Managing kitchen and bathroom builds

Builders’ Business is a column by builders for builders. Its objective is to provide a forum, particularly for small business operators, in which to share knowledge, experience, tips and ideas

Q. How comfortable are you managing work on kitchens and bathrooms?

 

Firm: Stonewood Homes Nelson & Blenheim 

Interviewee: Brent Stewart 

Role: Director 

Location: Nelson

Staff: 12

We do the bathroom and kitchen for every home we build, so we’re very comfortable with them. We’re helped by our great industry relationships, as we’ve partnered with award-winning joiners Bays Joinery to really help those areas pop and come to life. 

On the supply side, we use PlaceMakers for our bathrooms and our local rep, Colleen, is very valuable to us. We’ll often take our clients around the PlaceMakers showroom to help them choose the front of wall fixtures and fittings, and Colleen is great at helping clients make the right choices. 

We also have our own show home, which we can use to give clients a feel for what they might want their kitchen and bathroom to look like.

On the design side, we’ve seen a few trends emerge over the past 18 months, particularly the mix and match approach to styling. I find PlaceMakers offers products that keep up with popular trends pretty well. For a bulk supply company, PlaceMakers is top of its game in that regard.

 

Firm: Shore Build 

Interviewee: Ash Hare 

Role: Director 

Location: Auckland

Staff: 20

We’re always doing bathrooms and kitchens, whether it’s in new build homes, which is about 75% of the work we do, or renovations, which make up the rest. Most of our work is referred to us via architects and because of that, the projects we work on already have the products specified, so we just get told what to do!  

Saying that, there are some pretty cool new products that we get to work with. I really like the new profiled MDF panels, and I think the new melamine wood grain products have come a long way from what they used to be. In my opinion, it’s difficult to tell what is oak veneer or melamine because the new products are so good. 

The beauty of it is that they look smart and the price point is affordable. In my experience, designers are coming around to melamine as well. For example, we’re working on a high-end house and the architect, who is a purist and would never have specified melamine back in the day, specified it for the bathroom. 

 

Firm: Fixation Builders 

Interviewee: Darren Robinson 

Role: Director 

Location: Queenstown

Staff: 19

We do full management builds, so we’re very comfortable managing bathrooms and kitchens. We’re able to call on some excellent, preferred subcontractors and suppliers and that makes things easier for us, because we know exactly what we’re going to get from the people we work with.

We’re also comfortable taking on kitchen and bathroom renovation jobs, which probably make up 50% of the work we do in that space. 

We don’t have our own design team, and we prefer to work with architects, draughtspeople or interior designers – depending on the needs of the client. For interiors, we recommend that clients engage the services of an interior designer for fittings, tiles, cabinetry design, as the end result is really worth it.  

On the supply side, we work closely suppliers like Mico and we’ve sent lots of clients into PlaceMakers showrooms to choose their preferred fixtures and fittings. I find they have a good range of designs and products, so the relationship works well.