The suburb is changing around its edges
Bankstown has a commercial and civic core — Bankstown Central, Paul Keating Park, the library and knowledge centre, the hospital — and an increasingly apartment-led residential band around it. Go a few streets further out and it becomes what it has been since the 1960s: brick veneer and fibro houses on regular blocks.
The two produce different renovation jobs, and a quote should make clear which one it is pricing.
The house job
Post-war construction, suspended timber floor, compact bathroom with a separate toilet beside it. This is the most common brief we see here and it has a well-worn answer: combine the two rooms.
The timber floor is what makes it work. A plumber can get underneath, run new waste at a proper gradient and connect without cutting concrete — which is why the same change costs several times more in a slab building. The result is one room with space for a real shower, a decent vanity and somewhere to stand.
Two checks first. Whether the dividing wall carries load, which often it does not. And whether merging leaves the household without a usable toilet when someone is showering — in a larger house that is a genuine question rather than a detail. If it is the only toilet, think it through properly.
The apartment job
Compact bathroom, concrete slab, common stack, owners corporation. The slab makes relocating a waste expensive, so the sensible approach is to design around the existing positions and put the budget into everything else — removing an unused bath for a walk-in shower, a slimline wall-hung vanity, full-height tiling, a wide mirror and proper light at it.
The strata approval is the thing that decides your start date. Start that conversation before you choose tiles, not after.
What comes off the wall
On a pre-1990 bathroom expect the realistic possibilities: asbestos cement sheeting behind the tiles, deteriorated framing where a shower has leaked into the studs, cast-iron waste at the end of its life, and occasionally work done without a licensed plumber.
None of it stops a renovation. All of it is why the variation clause in your quote matters more than the tile allowance. Asbestos, if found, goes to a separately licensed removalist before general work continues.
What it costs
Bankstown houses keeping their layout mostly land at $15,000–$24,000; a combined bathroom-and-toilet with the drainage moving runs $22,000–$34,000 and up. Apartment bathrooms kept like-for-like sit in the lower band. The cost page sets out the 2026 figures, and how a renovation runs covers the program.
Nearby
We also work in Punchbowl, Greenacre, Revesby and Padstow, plus Yagoona, Condell Park, Bass Hill and Chester Hill.
Call 02 4404 0504 or send the room details through.
From first call to hand-back
- Measure — half an hour at your place, no cost, evenings and weekends included.
- Survey where the age warrants it, before the price is finalised rather than after.
- Written quote — fittings named, tile allowance stated, variation method set out.
- Build — 15 to 20 working days, with the waterproofing cure time shown.
Questions people ask before they commit
What are Bankstown bathrooms typically like?
Two kinds. In the residential streets, post-war brick veneer and fibro houses with a compact original bathroom and the toilet in a separate room next door, on a suspended timber floor. Nearer the CBD, apartments on concrete slabs with the waste connected to a common stack.
Can the layout change in a Bankstown house?
Usually yes, and it is where the value is. The suspended timber floor means drainage can move without cutting concrete, so combining the bathroom and the separate toilet into one properly sized room is affordable. Check whether the dividing wall is structural first — often it is not.
Do I need approval for an apartment bathroom?
In a strata scheme, work affecting waterproofing or common property generally needs owners corporation approval before it starts, and a bathroom renovation almost always does. Talk to your strata manager before you commission anything — the approval usually sets your realistic start date.
Is asbestos likely in a Bankstown bathroom?
On anything built or refitted before about 1990, yes, likely enough to assume until a survey says otherwise. Asbestos cement was standard through the decades when most of this suburb was built, and wet areas were a common application.
Will the Metro conversion affect renovating here?
Not the work itself. What it has changed is the mix of buyers and renters around the Bankstown core, which is worth knowing if you are renovating before a sale — a presentable bathroom matters more in a market with more people looking. For the renovation itself, the constraints are the same as they were: slab or timber floor, and strata or no strata.