Quick answer
Get the electrician in before the walls close, not after. Electrical work in a renovation happens in two visits, rough-in and fit-off, and rough-in has to be finished before the plasterer starts. The decisions that are expensive to change later are where the power points go, what the lighting is doing in each room, and whether the existing switchboard has the capacity for what you are adding. Most of the cost blowouts we see on renovations are not the electrical work itself, they are the electrical work having to be redone because it was booked too late.
Most people call an electrician about a renovation at roughly the point where it is becoming awkward. The walls are up, the plasterer is booked, and someone has realised there is no power where the island bench is going.
It is a fixable problem, and it is much cheaper to not have it. Here is how the electrical side of a renovation actually sequences, so you can get the trades in the right order rather than the order they became urgent.
Electrical Work Happens Twice, Not Once
This is the single most useful thing to understand about renovation electrical work, and it catches almost everyone the first time.
Rough-in. With the walls open, the cables get run. Every circuit, every light, every power point, every switch, every data run, all pulled through the studs and ceiling and left coiled where the fittings will go. Nothing looks finished at the end of this. It is the part that has to happen before the plasterer, because once the walls are sheeted it is a different and more expensive job.
Fit-off. After the plaster, painting and often the kitchen, we come back and fit everything off. Power points, switches, light fittings, the switchboard work, then testing and a Certificate of Compliance.
Two visits, with weeks of other trades in between. If a builder is running the job they will usually sequence this correctly. If you are managing it yourself, this is the bit to put in the diary early.
The Order That Matters
Demolition, then framing and any structural work, then rough-in for electrical and plumbing, then insulation, then plaster, then painting, then kitchen and joinery, then electrical fit-off, then flooring and the last bits.
The two places it goes wrong are plaster going up before rough-in is signed off, and the kitchen going in before anyone has confirmed where the appliance circuits land. Both are recoverable. Both cost more than getting the call right by a week.
What to Decide Before Rough-In
Once the cables are in the walls, moving them means opening the walls. These are the decisions worth sitting down with properly rather than making on the day.
Where the power points go, and how many. Think about what plugs in and where you actually stand. Benches, bedsides, desks, the TV wall, the spot the vacuum lives. More points at rough-in is cheap. More points later is patching and painting.
What the lighting is doing in each room. Not just how many downlights. Which lights come on together, what gets dimmed, whether the kitchen needs the bench lit separately from the room, whether anything should be on a sensor. Switching decisions are wiring decisions.
Appliance circuits. Ovens, cooktops, air conditioning and anything with a motor often want their own circuit. This is worth confirming against the actual appliance specs rather than guessing, because a cooktop upgrade can change the circuit.
Data and anything hard-wired. Cabling for wi-fi access points, a TV wall or an outdoor camera is almost free while the walls are open and genuinely annoying afterwards.
Outdoor and wet areas. Alfresco points, outdoor lighting, a future EV charger run to the garage. Even if you are not doing the charger now, putting the cable in while the wall is open is the cheapest it will ever be.
The Switchboard Decides More Than People Expect
A renovation adds load. New circuits for a kitchen, air conditioning, more lighting, sometimes a charger later. The question is whether the existing board has room and whether it is compliant to work from.
On the Northern Beaches a lot of the housing stock still has boards with rewirable ceramic fuses and no safety switches. If that is what you are starting from, the board is going to need upgrading as part of the job, and it is better to know that at quoting stage than to find it when the new circuits have nowhere to go. There is more detail on that in our guide to the signs a switchboard needs upgrading, and the switchboard upgrade page covers what the work involves.
The related question is the wiring you are keeping. If half the house is being renovated and the other half still has old rubber or cotton-braided wiring in the ceiling, you have a choice to make about whether to do it now while there is access and mess anyway. Our guide on rewiring goes through how to think about partial versus full.
Kitchens and Bathrooms Are the Two That Catch People
Kitchens are the densest electrical room in the house. Appliance circuits, bench points, under-cabinet and in-cabinet lighting, rangehood, sometimes a separate circuit for an induction cooktop. The joinery drawings and the electrical plan need to agree with each other before rough-in, because a 50mm change in a cabinet run can put a power point behind a fixed panel.
Bathrooms are about zones. There are rules governing what can be installed how close to a bath or shower, covering fittings, heating, exhaust and shaver points. It is not complicated, but it does mean the heated towel rail or the three-in-one cannot simply go where it looks best.
The Part That Is Not Ours
Worth saying plainly, because it affects renovation timelines. If a renovation is big enough that the supply to the property needs upgrading, that connection work is Level 2 work and has to be done by an accredited service provider. That covers the service mains, the point of attachment and the metering.
We do not do Level 2 work, so we will tell you if a job needs it rather than discovering it late. Everything on your side of the meter is ours. The connection itself is a separate accredited trade, and it has its own lead time with the network, which is exactly the kind of thing you want to know at the start of a renovation rather than the middle.
What We Usually Find in Older Beaches Homes
Renovating anything built before the 1980s around here tends to turn up the same handful of things once the walls are open.
Circuits that have been extended two or three times by different people. Junctions in ceiling spaces that were never meant to be permanent. Earthing that met the standard of its day. Switchboards on an outside wall that have spent forty years in salt air. And almost always, fewer circuits than a modern house needs, because the house was built for a fraction of the load.
None of it is unusual and none of it is a disaster. It is the reason an on-site look beats a phone estimate on renovation work, because the variables are behind the plaster.
How We Quote Renovation Work
We come out and look, go through the plans if there are plans, and talk through the decisions above room by room. Then you get a fixed-price quote before anything starts, with what is included and what is not written down.
If the job needs the switchboard done, that is in the quote rather than a surprise later. If it needs Level 2 supply work, we say so and you know it is a separate trade. If the scope changes because you decide to add something mid-job, which happens on most renovations, we price the change before doing it.
Licensed and insured, NSW Lic 473086C, and every job finishes with a Certificate of Compliance for the work done.
The Short Version
Ring the electrician when the plans are close to final, not when the plasterer is booked. Decide the power point and lighting layout before rough-in. Get the switchboard assessed early, because it decides what else is possible. And if the supply needs upgrading, find out in week one.
If you are planning a renovation anywhere from Manly through to the northern end of the beaches, ring and we will come and walk through it with you.