The glulam beam that arrived by truck to site on one of the first builds Warren Kelsey was working on for Box™ was 15 metres long and weighed a ton. Trouble was, the truck could go no further, and the beam had still to make it up one of Waiheke’s typically vertiginous gravel driveways. Box™ construction manager Nat Jakich was unfazed. She’ll be right. They’d get it up there on the roof-rack of his 2WD ute. “The car must have sunk six inches when we tied it on,” remembers Warren. “Then Nat just floored it, clipping trees with the front of the beam as he drove it up.” It’s one of the reasons Warren decided he was in the right place.
Doing what it takes to get the job done
That was10 years ago and Warren has since become our main man on the island, working on no less than 16 Box™ new-builds plus a couple on the ‘mainland’. In that time, the driveways haven’t got any gentler, but he has managed to nurture good relationships with Waiheke-based suppliers and sub trades such as plumbers and sparkies. He’s almost a local, except not quite.
Up before the larks to catch the 6am ferry
Weekdays, Warren is up before the larks to catch the 6am ferry from Half Moon Bay. “I’m not really an early-morning person,” he admits. “When I first started the job, I thought it might be too much of a mission.” But he’s made of tough stuff. Building in the blood. Missing out on a bit of shut eye won’t change that. Growing up in an 1868 villa in Howick, even as a nipper Warren helped his builder dad at weekends. He loved being outdoors and physical work and, when he left school at 14, took his first real job in a factory that made decorative internal panels. For $1/hour, he learned how to work with raw materials, shot-blasting and finishing the products in an intense hands-on process. He also learned to drive a fork-lift, hooning around the factory in the petrol-engine vehicle. “That would be a big no-no now – but this was the 70s,” he says.
A Jack of All Trades
A second job woodturning posts for waterbeds (all the rage back then) and mahogany legs for billiard tables gave him a great appreciation for the craft – experience that underpins his practice today. Labouring work followed for a company that built the southern side of the Mt Smart grandstand, pouring the concrete for the giant cantilevered masts that hold up the roof. From the eye-opening big commercial jobs, he switched focus completely – to small bach-y type dwellings when he joined his father and brother putting up kitsets around the North Island. “They were simple little 6 x 9 metre buildings with a pitched roof, weatherboards and windows,” he remembers. The Kelsey crew hit the ground running; they constructed the 54-square-metre baches in one week flat. Warren was still only 19.
Contracting to pay the 20 % mortgage
Always looking for the next challenge, in his early 20s he sold everything he owned to put together a deposit for his first house – a “shack” in Beachlands. He went contracting to pay the 20 per cent mortgage, teaming up with an old-school builder who taught him the ropes. “He was a real mentor. This was pre-internet times and the flashest thing we had was a fax machine.”
A relationship break-up sent him overseas where he landed up in Aberdeen, Scotland and met his first ‘brickies’. On his first day, he pitched up to work with his hammer and square. The snow lay thick on the ground, there was no power on site. They gave him a handsaw to get cutting. “That was a real education,” he says.
Those were heady days
Back in Auckland, Warren went on to start his own building business, marrying the girlfriend who once sent him packing and, like a machine, worked for developers, pretty much nonstop, one job after another. The father of six has decades of diverse experience, including a time as owner of the South Auckland franchise for HRV, a revolutionary heat-recovery ventilation system. Those were heady days, growing the business with his brother and doubling the turnover in the first year. After seven years, he sold up, bought another house in Half Moon Bay, sat back and thought, ‘what now?
Started at Box™ in 2015
Starting at Box™ in 2015, after he answered an ad posted the good old-fashioned way in his local rag, he really didn’t know how long he would last. But here we are. He has been with the company time enough to see several phases, as Box™ has adapted to dynamic market conditions. At first, materials were transported to the island from Auckland by barge – before that proved to prohibitive. Warren fondly recalls the post-and-beam period, a system he believes Box™ perfected. And remembers the two houses that used prefabricated construction methods, one that was made up of no less than seven modules. It was always somewhat nerve-wracking as the HIABs lowered those into place.
Although the design-and-build methods may have changed, what has remained constant is the wraparound support. If there are ever issues, they are resolved as a team. And, says Warren, the clients have always been really good sorts.
At his current Box™ project in Cowes Bay, that is no different. And neither is the access. Up a long, steep driveway – of course. It’s how Warren likes it: every day a new challenge, a chance to think on your feet. So what has being a builder for so many years given him personally? “A whole lot of tenacity,” he laughs.
