Bathroom and kitchen renovations in Auckland, built to an award-winning standard.

A bathroom or kitchen gets the same standard from us as a whole house. The room is smaller, but so is the margin for error, because every junction between tile, joinery and fitting sits in plain sight.

You can see it across our renovations. At Challinor in Mt Albert, a bungalow renovation completed in 2020, we built two tiled bathrooms and an open-plan kitchen that opens to a deck and saltwater pool. In Remuera, a new white kitchen anchors open-plan living that runs out through full-height sliders to a covered outdoor room. At Rawhitiroa in Kohimarama, all three bathrooms were rebuilt in premium finishes and the kitchen and dining enlarged, with steel beams taking the place of structural walls.

Some people come to us for a single bathroom or an ensuite. Others want the kitchen redone as part of a bigger renovation or an extension. The approach is the same either way.

In an older Auckland home, the finishes are the easy part. What decides the job is behind the linings: the framing, the drainage, the membrane under the tiles. That is why labour is typically 40 to 50 percent of a bathroom budget.

Kitchens are no different. Move the sink, or take out a wall to open the kitchen to the living, and you have changed the drainage and the structure, and usually the consent position as well. On the Grey Lynn villa, the kitchen came as part of a rear that was completely reworked.

Like-for-like bathroom work is generally exempt from building consent under Schedule 1 of the Building Act 2004: replacing or repositioning fixtures in the existing room, and new wall and floor finishes. Adding a bathroom, moving drainage, changing structure, or a new wet-area membrane or level-entry shower usually needs consent.

Exempt or not, the work still has to meet the Building Code, and sanitary plumbing has to be done by an authorised plumber, who issues a plumbing certificate. A project manager runs the day to day alongside Finn, and you are kept in the loop the whole way.

Indicative 2026 Auckland ranges put a mid-range full bathroom at about $25,000 to $40,000 and a mid-range kitchen at about $35,000 to $60,000 excluding GST. Treat these as a rough guide, not a quote. Layout changes, finishes and what turns up behind the linings move the number most, and in a pre-1940s home a contingency closer to 20 percent is sensible. Finn prices your room once he has seen it.

Our cost guides for bathrooms and kitchens go further into the premium ranges and what drives them.