Oakham Private Office, Grey Lynn

A new build tells you what it is on the drawings. A renovation tells you as you open it up.

That is the difference that shaped this job, a private office refit at 38 Monmouth Street in Grey Lynn, delivered for Oakham.

Most of the building was insulated in Pink Batts. R3.6 to the ceiling, R2.8 Ultra Wall through the timber-framed walls, R1.3 Ultra Interior Wall against the masonry, an R1.8 acoustic layer where the walls needed to hold sound, and the subfloor built up in two layers, R3.6 then R1.2, worked from below between the joists across the whole floor.

On an existing building the scope moves. You expose a subfloor and the reality is not the drawing. A ceiling cavity has services in it that nobody recorded. Framing is not where you expected. None of that is anybody's fault, it is the nature of working on a building that already exists, but it does mean the price you quoted on day one is a starting position rather than a conclusion unless you engage early.

So we engaged early, with the client and the architect, mapping where the cost points sat against the end product they wanted. Not designing anything, that is not our role. Just being honest, before the money was committed, about which parts of the scope were the expensive ones and where the finish they wanted would drive cost.

A note on the acoustic ceiling. Late in the job the specified carpark panel was swapped, at the client's direction, for Mammoth Panel Absorber. The Panel Absorber is a background acoustic product, and it is at its best read as a dark backdrop with the ceiling services and fixtures mounted in front of it. It absorbs the sound it is designed to absorb and lets the black recede behind everything hung off the soffit. That is its intended use, and used that way it does the job well. It is not marketed as a decorative feature panel, and we installed it for exactly what it is: an exposed black acoustic backdrop, to the client's brief.

Commercial office fitouts and renovations across central Auckland are core work for us, and being clear about what a product is and is not is part of how we quote them.