The Full Story
About
Callan’s passion for heritage restoration
Restoring historic villas back to their original glory has inspired a passion in Marlborough builder Callan Hendriks.
He has been building the region for eight
years with his company Black Stag Build Group, which now specialise in villa and heritage restoration.
Callan has years of extensive experience in heritage buildings and over time has developed a passion for conserving the character and legacy of a building.
A previous project restoring a 1905 Villa, that took over two years reignited Callan’s passion for working on older homes, and shaped Black Stag into what is now.
The project inspired Callan to take on more restorations.
“It was a big project, I really enjoyed it, and I quietly started angling towards that sort of thing. And here we are six or seven villas later.
“I didn’t really know what Black Stag would be when I first started out. I didn’t initially intend on specialising on just one thing.”
But he enjoyed the variety it offered.
“I got a little bit bored with new builds, whereas I quite enjoy all the detail work and the character of these homes. I need that variety in my life.”
Heritage projects also came with their own individual challenges, he said.
“Until I start stripping away layers that clients want to focus on, we find all sorts of things as we go.”
“We do whatever we can to make the homes economical to live in, but they do come with their limitations.”
A current project underway is restoring a 1910 villa in Picton – a full exterior restoration.
We’ve replaced all the windows with new units made to match the exisiting (but with double glazing of-course), and Reclad the exterior using custom-made v-groove shiplap weatherboards that were manufactured as an exact copy of the original cladding the Villa was built with.
Classic bullnose verandas extending around the Villa to fully wrap 3 faces of the building, from the East all the way across the north side to the west.
Callan looks forward to the opportunity to restore the interior in the coming years.
While the company have honed in on restoration work, the team are also capable of picking up a wide range of work, Callan said.
"Villas are what we angle towards, but we do everything. I've always considered any work that comes across my desk; That's always kept us busy if things get quiet."
Things were busy currently, and they had work ahead for the next two years, he said.
Callan moved to Marlborough from Auckland where, as an apprentice, he had worked on a number of restoration projects, many of which were heritage-listed villas.
Marlborough was booming and has been since he moved there in 2015. "It was absolutely pumping here, and it hasn't seemed to slow. "He put a lot of that down to the local wine industry, Marlborough being the largest manufacturing region in New Zealand.
Blenheim is expanding with plenty more
room to grow, he said.
“I would say 90 per cent of the new builds
I’ve done ... (its) a lot of young families coming
to the region.
They are either people moving to the
region or people moving back here from
overseas. There’s this huge influx of young
families.”
He said lifestyle was definitely a factor in
drawing people there.
“I love raising my kids here. I think it’s
amazing.”
It was the lifestyle that led to the name,
Black Stag.
“This region is synonymous with outdoors
lifestyle – fishing, hunting...
“I thought it really rolled off the tongue
quite nicely, I thought if it has to have a name,
that sounds good to me.”
Written by Rosa Watson,
Business South Magazine
September 2024
