Author: Superior Renovations

In January 2023 we moved Little Giant Interiors, our in-house cabinetry maker, into a larger factory. Manufacturing shifted from a 150m² unit in Henderson to a 700m² facility in Rosedale, on the North Shore, sitting alongside our parent company’s head office. It was a straightforward call about space and capacity, and it changed both how much cabinetry we can build and how tightly we can run the floor.

Why we moved

The Henderson site did its job, but it was small. By late 2022 we were building enough kitchens and cabinetry for our renovations that the space had become the limit, not the team and not the demand. A 150m² floor only holds so many machines and so much material before the work starts queuing. Rosedale gave us more than four times the floor area, and putting the factory next to head office meant the people running the group and the people making the cabinets were finally under one roof.

What the new factory runs

The extra room let us bring in machinery built for higher volume. Here’s what the Rosedale factory runs day to day:

• A Format-4 CNC machining centre (Profit H08) for cutting and drilling panels accurately and repeatably.
• A Homag edgebander that applies laser edge banding for a clean, hard-wearing finish on panel edges.
• A Micronair central vacuum and extraction system that pulls dust and offcuts away at the source, keeping the floor cleaner and safer.
• A larger assembly section where cabinets are put together and checked before they head out to site.

None of this is about chasing the newest badge on a machine. It’s about running a production floor that keeps up with the number of kitchens we design, instead of sending the overflow to an outside supplier.

What this means for you

More capacity means your cabinetry is less likely to sit in a queue behind someone else’s job. Because we make it ourselves, the timing of your kitchen is something we control rather than something we chase a supplier for. The larger assembly area and the extraction system also mean the work is put together and checked in a space set up for it, which shows in what turns up at your place. You can see the current range on the Little Giant Interiors website, and the kitchens on display at our Wairau Valley showroom come from this same factory.

Frequently asked questions

For years the cabinetry in our renovations was made by someone else. That’s normal in this trade, but it puts the part of a kitchen people touch every day, the doors, the drawers, the joinery, outside your own control. So in 2022 we changed it. Our parent company, Superior Construction Group, acquired an established Auckland cabinetry business operating since 2013, and from it we launched a new brand: Little Giant Interiors.

Why we brought cabinetry in-house

The reason was straightforward. When cabinetry is outsourced, you’re at the mercy of another company’s schedule and another company’s standards. A kitchen can be designed and priced well, then held up for weeks because the cabinets are stuck in someone else’s queue. The joinery is also the most visible finished element in most renovations, so any drop in quality shows immediately. We’d carried that risk on every project, and by 2022 we were doing enough kitchens that owning the work made more sense than contracting it out.

What the acquisition gave us

The business we bought was Kitchen Time Ltd, a cabinetry maker based in Henderson Valley in West Auckland that had been building kitchens since 2013. The acquisition gave us a working factory, the machinery and a team of qualified cabinet makers, rather than a name and a plan. Little Giant Interiors is the new brand built on that foundation, and it’s the in-house backbone for the kitchens and cabinetry that go into our renovations.

Today Little Giant makes custom kitchens and cabinetry here in Auckland, cut and assembled by qualified cabinet makers using laser edgebanding for a clean, durable finish on the panel edges. Because the manufacturing sits inside the group, the same team that designs a kitchen can see it through to the finished cabinets.

What this means for you

Bringing cabinetry in-house lets us control the quality, the timing and the follow-through on every kitchen we build. If a drawer runs late or a finish isn’t right, it’s on us to sort, not on a supplier we have to chase. For you that means one team accountable from the kitchen design through to the cabinets going in, and fewer of the handover gaps that cause delays. You can see the current range on the Little Giant Interiors site, and the kitchens on display at our Wairau Valley showroom reflect the cabinetry we now build ourselves.

A note on the history

To be clear about the dates: the 2013 start belongs to the cabinetry business we acquired, not to Little Giant Interiors, which we launched in 2022. What we gained was a running operation with real experience behind it, folded into a brand that now sits inside the group.

Little Giant Interiors FAQs

Superior Painters started inside Superior Renovations back in 2018, and from 2022 it runs as a dedicated painting brand in its own right.

It began small. In 2018, painting enquiries were handled as a minor division led by Michael Tran, mostly finishing work on our own renovation projects, plus the odd standalone repaint on the side. Word got around. The demand outgrew what a side division could carry.

By 2022 it made sense to give painting its own structure, its own crew and its own accountability, rather than leave it squeezed in between renovation jobs. So it became a business in its own right within the group.

For homeowners, that means painting is no longer an afterthought bolted onto a bigger project. Whether you’re repainting the weatherboards on a Grey Lynn villa or freshening up the interior before you sell, the painting side of the group handles it as a proper job with people who do only that.

It’s the same pattern we’ve followed with cabinetry and design: take something we were already doing, and give it the room to be done properly.

Superior Painters FAQs

Choosing finishes off a screen is guesswork. A tile looks one way on a website and another way in your hallway, and a benchtop you’ve only seen as a thumbnail can land very differently once it’s in front of you. So we built somewhere you can stand in the room before you commit to it. On 28 February 2022 we opened our first Auckland showroom, at 16B Link Drive in Wairau Valley.

Why we opened a showroom

By early 2022 we’d been renovating Auckland homes for five years, and the same problem kept surfacing at the design stage. People were making expensive, permanent decisions from small samples and on-screen images, then feeling unsure right up until the day the real thing went in. A photo can’t tell you how a matte tile reads under downlights, or how a Melteca panel sits next to a stone benchtop. We wanted a place where those decisions could be made with the actual materials in hand, on Auckland’s North Shore where a lot of our work is.

The showroom also gave our design conversations a home. Instead of meeting over a kitchen table with a folder of swatches, we could walk clients through full displays and let them see how the pieces work together.

What’s inside the showroom

Inside are five bathroom displays and three kitchen displays, set up as proper rooms rather than product shelves. You can open the drawers, run a hand across the benchtops, hold tiles against a Melteca panel and check Resene colours in the light. There are samples of the materials we actually build with, so the decisions get made with the real thing in hand instead of a swatch on a phone.

The appointment-only Design Studio

At the back there’s an appointment-only Design Studio room. It’s a private space where clients sit down with our team to work through the design of their renovation, away from the noise of the display floor. When we opened in 2022 this design service wasn’t something we’d made public yet, and it later grew into the in-house design work we now offer as part of a renovation. You can book time in the Design Studio as part of planning your project, and see how it feeds into our in-house interior design work.

The showroom concept was put together by our senior designers, Cici Zuo and Dorothy Li. The layout, the display pairings and the material selections on show were their work, built around the questions Auckland homeowners actually ask when they’re planning a kitchen or bathroom. The kitchen displays also show the kind of cabinetry we build through our in-house cabinetry brand, Little Giant Interiors.

Pairing the displays this way is deliberate. A benchtop, a tile and a cabinet colour that each look fine on their own can clash once they’re side by side in the same room, and that’s exactly the combination people struggle to picture from samples. Seeing the pieces together, at full size and in the same light, is where most of the useful decisions get made.

What this means for you

If you’re planning a renovation, the showroom takes a lot of the guesswork out of the finishing decisions. You can see and handle the materials before you sign off on them, which means fewer surprises once the work starts and more confidence in the choices you’ve made. Coming in by appointment means we can give your visit proper time, rather than have you wander a busy floor on your own. Our launch announcement was published on Scoop, and you’ll find the link in the references below.

Showroom FAQs

References

Superior Renovations announces launch of first Auckland showroom, published on Scoop, May 2022.

In 2021 we started working in formal alliance with Auckland architectural firms that specialise in renovations. The point was simple: pair our building and project management with their architectural design, so we could take on renovations that need proper drawings and a consent, not just a fit-out.

Why we did it

Plenty of renovations don’t stop at the surfaces. Removing a wall, adding a room, changing the roofline, reworking a whole layout, that’s work that usually needs architectural drawings and a building consent before anyone picks up a tool. We’re builders first, and back in 2021 we didn’t carry that architectural design capability in-house. Rather than turn those projects away or hand clients off and hope for the best, we built working relationships with architectural firms who live in that world every day.

How the alliances work

On a consent-heavy renovation, the architectural firm develops the design and the drawings, and we coordinate the build around them. We collaborate with the architectural team from early on, so what gets drawn is something we can actually build to budget and to programme.

We also coordinate the building consent process on the client’s behalf, working with the firm and the council so the paperwork keeps pace with the plan. To be clear about who does what: the council issues the consent, not us. Anything that counts as restricted building work is handled by the right licensed people. Our job is to keep the moving parts lined up so the project doesn’t stall in the gap between design and construction.

What this means for you

If your renovation needs an architectural designer and a consent, you don’t have to assemble that team yourself. You get a builder who already has working relationships with architectural firms, and one point of contact holding the design, the consent coordination and the build together. Fewer gaps between the people drawing your renovation and the people building it means fewer surprises when the two are meant to meet. You can talk a project through with us in the design studio, or see materials and finishes in person at our Wairau Valley showroom.

Architectural alliances FAQs

In 2021 we changed who you talk to first.

Why we changed who you meet first

Most renovation companies put a salesperson in front of you at the first meeting. We took a different route. We brought our first two designers, Cici Zuo and Dorothy Li, into the sales process itself. Both came from a background in design. From the first conversation, you’re sitting with someone who can think about how the space will actually work, not just hand you a price.

The reason is simple. Renovations are won or lost on the decisions made early: layout, light, how a kitchen opens onto the living area, where the walls really need to move. Sort those at the first meeting and the rest of the project gets easier. Get them wrong and no amount of good building fixes it.

What a design-led consultation looks like

Putting design-capable people in that first seat changed the tone of the whole thing. Less pitch, more planning. You’re talking through what your home could become with someone who understands both the look and the practical constraints, rather than being sold to and handed off later.

In practice, that means the first conversation is about your space, not a quote template. How you use the rooms now. What isn’t working. Where the light falls through the day. Whether the wall you want gone is doing a structural job. The person across the table can sketch the possibilities and flag the constraints in the same sitting, so you leave with a sense of what’s realistic rather than just a number.

What this means for you

You get design thinking from day one, at no extra step. The ideas and the practical limits land on the table together, early, when changing them costs nothing more than a conversation. That’s a very different starting point from being sold a package and working out the design later.

It’s how we’ve worked ever since, and it shaped a lot of what we built afterwards. When Scoop covered our Wairau Valley showroom launch in 2022, it described Cici and Dorothy as senior designers; by then the design side of the business was well established. It later grew into our in-house design team and the appointment-only Design Studio at our showroom, where those early conversations now happen in person around real materials and finishes.

Common questions about our design-led approach

We launched Superior Property Services in 2020, during the Covid lockdowns, and it’s since become the part of the group that looks after homes long after a renovation wraps up.

The timing wasn’t planned. When Auckland went into lockdown in 2020, renovation sites stopped. Property maintenance and essential repairs could still go ahead under the rules, so we set up a division to handle that work, the jobs that kept people’s homes safe and running while larger projects were on hold.

What began as a response to an unusual year turned into something we kept.

Two roles settled in. The first is aftercare: the maintenance, small repairs and upkeep our renovation clients need once they’re actually living in the finished space. A handover isn’t the end of the relationship. The second is a home for the enquiries that don’t need a full renovation, the smaller jobs where sending a maintenance team makes far more sense than starting a design process.

Frequently asked questions

Had work done with us and something needs attention? Or got a job that’s more repair than reno? Our property care team is where it goes.