Bathroom Refresh in Chatswood: A Smaller Vanity Solved What a New Bathroom Wouldn't Have

The situation

A client in a Chatswood unit got in touch feeling like the small bathroom just didn’t work. It wasn’t dated tiles or a tired colour scheme; it was the layout. An oversized built-in vanity, with a shaving cabinet and a washing machine built in, dominated the room. Opposite it, the toilet had almost no legroom, uncomfortably tight every time it was used. The shower felt cramped too.

His instinct was that the bathroom needed a full renovation to fix it. We came to have a look before agreeing to anything.

What we found

The tiles were sound. The waterproofing showed no signs of trouble. The toilet, shower and bath were all already in workable positions. The actual problem wasn’t the bathroom, it was one piece of furniture in it: a built-in vanity sized for a much bigger room, crammed with a shaving cabinet and a washing machine, that had eaten most of the usable floor space.

With the tiling and waterproofing both fine, there was no structural reason to strip the room back. The fix was sizing, not rebuilding.

The fix

We recommended a smaller vanity, sized to the room rather than to fit in everything the old one tried to hold, and re-tiled the single wall behind it to finish it cleanly. Alongside that, we fitted a new shower screen to open up the shower space itself.

Nick and his team did a great job and also gave me good advice along the way in my recent bathroom renovations.

That combination, a right-sized vanity and a better shower screen, gave the toilet its legroom back and made the shower feel bigger, without touching the tiles anywhere else in the room or opening up the waterproofing at all.

The outcome

The bathroom went from feeling cramped and awkward to comfortable, in a fraction of the time and cost a full renovation would have taken. The client was pleased enough to thank us multiple times on the day and left a five-star review afterwards.

It’s a common pattern: what looks like a case for a full renovation often comes down to one or two fixtures working against the room, not the room itself. You just don’t know what’s possible until you have it looked at.

Bathroom feeling small or awkward, even though the tiles are fine? Our minor bathroom renovations team assesses whether a refresh, like a right-sized vanity or a better shower screen, can solve it before recommending anything bigger. See our guide on new bathroom or remodel: how to decide, or the full picture at bathroom renovations.