Dalleyasuaurus Blogasaurus: The Best Builder in Rockhampton, Gracemere and Yeppoon

If you don’t count working as a paperboy in High School, my first real job was for Scott Kilpatrick’s Affordable Quality Homes P/L. I started there in 1995 fresh out of school and the plan was that I would learn drafting and end up as a draftsman. Plans didn’t work out that way however and in my first two years there I did a huge variety of work which included:

A six week stint as a carpentry apprentice (replacing an apprentice who broke his neck)

Sales work in several display homes in Gracemere and Rockhampton

Wheeling big barrows of concrete around building sites

Cleaning houses ready for handover.

Supervising untrustworthy clients viewing their houses prior to handover (they try to change locks without paying)

Data Entry – hours and days of it.

Accounts Clerical work – where I saved more money by scrutinising invoices in 12 months than I earned.

Quasi Site Supervisor work – spending many days driving around building sites delivering gear and organising subcontractors.

Professional Floor Sanding – I only cost $10 an hour and soon learned how to sand timber floors saving my boss a tradesman’s wage.

Customer Relationships – handing over houses, dealing with customer requests and colour selections on new homes.

Maintenance on new homes – changing lightbulbs, locks, installing air conditioners and much more.

One whole week of my life was spent popping and glueing magnets on brochures – a job I was glad to finish.

And many more fun tasks… I think I learned a lot from Scott.

In my second year with Scott – the building industry was tight, and a number of builders were going out of business. Scott diversified and opened a second company called Quality Relocateable Homes P/L which built houses on-site in Gracemere and then shipped them on several trucks to location in various places around Queensland. This brought a whole new set of experiences which included travel, dealing with specialty construction and much more.

One of my favourite (or interesting) memories was one afternoon when we were jacking up a house to put onto the back of two prime movers to send out West to Emerald or somewhere like that. Scott had invented these amazing jacks which were big fly wheels which spun and crawled up poles gradually lifting the house slowly inch by inch. Each half of the house had 6 of these jacks which required 6 people to operate simultaneously – me being one of them. I had been given a shirt by KB’s Frames and Trusses and it was XL (extra large) and I didnt’ have it tucked in. The word came - we all hit our magic buttons to start jacking and the flywheel on my jack spun. My shirt got caught on the flywheel and wrapped right around pulling me into the jack. I yelled loudly to stop - but the noise of all the jacks whirring meant it was a little while before everyone else realised to stop. They all had to “wind the house down” to my level and then we all lowered further until my shirt came out. It was covered in grease and had a “grease track” right across it. It looked like I had been run over by a motorbike. The main thing was that I was safe. I tucked in my shirt - we wound up the house - and sent it on its way out west.

Scott is an excellent builder – he lives between Rockhampton and Yeppoon, but builds houses in both places as well as Gracemere, Mt Morgan and the surrounding area. He also has a display home in Rockhampton where you can look at plans and get prices on construction etc. I recommend his building services.

I enjoyed working for Scott – in total for about 7 years and did a lot of interesting things. In all that time my esteem for Scott has grown and I highly regard him. Now I’m working for Scott in a different kind of way – I’m building and maintaining his websites. I have just finished building www.howtosucceedintoughtimes.com which is a website based on a book Scott Kilpatrick wrote. I am also currently working on www.affordablequalityhomes.com.au which is his main building website.