Padstow Bathroom & Kitchen

The brief

The owners had been quoted separately for the bathroom and the kitchen, planned to do the bathroom that year and the kitchen the next, and asked what the difference would be if they did both at once. The honest answer was about $11,000 and four weeks of their life — so they did both at once.

What we found

A 1968 fibro-and-brick home with the kitchen and bathroom sharing a wet wall. That shared wall was the whole opportunity: opening it from the bathroom side gave the plumber access to re-run the kitchen sink waste without cutting the kitchen floor, which on a separate booking would have been a $2,400 line on its own. The original kitchen had also been re-topped twice over a carcass that was no longer square, which ruled out a door-only refresh.

What we did

The kitchen became a shaker-profile polyurethane in white with a 40mm stone benchtop, waterfall ends on the island, brushed gold tapware and a pendant over the bench. The bathroom went to the Luxury specification: a freestanding bath under the window, brushed gold tapware throughout, an arched mirror and a backlit niche running the wall. Both rooms ran off one project manager, one skip and one waterproofing mobilisation, with the kitchen cabinetry in production while the bathroom was still being tiled.

The outcome

Thirty-one days on site for both rooms, against roughly forty-six days across two separate bookings. Final contract $74,900 including GST, no variations. The comparable separate quotes the owners were holding totalled $86,200.