What it costs

Our starting prices below were updated in August 2026, and every job is quoted fixed after we have seen the apartment and the building.

A bathroom starts at $28,000 with standard finishes: ceramic tiles, a standard vanity and a framed shower screen. From $39,000 you get porcelain tiles, a custom vanity and a frameless screen. From $53,000 the tiles are natural stone and the floor can be heated. A kitchen runs on the same scale, from $31,000 with laminate benchtops and polyurethane doors, from $39,000 with engineered stone and soft-close cabinetry, and from $53,000 with natural stone and custom joinery. A whole apartment in standard finishes starts at $85,000 for a studio or one-bedroom, $110,000 for two bedrooms and $140,000 for three.

The layout decides more of the price than the tiles do. Leave the toilet, shower and kitchen sink where they are and you avoid new in-wall plumbing and a second round of waterproofing, the largest saving available. Cabinetry is 30 to 40 percent of a kitchen, so spend your decision time on the joinery and let us handle the appliances, which we buy through a commercial account at up to 50 percent off retail. Our cost guide lists what each level of finish includes.

What a cheap quote leaves out

Labour and tiling are 40 to 50 percent of a bathroom, so a quote well under $28,000 is usually saving on the part you cannot see. The common shortcut is to tile over the old waterproofing membrane instead of replacing it. That saves a few thousand dollars and produces a leak into the flat below a few years later, and once you have renovated, that repair is yours. Ask for the quote itemised and ask who certifies the waterproofing. Ours is done by a licensed waterproofer, flood tested before a tile goes down, and certified at handover.

The building is older than the kitchen

Many of the blocks between Manly and Collaroy went up in the 1960s and 70s within a few hundred metres of the surf, in what engineers call a severe marine environment. Salt works into the brick mortar, the wall ties and the balcony concrete, so many of these buildings have had, or are due for, remedial work outside. Check the strata records for planned facade or balcony works before you book a builder, because scaffolding and a new bathroom on the same wall are cheaper done once than twice.

Inside, many of the same blocks have a magnesite topping over the concrete slab, laid as a leveller and a sound barrier. Magnesite holds moisture and corrodes the steel in the slab beneath it, so in bathrooms, laundries and by balcony doors we take it out and make good the concrete before we waterproof. On any pre-1980s block we carry a 15 to 20 percent contingency for what we find and put that figure in the quote up front.

Strata approval

Every NSW apartment renovation is cosmetic, minor or major work under the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015. A kitchen in the same footprint is usually minor and clears in two to four weeks. Anything that touches waterproofing, which means most bathrooms, is major: a special resolution at a general meeting and a by-law registered with NSW Land Registry Services, which takes six to twelve weeks. We prepare the application, the drawings and the waterproofing details and lodge them on day one, so the approval runs while the joinery and stone are on order. Across 1,000 apartments our approval rate is 100 percent.

Living in it with the kids

Most of our families stay put. On site, a bathroom takes two to three weeks, a kitchen three to four, and a whole apartment eight to sixteen depending on size. For a kitchen we set up a temporary bench in another room and you wash up in the laundry. The hard case is an apartment with one bathroom. For roughly two weeks during strip-out and waterproofing there is no shower or toilet, and a block has nowhere to put a portable one. Most owners stay with family for that stretch or shower at the gym.

Book the noisy fortnight in school term rather than the holidays, and give the building manager your lift bookings early, because the lift is often the only way a stone benchtop gets upstairs. We seal the work zone, run dust extraction, keep to the building’s work hours and put a note under the neighbours’ doors before demolition.