Blair Ave by Gareth Davis Builders

Blair Ave

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Over 100 years old and well past her prime, many would have thought this old lady was destined for a date with a bulldozer. But not our clients – they were fully committed to restoring her to her former glory and entrusted us with the challenge. It was a big task to bring her back up to scratch and prepare her for her new life as a commercial office building for a well-known, local real estate agency. Rotten framing, rotten cladding and rotten flooring meant that the place needed to be stripped externally and gutted internally. The building was fully re-piled, and the interior layout was redesigned to accommodate the new office layout. Being a commercial premise, the building needed to meet current fire standards which included fire wall on two exterior walls. We fully refit the place with new aluminum joinery except for the timber bay window at the front, as it was important to our client that some original character remained. This, along with the restored fret work on the front of the building give a definite nod to her past life. Old weather boards were replaced with new timber boards, as well as Hardies Villa board in some places. This was a big job with plenty of head scratching involved, but renovation projects don’t get more rewarding than this one. High risk = high reward was certainly the case here, for both us as the builder and our client!

Over 100 years old and well past her prime, many would have thought this old lady was destined for a date with a bulldozer. Read more

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renovation commercial office

Project team

Gareth Davis Builders

Comprehensive restoration of a century-old building transformed into a modern commercial office, preserving historical character while meeting contemporary fire safety standards.

Rotten framing, rotten cladding and rotten flooring meant that the place needed to be stripped externally and gutted internally. The building was fully re-piled, and the interior layout was redesigned to accommodate the new office layout. Being a commercial premise, the building needed to meet current fire standards which included fire wall on two exterior walls.

We fully refit the place with new aluminum joinery except for the timber bay window at the front, as it was important to our client that some original character remained. This, along with the restored fret work on the front of the building give a definite nod to her past life. Old weather boards were replaced with new timber boards, as well as Hardies Villa board in some places.

This was a big job with plenty of head scratching involved, but renovation projects don’t get more rewarding than this one. High risk = high reward was certainly the case here, for both us as the builder and our client!

1870h 21m

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Professional Reviews

1 / 4

“In 2013, following the Christchurch earthquakes, Karen and I engaged Gareth Davis Builders to rebuild a home on the site of our severely damaged former house. The new home was architecturally designed to be built of timber weather boards to both replicate the home we lost and reflect the homes in the street. The design required a significant amount of detail finish particularly in the exterior weatherboard cladding. Gareth’s skills and the skills of his preferred sub trades have given us a superb executive home while retaining the classical character lines on the exterior to mimic the surrounding homes. A tribute to his building skills is really summed up from the comments of two other builder acquaintances who have seen the finished product and both have commented on how well the finish work has been carried out. That is a tribute from other builders about a peer…there is no better recommendation. In 2016, Karen and I decided to build our holiday home and it was a no contest decision to contact Gareth once again to build this house for us. The house has already attracted huge attention and has been entered in the Architectural Designer’s Awards both for the design and build quality. We can’t recommend Gareth and his team highly enough. If you are looking for a competent, quality building company who can handle the construction of your new home along with the changes you know you will make along the way, quietly, competently and with the minimum of fuss, Gareth is the man to call.”

Karen and Jim – Strowan, Christchurch