Communication was excellent right from the start, the job went very smoothly, and everyone who stays in the flat says it's outstanding.
New build
ManlyStreet
Guest quarters above a new double garage
- Category
- New build
- Built for
- Grant and Gillian Cross
- Location
- Paraparaumu, Kāpiti Coast
07Paraparaumu
The brief
Grant and Gillian had an old garage on a coastal section and wanted more out of the footprint than it was giving them: secure covered parking that would keep their vehicles out of the salt, and proper guest accommodation for family and friends. The answer was to take the old garage off and put up a new double garage with a self-contained flat over it — a bedroom, a kitchenette, a full bathroom and washhouse, and a deck to sit out on.
Where we picked it up
The lower blockwork was already complete when we came on, and the building was architecturally designed by others — so this was not a job taken from bare ground. What we carried was the building work above that blockwork: framing the new structure, then everything through to the GIB going on, and the doors and trims after it. The specialist trades ran their own scopes alongside.
The stair, solved on site
The stair as drawn had not been set out accurately against what was actually there — the driveway on one side and an established tree on the other. Rather than build it and find out, the arrangement was measured up on site and reworked until a flight existed that landed properly, cleared the drive and still gave the guest quarters their own way in. That is the sort of thing that costs a day of thinking and saves a fortnight of undoing.
Working around the tree
The same tree complicated the rest of it. Driven piles, digger movement and plain access all had to be planned around it and around a narrow working strip down the side of the section, which meant the sequence mattered as much as the work did — get the order wrong and the machine that is needed is on the wrong side of something that cannot be moved.
Keeping it moving
Several contractors were on this build, and we ran the programme and the material ordering so each stage was ready for the next one. The result is a compact piece of work that does three jobs on a section that previously did one: parking, guest accommodation, and somewhere to sit outside above the lawn.
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FAQ
Questions
Before you enquire
Answers to the most common questions we get before a project begins. The full set — pricing, timelines, changes, consent and more — lives on the common questions page.
It depends on the scope of the work and the site — some work needs consent, some is exempt, and the thresholds change, so we'd rather look at your actual job than hand you a generic rule.
Where consent is needed, we handle the application and the council process as part of the job, while being straight about one thing: the consent legally belongs to the property owner, and the council's clock — 20 working days on a complete application — is the council's. We'll tell you honestly at the start what your project is likely to involve.
Duration depends on scope and, where it applies, consent — councils have a statutory 20-working-day clock on complete applications, and a request for more information stops that clock. We give a real timeframe when we quote, not a generalisation here.
On staying with it: we run one main project at a time. Once your job starts, it is the job — you see consistent progress, not weeks of empty site while the builder is somewhere else. Rachel, who named timeframes as her worry before her own project, describes being kept informed throughout and the process as transparent and upfront.
Topp Shelf is owner-led: Clinton prices the job and builds it, with his apprentice and a small set of regular trades he has worked with for years.
When a trade is on site — plumbing, electrical — Clinton remains the one responsible to you. You deal with the builder who carries the job from the first conversation to the last day on site.
We're a Kāpiti-based building company working across Horowhenua, the Kāpiti Coast, Porirua, the Hutt Valley and Wellington City.
How far we'll travel depends on the job — rural builds travel further than small repairs — and the callback settles it in one conversation.