Every renovation takes longer than the homeowner expects and roughly as long as the builder privately expects. The gap is not usually caused by laziness or bad luck. It is caused by a program that was never realistic, because it counted only the construction and ignored the design, the approvals, the procurement lead times and the gaps between trades.
This guide sets out how long each stage of an Adelaide renovation actually takes, where the time goes, and what you can and cannot compress.
A related guide to consider while planning this work is How Long Does a Kitchen Renovation Take?.
The Headline Numbers
End to end, from first sketch to moving back in:
- Bathroom renovation: 2 to 4 months total, of which 4 to 6 weeks is on site
- Kitchen renovation: 3 to 5 months total, of which 6 to 10 weeks is on site
- Full internal renovation, no structural change: 6 to 10 months total, 3 to 5 months on site
- Renovation plus ground-floor extension: 12 to 18 months total, 5 to 8 months on site
- Second-storey addition: 16 to 24 months total, 8 to 14 months on site
- Whole-house heritage renovation: 18 to 30 months total
The construction period is usually less than half the total. This surprises people, and it is the single most useful thing to internalise before you start.
Stage One: Design and Documentation
How long it takes
- Simple bathroom or kitchen: 2 to 4 weeks
- Internal renovation: 4 to 8 weeks
- Extension: 8 to 16 weeks
- Architect-designed or heritage project: 12 to 26 weeks
What is happening
- Site measure and existing conditions documentation
- Concept design and revisions — usually two to four rounds
- Design development, resolving how it will actually be built
- Consultant coordination — engineer, energy assessor, surveyor, heritage adviser
- Documentation for approval and for construction
What controls the duration
Almost entirely you. The most common cause of design running long is the client taking three weeks to review each iteration and then changing direction at the fourth. Set a decision rhythm at the start — drawings out Friday, comments back Wednesday — and hold it. This is the cheapest time you will ever save.
Stage Two: Pre-Lodgement Investigations
These run largely in parallel with late design, over 3 to 5 weeks:
- Soil test and site classification: 1 to 2 weeks. On Adelaide’s reactive clay this is not optional and it must precede footing design.
- Detail survey: 1 to 2 weeks
- Structural engineering: 2 to 4 weeks after design is settled
- Energy rating assessment: 1 to 2 weeks
- Heritage advice where applicable: 2 to 4 weeks
- Bushfire assessment in the Hills: 1 to 3 weeks
Stage Three: Approvals
Planning consent
The statutory timeframes in South Australia depend on the assessment pathway:
- Deemed-to-satisfy: 5 business days. If the design meets every applicable criterion, consent must be granted.
- Performance assessed, no notification or referral: 20 business days
- Performance assessed with a referral: 50 business days
- Performance assessed with public notification: 70 business days, including 15 for the notification period and 15 for the applicant to respond to representations
- Restricted development: 95 business days
The gap between 5 days and 70 days is the strongest argument for designing to deemed-to-satisfy. Ask your designer what it would take to get there and what you would give up.
Building consent
- Private accredited professional: typically 2 to 6 weeks
- Council: generally longer, depending on the council’s workload
Building consent can often be pursued in parallel with, or immediately following, planning consent. Development Approval issues once both are granted.
What causes approval delays
- Incomplete applications. The statutory clock effectively pauses while the authority waits for you. This is the overwhelming cause of long approvals in South Australia.
- Missing one deemed-to-satisfy criterion by a small margin, which shifts the pathway entirely
- Referrals to other agencies
- Representations from neighbours during a notification period
- Heritage assessment on a listed property or in a Historic Area Overlay
The full framework is in do you need council approval to renovate in Adelaide.
Stage Four: Tender and Contract
- Preparing the tender package: 1 to 2 weeks
- Builders pricing: 3 to 5 weeks. Good builders are busy and will not price a job in a week.
- Comparing and clarifying quotes: 1 to 2 weeks
- Contract negotiation and signing: 1 to 2 weeks
- Waiting for the builder’s start date: 4 to 16 weeks for anyone worth having
That last line is the one people forget. A good Adelaide renovation builder is booked two to four months ahead. Building this into the program rather than discovering it is the difference between a plan and a fantasy.
For more detail on this part of the project, see How to Find and Vet a Renovation Builder in Adelaide.
Stage Five: Construction
A ground-floor extension plus internal renovation, week by week
- Weeks 1–2: Site establishment, fencing, protection, demolition, waste removal, asbestos removal and clearance if required
- Weeks 3–5: Excavation and footings. On an H2 or E class site this means bored piers, reinforcement, engineer’s inspection and pour — allow the full three weeks.
- Weeks 6–8: Slab or subfloor, and structural steel where required
- Weeks 9–13: Framing, roof structure, roof covering. The house is weathertight at the end of this block, which is the first real milestone.
- Weeks 14–17: Windows and external doors, external cladding or brickwork
- Weeks 18–21: Services rough-in — plumbing, electrical, data, heating and cooling. All trades must finish before anything closes up.
- Weeks 22–24: Insulation, then internal lining and plaster set
- Weeks 25–27: Waterproofing to wet areas, with proper curing time between coats, then flood test
- Weeks 28–32: Tiling, internal carpentry, doors, skirtings and architraves
- Weeks 33–35: Joinery installation, then stone template, fabrication and install
- Weeks 36–38: Painting
- Weeks 39–41: Flooring, plumbing and electrical fit-off, appliance installation, shower screens and mirrors
- Weeks 42–44: External works, landscaping, final inspections, defects and handover
That is roughly eleven months on site for a substantial project. Compressing it below eight is difficult without either a smaller scope or a builder running an unusually well-resourced site.
Where the Time Actually Disappears
Procurement lead times
These run in parallel if you order early and become critical-path delays if you do not.
- Windows and external doors: 6 to 14 weeks. The single most common cause of a stalled Adelaide build.
- Kitchen and joinery: 4 to 10 weeks from final sign-off
- Stone benchtops: 10 to 15 business days from template to install, and the template cannot happen until the cabinets are in
- Imported tiles: 6 to 12 weeks
- Imported appliances and tapware: 4 to 16 weeks, sometimes far longer
- Structural steel: 3 to 6 weeks
- Roof tiles or specific Colorbond profiles: 3 to 8 weeks
The gaps between trades
A renovation is a relay, and the baton is dropped between runners. Each handover carries a few days of slack even on a well-run site, and there are twenty of them. Trades are booked weeks ahead and cannot simply arrive a day early because the previous trade finished early.
Curing and drying
- Concrete needs time before loading
- Waterproofing membranes need to cure between coats and before tiling
- Plaster and render need to dry before painting
- Salt damp remediation in a stone wall requires six to twelve months of drying. This is unique to Adelaide’s housing stock and it has to be planned around, not waited out.
Client decisions
Every unmade decision becomes a stop. Tile selection, tapware, paint colours, door hardware, power point positions, the exact height of the pendant over the island. Make every decision before construction starts and document it. Decisions made on site cost more and take longer.
Variations
Each variation costs time to price, time to approve and time to build, and it usually breaks the trade sequence. A job with fifteen variations runs measurably longer than the same job with two.
Adelaide-Specific Delays
- Salt damp discovered on demolition. Very common in pre-1930 stone houses. Adds two to four weeks of remediation work plus the drying period.
- Asbestos. Near-universal in 1945–1987 stock. Adds three to seven days including licensed removal and clearance certification.
- Footing design changes after the soil test. If the site classifies higher than assumed, the footing system is redesigned and re-priced. Two to four weeks.
- Heritage assessment in a Historic Area Overlay, which lengthens the planning stage considerably.
- Summer heat. Concrete pours are restricted on extreme days, roofing and external work stops in the high 30s and 40s for safety, and Adelaide gets a run of those days most Januaries and Februaries.
- Winter rain. Excavation, footings, roofing and external work all lose days through June to August.
- The Christmas shutdown. The industry closes from around mid-December to mid-late January. A job that would have finished in early December finishes in February.
What You Can Compress
- Make every decision before construction starts. The single largest lever you control.
- Order long-lead items early — windows, joinery, imported fixtures — even before site works begin
- Design to deemed-to-satisfy and save up to 65 business days at the planning stage
- Use a private accredited professional for building consent
- Lodge a complete application. Incomplete lodgements are the main source of approval delay.
- Move out for the intensive phase. Trades work faster in an empty house and can run multiple areas simultaneously — this alone commonly saves 15 to 25 per cent of the construction period.
- Do not change scope mid-build.
- Choose materials that are in stock rather than the ones with a twelve-week lead time.
What You Cannot Compress
- Statutory assessment periods
- Concrete curing, membrane curing and paint drying
- Manufacturing lead times, once the order is placed
- Trade availability in a market where good builders are booked months out
- The salt damp drying period
- The physical sequence of construction — you cannot tile before waterproofing or fit off before rough-in
Living Through It
- Add 20 per cent to whatever program you are given and plan your life around that number rather than the contract date
- If you are staying in the house, set up a functional temporary kitchen and confirm which bathroom stays operational and for how long
- Arrange a rental with a flexible end date rather than a fixed one, if you are moving out
- Do not book the housewarming, the sale campaign or a family Christmas against the contract completion date
- Expect the last 10 per cent to take 25 per cent of the time — the fit-off, defects and small items phase always runs long
A realistic program is not pessimism. It is the difference between a project that feels controlled and one that feels like it is happening to you. Build the program properly at the start, and most of the frustration disappears.
For the cost side of the same planning exercise, see the Adelaide renovation cost guide, and for choosing the builder who will actually hold to a program, how to find and vet a renovation builder in Adelaide.
Building a Program You Can Actually Hold To
A program is only useful if it is honest, and most renovation programs fail because they were written as a best case and then treated as a commitment. A workable Adelaide program is built the other way round.
How to construct it
- Start from the finish date you need and work backwards, not from today forwards. This immediately reveals whether the project is feasible in the time available.
- Identify the critical path. On most Adelaide renovations it runs through soil test, footing design, planning consent, building consent, builder availability, footings, frame, roof, services rough-in, waterproofing, tiling, joinery, stone, fit-off. Anything not on that chain can slip without affecting the end date; anything on it cannot.
- Put the long-lead items on the program as orders, not deliveries. Windows ordered in week 4 arrive in week 14. If the order slips a fortnight, so does the roof.
- Add float in blocks, not per task. Two weeks after approvals and three weeks before the finish date is more useful than three days sprinkled across forty activities, because sprinkled float gets consumed invisibly.
- Mark the immovable dates. The Christmas shutdown, a lease expiry, a school term, a family event. Anything the program must clear.
- Review it fortnightly with the builder, against the actual progress, not the intended progress.
The early warning signs that a program is slipping
- A trade did not start on the day they were booked and no replacement date has been given
- A variation has been discussed but not yet priced
- A long-lead item has not been ordered by the week the program says it should have been
- The site is quiet for more than three consecutive working days without an explanation
- A selection is still open two weeks before the trade needs it
- Approval conditions have been received but not yet actioned
Each of these is recoverable if it is caught in the week it happens and expensive if it is caught a month later. The homeowner who walks the site weekly and asks one question — what is the next thing that needs to happen, and is it booked — recovers most of them.
What a Realistic Program Looks Like Against the Contract Date
Contract completion dates on Adelaide renovations are met roughly as often as they are missed, and the misses cluster in predictable places. A useful working assumption is that the contract date is the earliest plausible outcome rather than the expected one.
- Add 15 to 20 per cent to any construction program on a house older than 1960, because the discovery risk is real
- Add four to six weeks if the project spans mid-December to late January
- Add two to four weeks if the site classifies as H2 or E and the footing design is not yet finalised
- Add the full salt damp drying period — six to twelve months — if remediation is required and internal finishes depend on it. This is planned around rather than waited out; the addition can be built while the retained walls dry.
- Plan your own life against the adjusted date, not the contract date. Do not book the sale campaign, the housewarming or the family Christmas against a date the builder has every incentive to state optimistically.
None of this is a criticism of builders. A construction program is a forecast made under uncertainty about a hundred-year-old building on ground that moves seasonally. Treating it as a forecast rather than a promise removes most of the frustration from the process.