One of the great things about dealing with Ed Ostler, owner of Stable Commercial, a commercial and strata property maintenance and repair company serving the Perth metropolitan area, is the number of professional tradespeople Ed has on his team.
Leading the team is Ed. He is a qualified construction engineer with more than 20 years of experience in the building industry.
And surrounding him is a wealth of trade expertise capable of handling everything from minor property maintenance to large multi-faceted commercial and strata remediation or renovation projects.
Claremont Location: Many Commercial and Strata Tradespeople
This heritage-listed home, in the Perth suburb of Claremont, Western Australia, is not typical of the commercial building and maintenance jobs carried out by Stable Commercial.
But because the owners knew Ed and knew that he knew a lot about building, he has become someone they can trust and go to for advice about their home.
Because of these talks, the Stable Commercial team has taken care of a number of building issues for the owners, beginning with building a wine cellar.
Creating a Wine Cellar
The owners had always wanted to put in a wine cellar.
A storage room existed at the base of the stairs, suggesting that one of the previous owners had also wanted a wine cellar, but had never followed through with the concept.
To begin the project, Ed organised a draftsman on his team to confer with the owners and design the cellar.
To maintain the temperature of the new room, the team core-drilled the existing walls and ran pipes for the air-conditioning and electrical cables from the outside. The walls were then lined with 50mm insulated plasterboard.
While this was happening, another member of the Stable Commercial team built the wine racks and cabinets that lined the room, and another ordered the wine refrigeration units from the eastern states. Stable Commercial’s stone mason then installed a stone bench top on top of the cabinets.
The owners were very happy with how that build turned out, so they talked to Ed again about having Stable Commercial fix some structural problems in their home.
Repairing Cracking Walls in Claremont Heritage Listed Home
The most serious of these issues were two large cracks that had recently formed in two of the house’s main rooms.
The fact the cracks were relatively new concerned Ed’s team, and an investigation of the likely cause showed the front of the house was sinking.
Resolving the cracks would require a two-pronged approach. Firstly, they injected grout to underpin the fittings at the front of the home.
Second, they fixed the walls where the cracks were by cutting out the plaster around them and using epoxy grouting to attach large helifix rods to the existing brickwork.
After that, each wall was replastered and repainted – returning the walls to their pre-cracked pristine condition.
Federation Home in Claremont: Treating Rising Damp and Re-tuckpointing
The owners of the house asked Ed’s team to look into rising damp at the front of the house while they fixed the walls.
To fix this, Ed’s team cut out the bricks just above the floor level and removed and damp-proofed them with a bitumous damp-proof and then replaced the bricks.
Because of these repairs, the home had to be re-tuckpointed, which is a common thing in Federation-style homes.
The Stable Commercial team ground off all the old tuckpointing and took it to a smooth mortar. They then taped at 5mm intervals over the existing mortar in the centre of each joint and a white mortar was then applied with a trowel over the tape. While the mortar was wet, the tape was removed to leave a beautiful white raised tuckpoint.
Stable Commercial: Multiple Tradespeople with Multiple Skills
All in all, Ed and his team enjoyed the change of working on a nineteenth-century home very much.
- Wine cellar construction
- Cracked walls
- Sinking foundations
- Rising damp
- Tuckpointing
“This was a different sort of job for us,” said Ed.
I think the fact I’ve got a team of tradies with a wide-skilled set helped us to deal with the different issues as they arose easily.”
And as for the owners?
They were thrilled with the quality of work and attention to detail they received from Ed and the Stable Commercial team.
“This is the third time they’ve called on our services,” said Ed.
“We’re their go-to team for home remediation and renovation issues.”
Different skill requirements.
One team.
If you’ve got a commercial or strata building repair project in the pipeline and you’d love for someone to oversee and coordinate the tradespeople for you, call Ed Ostler on 0401 743 430.
Stable Commercial.
Commercial and strata building repairs and remediation done properly.
