Trinity has a three-in-one religious connotation, but Trinity QT Construction recently enjoyed a six-in-one-night experience.
The high-end Queenstown builder picked up six awards for a 700 square metre build, overlooking Lake Hayes, at Registered Master Builders’ southern house of the year awards in Dunedin.
It won the new home over $4 million category award, Pink Batts craftsmanship award, Plumbing World bathroom excellence award, outdoor living excellence award, a gold award and the supreme house of the year over $1m award.
In its competition entry, Trinity says it delivered ‘‘a bespoke, eclectic and deeply different house’’.
‘‘There is nothing straightforward in this house, and that is deliberate.
‘‘It is luxuriously whimsical and a touch eccentric …’’
It was built as a holiday home for Brisbane-based, Zimbabwe-raised Mark Clark, who wanted a place to store his treasures, multiple entertainment areas and something technically advanced, hence he has solar panels covering almost all the roof.
Quirky touches include a rooftop whiskey bar with a mounted torpedo, accessed by a Harry Potter-style wrap-around stairway, an apparent floor-to-ceiling mirror in the powder room that’s a cleverly-concealed door, and a door entry to the whiskey bar staircase that’s clad in a stacked firewood veneer.
There’s also ostrich egg lighting, ante lope horn handles, giraffe skin chairs and reclaimed Arrow irrigation pipe used for a BBQ smoker and an entry gate.
Trinity director Roy van Leeuwen says ‘‘the house is so unique inside we were almost tempted not to enter it because we just thought it was a bit almost too far’’.
He pays huge credit to Mason & Wales’ Dunedin-based architect Francis Whitaker, ‘‘who knocked it out of the park with that design’’.
‘‘I think once every five years you get a special client and a particular build, and everything works.’’
Not that it was an easy build, due to Covid supply disruptions.
At one point they also halted work for seven months to wait for tripled-glazed windows to arrive from Germany, after their client changed his mind — ‘‘they were four times the price of a Kiwi option but that’s what he wanted’’.
Van Leeuwen pays particular tribute to their veteran craftsman Roy Tingay — ‘‘he’s just absolutely outstanding’’ — and his own 23-year-old son, Boyd, who was site foreman.
Queenstown Interiors and Formatt Bespoke Joinery Co. also played major roles, he adds.
