Laundry Renovations in Wollongong & the Illawarra

The laundry is usually the last room anyone plans and the first one that drives you mad. It's small, it works hard, and when the layout is wrong you notice it every single wash. A laundry renovation done well sorts out the flow, adds storage you'll actually use, and gets the plumbing and waterproofing done properly so you're not chasing damp or a slow leak a year down the track.

Ovas Build is a small local team working across Wollongong, the Illawarra and the Southern Highlands. We handle the design, any approvals your job needs, and the build, with one point of contact from the first chat to the final clean-up.

What a laundry renovation involves

A laundry touches more trades than its size suggests. Even a small one usually means plumbing, electrical, waterproofing, tiling, cabinetry and sometimes a bit of carpentry to shift a wall or a doorway. The value of having one builder run it is that those trades turn up in the right order and you're not left waiting between them.

A full laundry renovation might include:

• New or relocated plumbing for the sink, washing machine and dryer
• Waterproofing and new floor and wall tiling
• Benchtops, cabinetry and a proper laundry sink
• Room for a front loader, a dryer, or a stacked setup to save floor space
• Better lighting, power points and ventilation
• A pull-out or fold-down drying option where the space allows

Making a small laundry renovation work

Most laundries in the Illawarra are tight, tucked off the kitchen or built into the back of the garage. The trick with a small laundry renovation is getting more out of the footprint you already have, rather than knocking out walls you don't need to touch.

That can mean stacking the washer and dryer, taking cabinetry up to the ceiling, or building a benchtop over the machines so you get a folding surface and hide the plumbing at the same time. If your laundry doubles as a mudroom or the way through to the yard, we'll plan for the wet coats, the shoes and the dog too. Small rooms reward careful planning, and that's the part we spend real time on before anything gets ordered.

Where we do laundry renovations across Wollongong and the Illawarra

We renovate laundries throughout Wollongong and its northern suburbs, south through Unanderra, Port Kembla and Corrimal to Shellharbour and Albion Park, up to Helensburgh at the top of the escarpment, and into the Southern Highlands. It is the same crew and the same fixed-price proposal wherever the job is.

The reason the area matters is that the housing stock changes as you move through it, and the laundry changes with it. Around central Wollongong and the older northern suburbs like Corrimal and Bulli, the laundry is often a lean-to on the back or a room under the house that was never really inside the building envelope, so the work is as much about drainage, ventilation and getting the room properly enclosed as it is about new cabinetry.

The newer estate homes through Albion Park, Shellharbour and the outer suburbs have the opposite problem. There is usually a European-style laundry cupboard off a hallway, or a narrow galley beside the garage, and the floor area is fixed. Every gain there comes from stacking the machines, taking joinery to the ceiling, and building a benchtop over the top rather than moving a wall.

Post-war homes in places like Unanderra sit in between, with the laundry commonly in the garage. That works well once the floor is graded and drained, the splash zone is waterproofed and the room has its own ventilation, and it works badly when those get skipped.

Storage and cabinetry

Storage is what makes a laundry feel finished. A run of overhead cupboards, a tall broom cupboard, and a benchtop with a sink built in will clear the clutter that usually ends up sitting on top of the machine. We build joinery to suit the room, so the cabinetry fits the space instead of forcing the room to fit a flat-pack.

If you've got a look in mind, bring it along. We'll talk through benchtop materials, cabinet fronts and handles, and give you an honest read on what wears well in a room that's damp and busy.

Waterproofing and the wet trades

This is the part you don't see and can't afford to get wrong. A laundry is a wet area, so the floor and any splash zones need to be waterproofed to the Australian Standard before the tiling goes down. Cut a corner here and you get lifting tiles, swollen cabinetry or damp in the wall, and it's expensive to unpick later.

We coordinate the plumber, the waterproofer and the tiler so the membrane is laid properly, the floor falls run to the drain, and the machine connections are done to code. It's ordinary, unglamorous work, and it's the difference between a laundry that lasts and one you're fixing again in a couple of years.

What it might cost

A laundry renovation covers a wide range. A tidy refresh with a new benchtop, sink, cabinetry and tiling in the existing layout sits at the lower end. Moving plumbing, relocating the room or a full strip-out and rebuild pushes it up. As a rough guide, a small laundry renovation often lands somewhere in the low-to-mid five figures, but treat that as a starting point, not a quote.

We work to fixed-price proposals, so once we've seen your room and settled the scope, the number we give you is the one you plan around.

Approvals

Most laundry renovations that stay within the existing footprint are internal work and don't need council approval. Move the room, change the building's footprint or alter the drainage in a big way and that can change. We'll tell you honestly whether your job needs anything, and confirm it with council or a certifier before we start.