Bathroom renovations in Cranbourne West

Cranbourne West was substantially built out through the 1990s, particularly across the land between Evans Road and Monahans Road. The Sandhurst Centre opened on the corner of Duff Street and Monahans Road in 2006.

The Cranbourne West Development Plan released by the City of Casey in 2008 opened up further land bounded by Thompsons Road, Evans Road, the Western Port Highway and Ballarto Road. The result is a suburb with two clearly separate eras of housing, and the bathroom work in each one is different.

The 1990s core is the main body of work

Houses in the original 1990s streets are now 28 to 35 years old. Their bathrooms were built to the standard of the day, and the item that has almost always reached the end of its life is the shower base. A sand and cement base of that era is a screed bed laid over a membrane, and once the membrane under it gives way the screed holds water instead of shedding it. A base at double the age waterproofing is designed for has been soaking into the bedding for a long time before anything shows on the surface.

The way it presents in this stock is consistent:

1. The floor tile just outside the shower sounds hollow when tapped.
2. The bottom row of wall tiles inside the shower has loose or missing grout that keeps coming back.
3. The skirting board on the other side of the shower wall has swollen or lifted at the bottom edge.
4. The room smells damp even after the door has been open all day.

Any one of those on a 1990s base means the base gets replaced rather than repaired. That is set out further on shower repairs and waterproofing and on signs your shower is leaking.

Watch for the previous owner’s partial job

A pattern worth knowing about in this suburb is the overlay. At some point in the last fifteen years a lot of these bathrooms had new tiles laid straight over the original floor and base, with new silicone and a new screen, and no new waterproofing underneath. It looks like a renovated bathroom and it costs a renovation to fix, because the demolition now has two layers of tile and screed to take out before the frame is reached. We check for this before quoting, since it changes both the demolition allowance and the finished floor height.

Reactive clay on the western side

The western side of Cranbourne sits on the reactive clays along the margin of the drained Koo Wee Rup swamp. These soils swell and shrink with the seasons and the frame travels with them, which is why a third regrout on the same base is money spent twice. What holds is a rebuilt wet area with soft joints at the corners and the base, so the annual movement is absorbed by something designed to absorb it. Skipping that detail is why the same shower in this suburb can fail three times under three different tradespeople.

Check the build date before demolition

Most of Cranbourne West went up after 1990, but not all of it. Where a house on one of the older holdings predates the estate streets, the wet area linings are sampled and the result is in hand before a quote is issued. It is a short delay at the front of the job and it removes the worst variation a bathroom renovation can produce.

Access, parking and the skip

Streets in the 1990s part of Cranbourne West are narrower than the newer estates and many houses have a single crossover with a carport or a single garage. A skip generally fits on the driveway if the cars come out for the demolition days. Where it does not fit, a bin on the road or nature strip needs City of Casey approval and the fees change, so we confirm the current position at the time of quoting. Dual occupancy sites along and around Monahans Road are the tightest access in the suburb, and on those we usually work with bin swaps rather than a bin left on site.

Price bands here

Budget expectation in Cranbourne West sits below the eastern side of the City of Casey. A small or budget full renovation runs $10,500 to $21,000 and a standard renovation runs $21,000 to $36,750. Where the work is confined to the shower, waterproofing is $50 to $85 per m2 and floor tiling is $90 to $190 per m2, though replacing a base without retiling the room rarely makes sense once the wall tiles have to come off to reach the membrane. The full local breakdown is on bathroom renovation cost in Cranbourne.

Compliance

A 1990s shower rebuild is still domestic building work, so the registration, the written contract and the certificates all apply exactly as they would on a new estate house. What each of those thresholds actually is, and who issues what, is on what the law requires.

Tell us the street, when the house was built and whether the bathroom has been tiled over, using the quote form.

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