end of a long main bedroom, a built-in robe on a wet-area wall, or the laundry if the laundry can move. Which one works depends on the sewer route, and that is the first thing we check.

Is the laundry worth doing at the same time?

It often is. The laundry in these houses is a trough and a tap in a back room, and it shares every trade with the bathroom — plumber, waterproofer, tiler, cabinetmaker, electrician. Doing both as one project means one disruption and a better price per room.

What about the ceiling sheeting?

In houses of this era bathroom and laundry ceilings are often fibre cement, and that is one of the things we test before demolition. If it contains asbestos, removal is done by a separately licensed removalist and quoted separately.

Do you speak with the whole family about the design?

We would rather you had everyone's input before we price it than afterwards. In a household with three generations, the person who uses the bathroom at six in the morning and the person who needs to sit down in the shower want different things, and both have to be in the drawing.

Chester Hill Bathroom Renovations