When Mel and Justin Riley of DC Builders saw the plans for a luxurious home to be built north of Auckland, they knew straight away it was House of the Year material. “We had 3D concept drawings and the site was in an awesome spot,” he says.
“It was set at a very early stage we were going to enter it, and it was a constant reminder the quality of work needed to be right up there. Our team worked really hard to make it perfect.”
The home went on to win the company a bronze award in this year’s Auckland/Northland Registered Master Builders House of the Year Awards, The construction programme was under pressure from the start, since the clients’ 50th wedding anniversary was approaching, and they wanted to start their 51st year of marriage in their new home.
Mel says it was a complex and challenging project. “Being a two storey home with large open spaces on the upper floor, it required complex and technical structural steel installation.
“In order to create large open spaces, you need large steel beams and posts, and the structural steel component was a very challenging part of the build.
“The upper floor and the roof space were littered with structural steel. We created large open spaces to gain expansive views out to Orewa Beach.”
The home’s cladding is a combination of dark vertical cedar and white vertical and horizontal James Hardie fibre cement products, which were relatively new to the market.
“We weren’t the guinea pigs, but there weren’t a lot of places that had it installed that we could view. We had meetings on site with the James Hardie rep, and it turned out perfectly.”
DC Builders delivered the new home two weeks before schedule and within 2% of the budget, to highly appreciative and extremely happy clients.
“They have been absolute dream clients, they’ve appreciated everything we’ve done,” Mel says.
The relationship has continued, and DC Builders is now designing and building a new home in Stanmore Bay for the clients’ niece, and has recently brought their nephew into the DC Builders team as a builder.
DC Builders is a design and build company with Justin and Mel bringing a mix of skills to the projects they work on.
Justin is a qualified builder with more than 10 years’ experience on the tools and previous experience as a site manager for one of New Zealand’s largest commercial contractors, and Mel is a qualified builder and architectural designer.
“Our strength lies in looking at plans and picking up any issues well in advance before they become issues on site,” Mel says.
“On this project, there was a large number of things that had to be tweaked on site. Having that design experience as well as the build experience with the team always allows for a much smoother running project.”
Next year, DC Builders will be back at the Registered Master Builders House of the Year Awards with two renovations over $1 million, and reaching for gold.
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The award-winning Orewa Beach home features vertical cedar and white vertical and horizontal James Hardie fi bre cement
products.
