Laundry renovations in Cranbourne
Laundry renovations in Cranbourne, from older township back laundries to the euro laundry cupboards in Cranbourne North and Cranbourne East estates.
A laundry is a wet area under the same waterproofing rules as a bathroom. In Cranbourne it is also the room most often raided when a house needs a second wet area, and three laundry types account for nearly all the work in postcode 3977. Decide which job you are doing before the rough in.
The three laundry types in this postcode
The township back laundry. In the old township, Junction Village and Devon Meadows, the laundry is often a lean to or a back of house room with a concrete trough, an exposed waste, a single power point and a door to the yard. A room lined before 1990 gets its sheeting tested first, because the wall behind the trough is one of the likeliest places in the house to find bonded asbestos, and that answer decides how the strip out is run.
The 1990s trough and cupboard. The 1990s stock on the western side has a standard arrangement: a stainless steel tub in a laminate cabinet, one overhead cupboard, vinyl on the floor and a splashback three tiles high. Three decades on, the cabinetry is usually swollen at the kickboard, the vinyl is lifting at the tub and the taps are seized.
The euro laundry. The 2000s estates north and east of the township often put the laundry in a cupboard off a hallway or the garage. The washer and dryer are stacked, there is a small trough or none at all, and there is no bench to fold on.
What a laundry renovation covers
- Strip out of cabinetry, trough, floor covering and wall linings where they are being replaced.
- Plumbing rough in for the tub, the washing machine stops and the floor waste.
- Electrical rough in for the washer, the dryer, lighting and any additional power points.
- New wet area sheeting, with noggings behind anything wall mounted, including a wall hung dryer.
- Waterproofing to the extent the Code sets for a laundry, which is less than a shower enclosure but is not nothing.
- Floor and splashback tiling.
- Cabinetry, bench, tub, tapware and the dryer bracket.
- Fit off, silicone, and the certificates that go with the plumbing and the wiring.
Decisions worth making early
| Decision | Why it is early |
|---|---|
| Tub size and whether it is undermounted | Changes the cabinet and the waste position |
| Bench length and where the machines sit | Fixes the plumbing and power positions |
| Front loader or top loader | A top loader cannot go under a bench |
| Dryer type: vented, condenser or heat pump | A vented dryer needs a duct through a wall |
| Whether the dryer goes on the wall | Needs noggings in before sheeting |
| External door or pet door | Framing change, and an approvals question if structural |
| Drying space | A pull out rail or a ceiling airer has to be planned, not added later |
The dryer question matters more here than people expect. A vented dryer discharging into a small closed laundry, which is normal in a euro cupboard, puts a large amount of moisture into the house. Either duct it out through an external wall or specify a condenser or heat pump unit.
Using the laundry to create an ensuite
In township houses with one bathroom and no ensuite, the laundry is often the cheapest donor space, because the sanitary drain, the water lines and the vent are already in that part of the house. The usual outcome is that the laundry shrinks to a euro style cupboard with a stacked washer and dryer and a small trough, and the space it gives up becomes a shower, a toilet and a basin. That combined job is priced and sequenced as one project, and the detail is on ensuite renovations.
Two things decide whether it works. The first is what the wall being moved is doing structurally, since that governs both the framing and the approval path described on what the law requires. The second is whether there is still a sensible route from the back door to the machines, because a laundry that can only be reached by walking through a bedroom will annoy the household every week.
What goes wrong
Skipping waterproofing. A laundry is a wet area. Owners who treat it as a dry room and tile straight onto sheeting get failure at the tub wall and around the machine within a few years.
No floor waste, or a floor with no fall. A washing machine hose that lets go in a room with no fall sends water into the hallway carpet. If the room has a floor waste, the floor needs to actually fall to it.
Rigid grout on ground that moves. Seasonal soil movement in the older half of Cranbourne works the frame and the slab, and grout has no give in it. A flexible joint where the wall meets the floor, and another in each corner, is what stops the splashback opening up a year after handover.
Undersized power. Two machines, a heat pump dryer and an iron on one old circuit will trip. The switchboard capacity gets checked at quoting stage, not at fit off.
Cabinetry that assumes the old machines. Measure the machines you are actually keeping, including the depth with the hoses connected and the door open.
What it costs
A laundry renovation usually lands at $5,000 to $20,000. That band is wide because the jobs at each end are genuinely different: a euro cupboard refit with a new trough, bench and tiling sits near the bottom, while a full township laundry rebuild with asbestos removal, new drainage, new cabinetry and an external door sits near the top.
Floor tiling supplied and laid runs $90 to $190 per m2. Where a laundry is being rebuilt at the same time as the main bathroom, doing both in one program saves on the strip out, the rubbish removal and the plumber and tiler attendances, and that is worth pricing alongside a full bathroom renovation.
List what you are keeping, add the room size and the build year, and send the lot through the quote form.