Today we’d like to introduce you to Oliver Childs.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Oliver. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I am British by Citizenship Born in Bletchley park UK, when 19 I Landed Myself a record deal with Warner Bros and started recording an Album at Wessex studios in Highbury London. To keep it short, I am one of those stories that got away! Notoriously the music industry is not the most promising way to earn your bread and butter so I channeled my creativity into another trade to subsidize my drizzle of an income. That’s where I founded Grand avenue Painter, Decorators and building solutions in North London, I immediately brought in painting contracts and slowly started moving onto bigger things. I wasn’t long before I had a 6 man strong team and was creating a reputation for myself, fast forward 12 years and I eventually found myself touring America, I met my wife on the cape summer of 2009 and well.. Here I am! it felt Natural to just round up a few tools and start a similar Business in Boston, The American fast pace of business and Boston’s Booming real estate, I quickly found myself amongst the competition, Always striving to be the best, this job presents its daily challenges that make it the exciting and satisfying career it should be.
Has it been a smooth road?
Being from Britain, I grew up using Metric as a form of measurement, with America being inches and feet, I had to get to know standard sizes all over again, for example, copper pipe here is in 1/2 ” 3/4″ 1″ etc, well in the UK and Europe it is 15mm 22mm 28mm and so on.
My other struggle was learning what the alternative names were for the same product, over here we say dry wall, and over there you say plaster board. here spackling, there filler, these are struggles specifically for a Brit I understand of course so as well as that you have to learn a mountain of new building code and regulations
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Downtown Abbeys specializes in interior remodeling, whether that be a kitchen or bathroom or a condo conversion. We love the before and after effect and demonstrating how we can transform a squat into a posh pad. A company is only as good as the people that work for them, we are big on the concept of team building, there is no heir-achy in this company, everybody plays an equally important role in completing a successful project. we genuinely care about our clients lives and how they are going to enjoy their remodels for years to come, I won’t let a client make a bad choice when they are overwhelmed, of course at the end of the day it’s about money, but we are only interested in an equal trade that makes people feel that the hard earned savings they are putting into their homes was a wise investment.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Right now, I feel that Boston is one of the most desirable places to live in the world, that’s becoming more and more common knowledge and is bringing people in, but I think we need more trades in the business, last summer was probably the busiest I have ever experienced within any company and finding employees and subs were tough, I found that commercial buildings going up all over the place were poaching subs from where ever they could leaving the smaller residential companies like mine with less choice. I would like to see an improvement in the permitting process. Obtaining a permit can be costly, time consuming and should be able to be done remotely and not in person.
Pricing:
- Bathroom remodel $16k
- KItchen remodel $35k
- Gut renovation $200 sq ft
Contact Info:
- Address: 31 Kenmore street
Newton
Ma 02459 - Website: www.downtownabbeys.com
- Phone: 617 580 8273
- Email: downtownabbeysboston@gmail.com
- Instagram: downtownabbeys
- Facebook: @downtownabbeysboston
- Twitter: @downtownabbeysboston
- Yelp: Downtown Abbeys LLC
Image Credit:
Charlie Abrahams Photography
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