| 63 Que Homes Que Homes’ clients can choose from an existing portfolio of modifiable plans, or use the company’s designers to create a custom built home. BUILDING PO BOX 243, KAIAPOI 7644 Dave Nowacki | 027 462 3029 hemiracer63@gmail.com Husband and wife team Dave Nowacki and Shelley McIver of D&S Bricklaying are the perfect partnership both on and o the job site, where they specialise in all forms of residential brick and block work and provide a high level of quality and professionalism. Dave and Shelley have been working together for 18 years and notably, it was Shelley who taught Dave the trade. Shelly was working with and for her dad Ernie, who was a bricklayer in England before emigrating to Aotearoa New Zealand in the 1960s. Dave joined the family business and after a year, he and Shelley went out on their own and Ernie came to work for them. Since Ernie retired, Dave and Shelley have been a successful team of two. “We would turn up to a building site and the builders would come and talk to me, as if I was running the show,” Dave says. “I would have to say ‘look mate, I’m just learning and I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. You’ll have to go and talk to Shelley’. They might have felt a bit like she didn’t really belong on site, but she has gone on to earn nothing but respect from the builders on site.” D&S Bricklaying has been working with Justin McDonald since before the beginning of Que Homes, when he was a young builder doing his own spec 15 years of quality bricklaying homes. The two businesses have a fantastic partnership, sharing the goal of providing each client with the best possible service. Dave says Que Homes is great to work for and they even built he and Shelley’s own brick home in North Canterbury. Dave says bricks are one of the most cost-e ective ways to clad o a house. “Even though we’re a slow trade on the build, the cost of bricks and the rates to install them are lower than plaster, and weatherboard homes are more labour-intensive with nailing o , illing the nail holes, and then painting over them. When a bricklayer comes to site they put the wall up from the bottom to the top and then they’re o the site. It takes us about eight days to clad an average three-bedroom home.” After all these years of spending about 20 hours of every single day together, Dave and Shelley still haven’t run out of things to talk about. “We have a lot of fun at work, a lot of banter, and people remark how well we work together. She is my rock.” Dave and Shelley marked the 15th anniversary of D&S Bricklaying with a big party at home around Dave’s custom racetrack. “I’m not sure I ever thought we would get that far and still be so into it. And we’ve still got quite a bit ahead of us before we retire.”
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