My journey into becoming a joiner began in 1979 when I left Shirley Boys High to become apprentice working for 3 years making doors and sashes with Reid Bates (known as Reg), the founder of Bates Joinery. Greg Bates, his son, in his 30’s by then pretty much ran the show.

I spent 5 years as an apprentice, passed my Trade Certificate, then went on to pass Advanced Trade Certificate, then worked in the joinery factory for 5 years.

In 1988 I was called in to help in the office back costing, measuring, quoting, and writing up production sheets. Here I worked with Greg learning the finer skills of the joinery business and eventually became factory manager.

The main tasks were meeting with clients, establishing their requirements and producing designs for kitchens and other joinery items, quoting the items and through to organising job sheets. It was then into the factory and on to installing the job on site. This procedure is still in place today carried out by both myself and my second in charge, Kevin Fussell, who joined Bates Joinery in 2000 bringing with him 40 years’ experience in the industry.

I enjoy the challenge of the various degrees of difficulty for the different types of projects, from a simple entertainment cabinet through to high-end architectural house fit-outs. This can mean wardrobes, laundry, scullery, designer kitchens, dens, wine cellars, media rooms, solid timber stairs and balustrades.

Bates is one of the few joinery company in Christchurch that still manufacture custom made solid timber windows and doors, from replacing rotten timber sashes through to manufacturing sophisticated bi-fold and sliding timber doors. We operate out of a modern premise using both up-to-date machinery (including a state of the art CNC flatbed machine) and more traditional, reliable machines and tools of the trade.
Over the many years of being in business tour staff turnover is very minimal as we maintain a loyal and dedicated team that have invaluable experience and artisan skills and also enjoy working at Bates Joinery.

We believe it’s important to pass our knowledge and skills on to the next generation of tradesmen. It’s our aim to encourage apprenticeship and promote respect for the joinery trade.

Recent times have been very challenging with the earthquakes making the workload very patchy. The number of false starts for the rebuild of Christchurch only now is showing signs of confidence that the building boom is going to happen.

For the future, joinery is an ever changing craft with constant development of new hardware, systems and production, whether it’s kitchens or solid timber doors and windows there’s always improvements which we in our trade endeavour to embrace to stay competitive.

We are looking forward to the next chapter in the rebuild of our city which will keep our team of joiners very busy. We pride ourselves on delivering superb service and meeting our customers exacting requirements and needs.

Come in for a cup of coffee check out our ever evolving showroom and get inspiration from some of the brand new projects we always have on the go.
 
Kind regards,   

                                                                                 
Mark Allworthy 

Owner - Operator