Renovating an Inner West apartment or unit: what to know before you start

The building decides most of an apartment renovation before you choose a tile. Two blocks on the same Marrickville street can be forty years apart, and which one you own sets the access, the paperwork, the surprises behind the walls and a good part of the price. Settle that first and the rest is a normal renovation.

I run Fine Touch Group, a family building business in Strathfield that has renovated apartments across Sydney since 1994. What follows is what we tell owners before they spend money on design.

Start with the building

Flats and apartments are 42.4 percent of homes in the Inner West Council area, against 21.7 percent across NSW on the 2021 census. Most of the older ones are red-brick walk-ups of two or three floors with no lift, and the council’s own housing strategy names Summer Hill, Leichhardt, Petersham and Dulwich Hill as where they cluster. Add the pre-war Art Deco blocks, the warehouse conversions in Camperdown, Balmain and Rozelle, and the newer towers along Parramatta Road and the Sydenham to Bankstown line.

Each type changes the job. In a walk-up, every box of tiles and every bag of rubble moves by hand up the stairs, and a stone benchtop that cannot make the turn in the stair gets set out in pieces that can. Behind the walls of a pre-1980s block the wiring and plumbing are usually original, and NSW Government advice is to have wiring of that age inspected, so we carry a 15 to 20 percent contingency on those blocks and put it in the quote up front. In a newer building the constraint moves to the calendar: lift bookings, a loading dock, and a limit on how large a piece of stone the lift will take.

What it costs in 2026

These are our starting prices, updated in August 2026. Every job is quoted as a fixed price after we have seen the apartment and the building.

Bathroom: from $28,000 with standard finishes, from $39,000 mid-range, from $53,000 premium.

Kitchen: from $31,000, $39,000 and $53,000 on the same scale.

Whole apartment with standard finishes: from $85,000 for a studio or one-bedroom, $110,000 for a two-bedroom and $140,000 for a three-bedroom. Mid-range finishes take a two-bedroom to $140,000 and up.

Layout moves the number more than the tiles do. Keeping the toilet, shower and kitchen sink where they are is the single biggest saving, because moving them means new in-wall services and new waterproofing. Cabinetry is 30 to 40 percent of a kitchen, so the joinery decision matters more than the appliances. Labour and tiling are 40 to 50 percent of a bathroom, which is why a quote well under these figures usually means the old waterproofing membrane is being tiled over instead of replaced. That saves a few thousand dollars now and shows up as a leak into the flat below a few years later, with the repair on you.

What your strata will ask

Under the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 every renovation falls into one of three tiers, and the tier sets the paperwork and the wait.

Cosmetic work (section 109) needs no approval: painting, carpet, a built-in wardrobe, new light fittings without rewiring.

Minor renovations (section 110) need an ordinary resolution at a general meeting, or a decision by the strata committee where your scheme has delegated that power to it. A new kitchen in the same footprint, connecting to the same water and waste points, usually sits here, and so does hard flooring in most schemes. Committees typically review these in two to four weeks.

Major work (section 108) is anything touching waterproofing, structure or common property services: bathrooms, laundries, removing a wall, moving a kitchen sink across the room. It needs a special resolution and, in practice, a by-law drafted by a strata lawyer and registered with NSW Land Registry Services. Drafting commonly runs $700 to $1,500 plus GST, registration is $182.73 on the 2026-27 fee schedule, and the whole process realistically takes six to twelve weeks.

The trap is a kitchen that starts as minor and becomes major because the sink moved. Confirm the tier in writing before you pay for design. Then ask your strata manager for the meeting calendar, because a special resolution needs a general meeting, and if the next one is five months away the approval can take longer than the build. Committees read the method statement most closely: noise hours, stair and lift protection, deliveries and waste. It tells them whether their building will be looked after.

Can you live in it with the kids?

For a kitchen, usually yes. Set up a microwave, kettle and benchtop hob in another room before demolition starts and wash up in the laundry sink. For your only bathroom, usually no. You have no shower or toilet for roughly two to three weeks during the strip-out and waterproofing, and a portable toilet is not an option in a block. Owners with one bathroom mostly stay with family for that stretch or move out for the job.

Dust is the other reason to leave. Cutting tiles and concrete releases silica dust, which NSW work health and safety rules have treated as a notifiable hazard since September 2024. A good crew seals the work zone, runs extraction out a window and cleans down daily. If anyone at home has asthma or is very young, be elsewhere on demolition days regardless.

Building rules stretch the calendar. Most apartment by-laws cut work hours to something like 8am to 4pm on weekdays with no weekends, which removes the catch-up days a house renovation relies on. Nor can your water be switched off on your own say-so: isolating the riser affects other units, so it is booked through the building manager with notice to your neighbours.

Tell the neighbours

A note under the doors on your floor with the dates, the daily hours, the loudest days and a phone number heads off most complaints to the committee. People living through someone else’s renovation mostly want to know when it ends and who to call.

How long it takes

On site, a bathroom is two to three weeks and a full apartment eight to sixteen weeks depending on size. The strata approval runs before that on its own clock, and custom joinery and stone carry four to eight week lead times. Lodge the strata application on day one and order the long-lead items while it is being decided, so the approval wait overlaps the preparation instead of stacking on top of the build.

Who owns the leak afterwards

While your bathroom is original, the waterproofing is common property and the owners corporation maintains it under section 106. Once you renovate under a by-law, responsibility for the new work moves to you and stays with the lot, so the next owner inherits it. That is the reason to insist on the floor and shower walls being tanked to AS 3740 by a licensed waterproofer, a flood test before tiling where the area is filled and left for 24 hours, and a waterproofing certificate at handover, kept with your strata records.

If you are planning an apartment renovation anywhere from Balmain to Dulwich Hill, Fine Touch Group quotes every job as a fixed price after an inspection and handles the strata application as part of the work.

Richard Bechara is the Managing Director of Fine Touch Group, a family-run Sydney builder based in Strathfield that specialises in apartment and strata renovations. He holds a Bachelor of Construction Management and has worked in the family business since he was 15. Fine Touch Group holds NSW contractor licence 151772C (class Builder) with a clean record on the NSW public register and has completed more than 1,000 apartment projects across Sydney since 1994.

This article is general information from a licensed builder and is not legal advice. Strata by-laws differ between buildings, and any building work should be quoted after an inspection of your apartment and your scheme’s by-laws.