What actually happens in your house

Your Wagga bathroom retile, day by day, from the first jackhammer to handover.

A standard 6 to 8 square metre Wagga bathroom takes 9 to 14 working days on site, which is 2 to 3 calendar weeks once weekends and a shower screen delivery are counted. Two tradespeople arrive about 7am, the room is unusable the whole time, day one is loud and dusty and the rest is not, and the two or three days of waterproofing cure in the middle are the days when nothing appears to happen. That waiting is the part you are paying for.

Get a written quote See the timing deep dive

The stage by stage timeline

Every stage, how long it takes, and what we need from you.

This is the running order for a like-for-like retile of a typical Wagga bathroom: same layout, same door, fixtures in roughly the same places. Moving the shower to the other wall or taking out a load-bearing wall adds plumbing and carpentry days at the front, not tiling days at the back. The column on the right is the honest bit: on most days we need nothing from you at all, and on four of them we need something specific.

Stage	How long	What happens	What you need to do
Measure and written quote	45 minutes on site, quote in 1 to 2 business days	We measure every wall and the floor, check the substrate, look under the vanity for existing damage, and check the fall to the waste. You get an itemised fixed price.	Be home, and have any tile you are considering on hand or on your phone.
Booking and tile order	1 to 3 weeks lead time	Tiles ordered, quantities set with wastage, delivery booked. Stocked porcelain arrives in days. An indent or imported line can be 6 to 10 weeks.	Sign off the tile, the grout colour and the layout. Changes after this point cost money.
Day 1: strip-out and disposal	1 full day	Old tiles, screed, failed membrane, vanity, screen and often the bath come out. Skip or trailer loaded. Loudest, dirtiest day by a distance.	Bathroom emptied, cars off the driveway by 7am, pets shut away or out for the day.
Day 2: plumbing and carpentry rough-in	Half a day to 1 day	Licensed plumber sets waste and tap locations, noggins go in for the vanity, niche and grab rail, and wall sheeting is patched or replaced with compressed sheet or villaboard.	Confirm final heights: shower rail, niche, mirror, towel rails. This is your last easy chance.
Day 3: substrate prep, screed and falls	1 day	Floor screeded to fall toward the waste, hob or hobless step formed, junctions bonded, everything vacuumed and primed.	Nothing. Stay out of the room.
Day 4: screed cure	Usually 1 day	Nothing visible. The bed has to be dry enough for the membrane to bond to it. In July that can stretch to 2 days in an unheated room.	Leave the door open and, if you have one, leave the exhaust fan running.
Days 5 to 6: waterproofing to AS 3740	2 to 3 days including cures	Bond breakers, corner and junction reinforcing, then 2 or 3 membrane coats with a cure between each. Every stage photographed and dated before it is covered.	Nobody enters the room, not even to look. A footprint in a wet membrane is a coat redone.
Days 7 to 9: wall and floor tiling	2 to 3 days	Set out from the most visible line, walls first then floor, wet saw running outside. Large format and herringbone add a day.	Leave the driveway or a shaded slab clear for the saw and the tile stack.
Day 10: grouting	1 day	Adhesive has cured overnight, grout goes in, joints are sponged and the haze cut back. Quiet day.	Nothing.
Day 11: silicone, trims and clean	Half a day	Internal corners and the floor to wall junction siliconed in a flexible sealant, edge trims finished, tiles washed down, room vacuumed and mopped.	Nothing, but do not run water in the room for 24 hours.
Day 12: plumbing fit-off	1 day	Toilet, vanity, tapware and waste refitted and tested. The room becomes usable again at the end of this day.	Be contactable for a decision on anything that does not fit as planned.
Shower screen	Templated on day 11, fitted 5 to 14 days later	Custom glass is measured off the finished tiles, not off the plan, so it cannot be ordered earlier. A standard semi-frameless is quicker than frameless.	Use the shower with a curtain in the meantime if you need to. It will not hurt anything.
Handover and documents	30 minutes	We walk through together, list anything you are not happy with, and you receive the waterproofer licence number, the dated membrane photographs, the product datasheets and the invoice.	Actually walk it. Point at anything. It is far easier to fix on the day than in a month.

Working days, not calendar days. Based on a like-for-like 6 to 8 square metre Wagga bathroom in 2026. Layout changes, second storeys and asbestos sheeting all add time.

The delays that are real

What actually stalls a retile, and what does not.

Very few bathroom jobs run late because a tiler is slow. They run late for four reasons, and three of them are decided before day one.

Tile lead time. A stocked 300x600 porcelain from a Wagga or Albury supplier is on site in a few days. An indent line, a natural stone, or a discontinued colour being chased through a warehouse can be 6 to 10 weeks. We will not book a start date until the tiles are physically confirmed, because a crew standing in an empty bathroom waiting on a pallet helps nobody.
Cures. Screed, then membrane, then adhesive, then grout. Each one has a minimum set by the product datasheet, not by us, and every one of them slows down in the cold. A Wagga bathroom in mid-July with no heating and one small window sits several degrees below the rest of the house all morning. That is a genuine extra day, and it is the day people ring to ask why nobody is on site.
Trade sequencing. A plumber has to come twice, at rough-in and at fit-off, and an electrician may need a visit for a heat lamp or a new fan circuit. Those visits are booked around other jobs, so when a plumber gets held up on an emergency, everything behind them shifts by a day. This is why we book the plumber before we book you.
Discoveries at strip-out. The honest one. A good share of Wagga bathrooms built before the mid 1990s show something behind the tiles that was not visible at the quote: rotted studs at the shower corner, a floor 25mm out over 2 metres, an old bedded shower base with no membrane at all, or termite damage in the bottom plate. We photograph it, price the repair as a written variation, and you decide before we go further. Nobody quietly tiles over rot.

What does not stall a job: rain, most of the time. The room is indoors. See the best time of year to tile in Wagga for how the seasons really affect scheduling, and how long a bathroom retile takes for the timing detail behind this page.

Want a start date and a finish date in writing?

We put both on the quote, along with the strip-out day and the fit-off day, so you can plan around them.

Book a free measure See 2026 pricing

Access, parking, power and water

What we need from your house while we are there.

None of this is difficult, but a job that has to stop while somebody moves a car is a job that finishes later. Wagga housing stock makes some of it easier than the capital cities: most homes in Kooringal, Lake Albert, Bourkelands and Estella have off-street parking and side access, which the older inner streets around Turvey Park and the CBD sometimes do not.

Parking. One ute and a trailer, ideally on the driveway or directly out front. On strip-out day and tile delivery day we need the driveway itself, because a pallet of porcelain is over a tonne and it gets barrowed, not carried.
Access path. A clear run at least 800mm wide from the vehicle to the bathroom door. We lay corflute or hardboard over carpet and timber floors on that path and tape it down.
Power. Two standard general power outlets we can use, ideally on different circuits, for the wet saw, the vacuum and the mixer. If the bathroom circuit is going out for an electrical change, we need a working outlet elsewhere.
Water. An outside tap for the wet saw and for washing tools. In a Wagga summer the saw goes through a surprising amount and it is not worth running a hose through the house.
Somewhere for the skip. Kerbside is normally fine in Wagga residential streets, but check with Wagga Wagga City Council if the only spot is on a nature strip or in front of a neighbour, and always speak to the neighbour first.
Somewhere for the wet saw. Driveway, carport or a shaded slab. It throws a fine slurry within about 2 metres, so not next to a car you love or a freshly painted wall.

Noise, dust, smell and the household

Living in the house while your bathroom is out.

Almost every client stays put, and it works. Here is what to actually expect, in the order it hits you.

Noise

Day one is a jackhammer and an angle grinder, roughly 7am to 3pm with breaks. It is loud enough that a phone call anywhere in the house is unpleasant and a video meeting is impossible. If you work from home, take that one day out of the house or plan it as an office day. Tiling days involve a wet saw running outside in bursts and a rubber mallet inside, which is more of a background tapping than a noise problem. Grout day, silicone day and fit-off day are quiet. We start at 7am because summer afternoons in Wagga are the wrong end of the day to be carrying tiles, but if a shift worker or a baby sleeps in the next room, say so and we will start at 8.

Dust

Old wall tiles bedded into render, and an old sand and cement floor bed, generate a fine grey dust that gets everywhere. We seal the doorway with plastic and a zip, run a dust extractor off the grinder, and lay protection down the access path. Even so, expect to wipe down surfaces in the nearest room after day one, and shut the doors on any room with open shelving or a computer. An air conditioner set to recirculate helps. A ducted system running on that day does not, since it distributes the dust politely to every room in the house.

Smell

Waterproofing membranes and primers carry a solvent smell for a few hours after each coat. It is strongest on the first membrane day and is largely gone overnight with the window open and the fan running. Silicone smells of vinegar for about a day. Neither is pleasant, and if anyone in the house has asthma or is pregnant, mention it and we will schedule membrane coats for the morning and leave the room ventilated all afternoon.

Pets, kids and working from home

Dogs and cats need to be shut at the other end of the house or boarded for strip-out day, because the doors are open all day and the floor is covered in tile shards and screws. Cats in particular will walk through a wet membrane given any chance at all, and that is a coat redone and a day lost. Small children need the bathroom door treated as permanently off limits for the whole job, not just the noisy part: the membrane days look completely harmless and are the ones that matter most. If you work from home, the pattern that works is to plan around day one and the fit-off day and simply ignore the rest.

The end of the job

What a clean site looks like, and where your old bathroom goes.

A tidy finish is not a favour, it is part of the price. At the end of every day the access path is swept, offcuts are in the skip or the trailer rather than on your lawn, and the wet saw slurry is hosed off the driveway before it dries, because dried tile slurry on concrete is a genuine stain. At the end of the job the room is washed down and mopped, grout haze is cut back, the silicone lines are clean and even, and the protection comes up off the hall floor. Nothing of ours stays behind except the labelled spare tiles, which you should keep somewhere dry: a matching tile in five years is worth far more than the shelf space it takes.

The waste from a standard Wagga bathroom is roughly 2 to 3 cubic metres, which is one 3 cubic metre skip or a couple of trailer loads. Mixed construction waste goes to the Gregadoo Waste Management Centre south of town. Cast iron, copper pipe and steel framing get separated for scrap because it is worth doing. Disposal sits inside the $500 to $1,200 strip-out line on our quotes rather than appearing later as an extra. The one exception is asbestos: if the sheeting behind the tiles in a pre 1990 house is likely to contain it, the work becomes a licensed removal with its own disposal stream and its own price, and it is not something to guess about or push through.

When you should not be doing this at all

Plenty of the bathrooms people ask us to retile do not need it. If the tiles are sound, the layout works and the only real problem is discoloured grout and mouldy silicone, a regrout and reseal at $350 to $700 gets you most of the visual improvement for a fraction of the cost, and it is done in a day with the bathroom back in use that night. If a single cracked tile is the issue, that is a repair, not a renovation. And if you are retiling purely because the house is going on the market, read what a retile actually returns at sale before you commit, because the answer is not always yes. We would rather do a $600 regrout for you now and the full room in four years than sell you a job you did not need.

Get a price

Get a written retile plan with your start and finish dates on it

Send your details and we will book a free on-site measure, usually within a week, then email an itemised fixed quote with the day by day schedule attached within 1 business day of that visit.

Questions people ask before the crew arrives.

How many days will my bathroom actually be out of action?

Plan on the room being unusable for the full run of the job, which for a standard 6 to 8 square metre Wagga bathroom is 9 to 14 working days, or 2 to 3 calendar weeks once weekends and a screen delivery are counted. The toilet usually goes out on day one and comes back at fit-off near the end. If it is your only bathroom, tell us at the quote stage and we can often keep the toilet connected until the day the floor screed goes down, which buys you about half the job.

What are the noisiest and dustiest days?

Day one is the worst by a wide margin. Stripping old wall tiles off render or removing a bedded sand and cement floor means jackhammers and grinders, and it runs roughly 7am to 3pm. Cutting day during tiling is the second noisiest, though a wet saw set up outside on a drop sheet is far quieter than a dry grinder. Grouting, silicone and fit-off days are close to silent. We tape plastic over the doorway and run a dust extractor, but expect fine grit through the nearest hallway on day one no matter what anybody promises.

What do I need to move before the crew arrives?

Empty the vanity, the shaving cabinet and the linen press if it shares the wall, take everything off the walls in the adjoining rooms because vibration walks pictures off hooks, and clear a path from the front door or the side gate to the bathroom that is at least 800mm wide. Move cars off the driveway by 7am on strip-out day and on tile delivery day, since a pallet of porcelain weighs well over a tonne and cannot be carried far. Everything else we handle.

Will the weather in Wagga delay my bathroom?

Rarely for the tiling itself, because it is indoors, but genuinely for the cures. Waterproofing membranes are rated for application between about 5 and 35 degrees, and on a Wagga winter morning an unheated bathroom can sit at 4 or 5 degrees until mid-morning, which pushes the first membrane coat back a few hours and can add a day to the cure. In a February heatwave the opposite problem appears: adhesive skins over in minutes, so we start earlier and work in smaller sections. Outdoor and alfresco tiling is far more weather exposed than a bathroom.

Where does the old bathroom end up?

A standard strip-out fills roughly 2 to 3 cubic metres, which is a 3 cubic metre skip or two trailer loads. Broken tile, screed and plasterboard go to the Gregadoo Waste Management Centre as mixed construction waste, and the cast iron bath, copper pipe and any steel framing are separated for scrap. Disposal is part of the $500 to $1,200 strip-out line on our quotes, not a surprise extra. If the house predates about 1990 and the sheeting behind the tiles may contain asbestos, that changes the process completely and gets priced separately.

Can I stay in the house while the work is on?

Almost everyone does, and it is fine for the great majority of the job. The two things worth planning around are day one, when the noise makes a work call impossible anywhere in the house, and the two or three days of membrane cure, when the room must stay closed and undisturbed. Dogs and cats need to be shut in a room at the other end of the house or boarded for strip-out day, because the front and back doors are open all day and the floor is covered in sharp tile shards.

Ready to lock in a start date?

Free on-site measure, itemised fixed quote, and a written schedule so you know which days are the loud ones.

Get a written quote Bathroom tiling