HENDERSON VALLEY, WEST AUCKLAND

A black-and-oak kitchen and two layered-grey bathrooms in a bush-framed West Auckland home

Completed December 2021

Designed and Project Managed By

Quick answer: This contemporary kitchen and bathroom renovation in Henderson Valley, West Auckland turned a dated 90s kitchen and two tired bathrooms into a black-and-oak kitchen and two layered-grey bathrooms — designed and project-managed end to end, finished in December 2021.

Why a 90s Kitchen in a Bush-Clad Home Had to Go

Leigh and her family had lived in their Henderson Valley home for 15 years. It’s the kind of West Auckland house that suits the area — high ceilings, exposed wooden beams, native bush pressing in on every window. The bones were lovely. The kitchen and bathrooms weren’t.

Both dated to the 90s, and they fought the rest of the house rather than working with it. The kitchen’s green vinyl cabinet fronts were the worst offender, pulling the eye away from the timber and the warmth everywhere else. After 15 years of living around it, Leigh decided it was time. The brief: one kitchen and two bathrooms, brought up to the standard the rest of the home already had.

Henderson Valley sits at the foot of the Waitākere Ranges, where homes lean into their bush settings. A renovation here isn’t about fighting that character. It’s about catching up to it.

Why Leigh Chose a Renovation Company, Not Just a Builder

This was Leigh’s first renovation, so she met a few companies before settling on us. One of them was a kitchen specialist with genuinely beautiful designs. The catch came later: they only designed, manufactured and installed the kitchen. Electricians, plumbers, painters — Leigh would have to find and manage all of them herself.

She’d actually considered running the whole thing on her own. As she put it:

“I did try and look into project managing myself because I used to be a production manager, and then I was like, oh my gosh. Trying to organise trades, who comes in first, getting a designer — it was all getting too much. I was like, nah, I need to get someone to manage it, and I could just be like yes, I like this, and someone can just do it. Which is exactly what happened.”
— Leigh, Henderson Valley

Sound familiar? It’s the moment most homeowners reach two weeks into planning. Leigh wanted one company that brought its own designers and trades, managed the lot, and quoted a fixed price that covered everything. That’s how this became a full project we ran from design through to handover, linking our full-home renovation work with the detail of building a new kitchen from the cabinetry up and two bathrooms under one roof.

Jin Park managed the project and was hands-on from the first meeting — including the parts most people dread.

The Kitchen Design Brief: Modern, Not Sterile

The hard part of designing this kitchen was the room it sat in. A very modern kitchen would have looked imported into a home full of timber beams and bush views. As Leigh said, “I wanted something modern but not too modern, because very modern designs look too sterile.”

She also didn’t want to lock the cabinets to a trend colour she’d tire of. Black was the answer — but black on its own would have been cold and heavy against all that warmth. So the design toned it down with oak. Wood-grain panelling on the island and breakfast nook picks up the timber in the ceiling beams, so the new kitchen reads as part of the house rather than a box dropped into it.

“Black gives you that contemporary edge, but in a home like Leigh’s it needed warming up. The oak panelling on the island ties straight back to the ceiling beams — that’s what stops a black kitchen feeling clinical. The house tells you what it wants if you look at it properly.”
— Dorothy Li, Design Manager, Superior Renovations

Choosing the Materials, and the Splashback Everyone Talks About

Narrowing materials is where most clients freeze. There’s simply too much choice. Jin took an active role here, which Leigh was grateful for:

“I had a little look at Tile Depot and I was flabbergasted — it was just too much to choose from. So Jin met me there. We had all kinds of swatches: the benchtop, the splashback, paint swatches. He helped me put it all together.”
— Leigh, Henderson Valley

Every kitchen has a showstopper, and in Leigh’s case it’s the splashback. She’d assumed she’d end up with subway tiles. Jin talked her out of it, and she’s glad he did:

“I always thought I’d end up with subway tiles, but Jin talked me out of it. We had to be careful the splashback didn’t clash with the benchtop but actually matched. I’m stoked — we’ve had so many comments about these tiles.”
— Leigh, Henderson Valley

Kitchen Specifications

Layout and Cabinetry

• The kitchen layout stayed as it was, so no structural work was needed
• Prime Acrylic black matte cabinet fronts from Laminex — 18mm
• Prime wood-grain panels for the breakfast nook — 18mm
• Both the acrylic and wood-grain panels are fingerprint-resistant
• All cabinetry runs on BLUM soft-close, with BLUM hinges
• Recessed nose hooks for a no-handle, contemporary look

Splashback and Benchtop

• 30mm engineered-stone matte benchtop with grey and black flecks
• Art Stone Painting Grey Chevron 300×800 splashback from Tile Depot — an art-deco tile with a 3D effect that gives the wall real dimension
• The splashback was chosen to pick up the grey and black undertones in the benchtop

Storage and Amenities

• Custom pull-out pantry for built-in storage
• Pull-out rubbish bins
• Blanco Silgranit sink — stain, scratch and heat-resistant to 280 degrees, 37L, Metra XL 6 in matte black
• Large matte-silver U-bend tap with a pull-out flexible nozzle for easy cleaning

Flooring, Lighting and Electrical

• Anti-slip 600×600 Lakey Grey tiles from Tile Depot throughout, tying back to the benchtop and splashback
• Layered lighting — task, ambient, pendant and recessed
• 6 LED downlights in the ceiling
• 3 pendants over the island
• LED strip lighting under the cabinets to wash the splashback and double as task light
• The kitchen was re-wired by a licensed electrician, with the installation carried out under the New Zealand wiring rules (AS/NZS 3000)

The Main Bathroom: A Freestanding Bath and Layered Greys

Bathroom Design Brief

The main bathroom carries the same contemporary, timeless feel as the kitchen — a freestanding bath, a tiled shower, a floating vanity and matte tiles. The clever part is the tile work: three greys doing three jobs. A lighter neutral grey on the walls, a medium grey underfoot, and a darker grey in the shower. Stacked together they give the room depth and a quiet, understated calm rather than one flat tone.

Bath, Tiles and Tiled Shower

• Freestanding bath from Bath and Tile
• Glazed ceramic wall tiles from Tile Depot — Marmo Wall 2.0, 300×600, two faces
• Floor tiles match the kitchen — anti-slip 600×600 Lakey Grey from Tile Depot — for a deliberate contrast against the wall tiles
• Custom-cut shower glass
• The shower floor and walls were fully waterproofed before tiling
• Darker grey shower tiles — Art Stone Painting Grey Chevron 300×800 from Tile Depot

Vanity, Basin, Tapware and Mirror

• Wall-hung 1200mm vanity with two drawers
• Melteca cabinet boards, supplied by Elite Bathrooms
• Concrete shark-inlay handle detail in a no-handle setup
• Engineered-stone benchtop, 1200mm x 600mm
• Halo round basin in matte white, 380 x 110mm

• Industry tall basin mixer — gun metal
• All shower fittings in gun metal
• Towel rail and toilet-roll holder in gun metal
• Bath tapware in gun metal
• Broadway LED demister mirror — round, 800mm

The Smaller Second Bathroom

Not every space gives you room to move walls, and this one didn’t. The second bathroom is narrow, so the layout stayed put — there was no sense forcing structural changes a small footprint can’t reward. Instead it was tied visually to the main bathroom: the same floor, shower and wall tiles, and the same gun-metal tapware. The only real differences are a smaller vanity and an insert sink to suit the space.

It’s an honest call on a renovation — knowing where to push and where to leave well enough alone.

How the Showers and Wet Areas Were Waterproofed

The part of a bathroom you never see is the part that matters most. Before a single tile went on, the shower floor and walls were fully waterproofed, because in a wet area the membrane behind the tile is what keeps water out of the framing and the rooms next door. Tiles and grout are not waterproof on their own.

New Zealand’s Building Code sets the standard here. Clause E3 Internal Moisture requires wet-area surfaces to be impervious and easily cleaned, and its Acceptable Solution E3/AS1 covers how showers and bathroom floors are built to contain water and drain it away. The waterproofing membrane is the layer that does the real work, and membranes for wet areas are specified to AS/NZS 4858, the New Zealand standard for that product class.

On a job like Leigh’s that means the shower floor is laid to fall toward the waste, the membrane is carried up the walls and across every junction, and the corners and floor waste are detailed so water has nowhere to sit. Get that right and a tiled shower lasts for decades. Get it wrong and you are back inside the wall within a few years. It is quiet, unglamorous work, and it is a big part of why a Superior Renovations bathroom holds up the way it does.

What Leigh Made of the Whole Thing

Most renovation companies can build to the same standard we do. What we try to get right is the run of it — the day-to-day, not just the day it finishes. This project landed in the thick of the Covid supply squeeze, and it came down to the wire before Christmas. Leigh’s account of it says more than we could:

“The tradespeople were lovely. They worked so hard and I was really impressed. On Christmas Eve I didn’t have an oven and everything was right down to the wire. The plumber lived all the way down in Pukekohe and he bent over backwards for my place to get it done. They pulled out all the stops. I know there were all these projects happening at the same time, and with Covid things were stuck on boats — I really appreciated it.”
— Leigh, Henderson Valley

What a Kitchen and Two Bathrooms Like This Cost in Auckland

Every renovation is priced to its own scope. The size of the rooms, the materials, how many rooms run at once, and how much hidden work sits behind the walls all move the number. A multi-room job like Leigh’s — a kitchen plus two bathrooms — is a different beast to a single room, so a figure quoted off another project won’t match yours. Rather than guess, run your own numbers through our kitchen renovation cost calculator for a realistic Auckland estimate, then talk it through with us.

💡 Quick tip: Re-wiring an older kitchen back to current standards is a cost line homeowners routinely forget. On a 90s home it’s often non-negotiable, and it’s far cheaper to do while the cabinetry is already out than to retrofit later.

Thinking About Your Own Kitchen or Bathroom?

Leigh’s place shows what happens when a dated kitchen and two bathrooms finally catch up to the home around them — and when one team designs it, manages the trades, and holds the fixed quote. If your West Auckland home is sitting in the same spot hers was, we’d be glad to look at it with you. Our in-house design team works through the look with you before a single trade lifts a tool, and we manage every bathroom renovation we take on across West Auckland from concept to handover.

➡ Book your free in-home consultation with Superior Renovations
➡ Estimate your kitchen renovation with our cost calculator
➡ Request a free feasibility report for your project

Henderson Valley Kitchen and Bathroom Renovation FAQs

Further Resources

1. More completed Auckland renovation projects
2. Real client stories from across Auckland

References

1. WorkSafe New Zealand — Electricity (Safety) Regulations 2010 (electrical installations under AS/NZS 3000)
2. Building Performance (MBIE) — Building Code clause E3 Internal Moisture (wet-area waterproofing)