Builder in Unanderra
Local granny flat, renovation and extension builder for Unanderra and the surrounding Illawarra.
A local builder you can count on in Unanderra
One team, one point of contact — design, approvals and engineering handled.
- Free, fixed-price proposals
- Licensed & insured
- Approvals & engineering handled
- Local team, tidy sites
Laundry renovations in Unanderra
Laundries are one of the jobs we're asked for most in Unanderra, usually as a room on its own rather than as part of a whole-house renovation. We run the plumbing, electrical, waterproofing, cabinetry and tiling as one job on a fixed price, which for a room this size is the difference between a fortnight and a couple of months of waiting on trades.
Most of Unanderra was built in the post-war decades, when the steelworks was hiring, and in a lot of that housing the laundry was never really a room. It's in the garage, in a back porch that got closed in later, or in a lean-to off the kitchen. Which of those you've got decides the job more than anything you'd pick from a showroom.
A laundry in a garage can be done properly, and often should be, because the space is already there. It needs the floor graded and drained, a waterproofed splash zone behind the tub and machines, and its own ventilation, none of which a garage was built with. Leaving those out is why some of them smell damp by the second winter.
The alternative worth pricing is bringing the laundry inside. Where there's a corner off the kitchen or a hallway cupboard near existing plumbing, moving it in can cost less than making the garage work properly, and you get a room you'll use in July.
How we run a home renovationSunroom extensions and closing in a patio in Unanderra
We build them, and the straight answer is that closing in a patio is usually an extension rather than a cheap way of avoiding one. As soon as the space is sealed, insulated and heated, it's a habitable room, and it has to be built as one to work like one.
The idea comes up a lot around here because so many of these houses already have a roofed patio or pergola sitting on a concrete slab out the back. It looks like most of the work is done. What's actually there is a slab laid with a fall so water runs off it, often with no damp-proof membrane underneath, and a roof that's a single uninsulated sheet with nothing between it and your head.
That's where the money goes: levelling or replacing the floor, insulating and lining the roof so it doesn't drip condensation onto new plasterboard, and opening up the old external wall, which on these homes is usually carrying roof load and needs an engineered beam. The glazing is the cheap part and the part everyone budgets for.
Aspect decides whether it's worth doing at all. Facing north with an eave over it, an enclosed room is comfortable most of the year for very little running cost. A large area of unshaded west-facing glass gives you a room nobody sits in after two in the afternoon in summer, and no amount of air conditioning fixes that cheaply.
What an extension involvesOther areas we build in
Planning a build in Unanderra?
Tell us about the project and we'll come out, talk through your options and put together a fixed proposal. No pressure, no obligation.