Quick answer
On a 1950s ex-state house in Glen Innes or Panmure, the strip-out is where the money and the programme move, not the cabinets. WorkSafe treats any building put up before 1 January 2000 as likely to contain asbestos, and a kitchen strip-out is refurbishment rather than maintenance, so the asbestos must be identified before demolition starts, not after someone's multi-tool finds it. So: firm price on the cabinetry, refurbishment survey before anything is pulled, and a contingency on the strip-out you expect to spend.
Key points
- Tamaki, meaning Glen Innes, Point England and Panmure, is turning about 2,500 old public homes into roughly 10,500 new ones, but the privately owned ex-state houses on the same streets are being renovated instead.
- WorkSafe's position is that a home built before 1 January 2000 may contain asbestos, and that the only way to confirm it is to test a sample.
- A kitchen strip-out is refurbishment, not maintenance, so under the Health and Safety at Work (Asbestos) Regulations 2016 a business must identify asbestos before work starts.
- Up to 10 square metres of non-friable material may be removed unlicensed, more needs a licensed removalist, friable needs a Class A licence, and licensed removal needs five days' notice to WorkSafe.
- Price the cabinetry firmly and put the contingency on the strip-out: the carcasses are a known quantity, the wall cavity is not.
Test before you demolish, not after.
Stand in the kitchen of a 1950s ex-state house off Taniwha Street or Dunkirk Road and it is obvious what you would change. The bench runs about two metres. A window over the sink, a pantry with a wire front, a doorway through to what used to be the washhouse. It reads like a weekend and a hired skip. The cabinets are not what makes it a real job. The seventy-odd years of building behind them is.
None of what follows is legal advice. Confirm consent questions with Auckland Council and your LBP, and take anything asbestos-related from WorkSafe's guidance rather than a blog, including this one.
Ten and a half thousand homes, and the ones nobody is replacing
Tamaki is three suburbs, Glen Innes, Point England and Panmure, carrying one of Auckland's largest housing regeneration programmes: about 2,500 old public homes becoming roughly 10,500 new ones over two decades. The half of the street that gets missed is the privately owned half. The scheme that built Tamaki ran from the late 1940s into the 1960s, and many of those houses were sold off decades ago. They sit outside the programme, and their owners are renovating them, kitchen first, because that is the room that dates worst. The public side runs through a different procurement path, covered under kitchen supply into social housing. The ex-state house two doors down behaves nothing like the 1980s stock a few kilometres east that fills our Howick and Pakuranga work.
What is actually behind a 1950s kitchen wall
There is no single answer. Houses of that era were lined with whatever was going: fibrous plaster sheet, early plasterboard, hardboard, softboard, and in the wet corners sometimes fibre-cement sheet. Plenty have a 1970s kitchen screwed straight over the 1950s one. Until a sheet comes off you are guessing.
WorkSafe's list of where asbestos turns up in New Zealand homes reads like an inventory of a 1950s kitchen: textured ceilings, panels in wet areas, vinyl floor tiles and the adhesives beneath them, patching compounds, insulation around pipes, electrical switchboards, flues. The rule is blunt and useful: if the building went up before 1 January 2000, presume asbestos until a test says otherwise, because the only way to confirm the material is to sample it. Paint is the quieter one. WorkSafe and the Ministry of Health say to presume anything built in the 1980s or earlier was painted with lead-based paint, and sanding the old reveals is what turns that from a fact into a problem.
| Where | What it might be | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Under the vinyl | Sheet vinyl or tiles, plus the dark adhesive beneath | Only exposed once the cabinets are out, which is the wrong moment |
| The ceiling | Textured coating, common in the era | Rangehood ducting and downlights both put somebody through it |
| Wet corners and splashback | Panels used in wet areas; linings vary house to house | Comes off with the old bench, so it sits inside the demolition |
| Behind the old range | Insulation around pipes; flue penetrations | Insulation is likeliest to be friable, and friability sets the licence class |
| Reveals and scotia | Presume lead-based paint on a pre-1980 house | Sanding creates the exposure, not the paint sitting undisturbed |
Test before you demolish, not after
The regulations do not care what you call the job. They care what the work does. WorkSafe's test is the primary purpose: maintenance is care and upkeep that keeps a building in working order; refurbishment is work with the emphasis on changing or upgrading it. Their own illustration makes the line obvious. Replacing a window frame with a similar one is maintenance; turning that window into a ranch slider is refurbishment. Ripping a whole kitchen out to put a different one in is not upkeep.
So the duty switches on. Under the Health and Safety at Work (Asbestos) Regulations 2016, a business carrying out refurbishment or demolition work must identify asbestos or asbestos-containing material first, where the structure was built before 1 January 2000, or asbestos has already been identified, or is likely to be present. Minor maintenance sits outside that. A strip-out does not. If you own the place as a rental the duty lands harder: WorkSafe treats landlords as PCBUs, and says that where a kitchen is refurbished the asbestos must be identified and removed, so far as is reasonably practicable, before work starts.
| The job | Which side it falls on | What follows |
|---|---|---|
| Swapping a mixer tap or a failed hinge | Maintenance | Routine upkeep sits outside the identification duty |
| Taking the benchtop, splashback and cabinets out | Refurbishment | Identification duty applies on a pre-2000 house |
| Lifting the vinyl to lay new flooring | Refurbishment | The adhesive is the issue as much as the vinyl |
| Cutting an exterior wall for a ducted rangehood | Refurbishment | You are going through cladding of unknown make-up |
On the ground that means a refurbishment survey by a competent person, before anything is pulled. Not a walk-through and a shrug. Samples. What the survey finds decides who may touch it, and that decides your programme. Up to 10 square metres of non-friable material may be removed without a licence, and you cannot carve a large area into 10 square metre pieces to get there. More than that needs a licensed removalist. Anything friable needs a Class A licence. Licensed removal needs at least five days' written notice to WorkSafe, and Class A clearance must come from an independent licensed assessor.
The wiring you cannot see, and the paperwork you should keep
The kitchen is where the electrical load in a 1950s house rose most and where the original design assumed least. A couple of power points, a range circuit, a light. Today it is an oven, a hob, a dishwasher, a microwave, a rangehood and somebody charging a phone behind the fruit bowl. Nobody can tell you from a blog whether your house needs a rewire. What is fair to say is that houses of this vintage were commonly wired in rubber-insulated cable, that rubber goes brittle with age and heat, and that your electrician will open the switchboard on day one and tell you which conversation you are having.
The rules here protect you, so use them. A homeowner may do a limited amount of electrical work in their own home; anyone else doing prescribed electrical work must be registered with the Electrical Workers Registration Board and hold a current annual practising licence. For fixed wiring work, including new power points, the electrician must give you a Certificate of Compliance. Some work must also be inspected by a licensed electrical inspector, particularly work on the main switchboard, the main cable and the main earth. Keep the CoC: your insurer and your eventual buyer will ask for it. Extraction is the other trap, because a ducted rangehood needs a hole through a 1950s exterior wall of unknown make-up. The ducted versus recirculating trade-off is its own argument; here the question is what you are cutting through.
Price the cabinets hard. Carry the contingency on the strip-out.
Here is the bit most quotes get backwards. The cabinetry is the known part: measured, drawn, priced, made in a workshop, installed over five to seven days. A carcass has never surprised anybody. The strip-out is the unknown part, and it routinely gets one line, a shrug and no allowance. Bands, since you will ask. Supply and install on a kitchen this size sits at the affordable end of the Auckland range: entry grade in the lower five figures, mid-range climbing comfortably into the mid five figures, premium well past that, all plus GST. These kitchens are small. Fewer linear metres, less benchtop, no scullery.
The temptation is to spend what the small footprint saved you on nicer handles in week one. Do not. That money is the contingency, and on a seventy-year-old house you should plan to spend it on something you cannot see yet, which is the discipline set out in renovating without blowing the budget. Then read the quote like an adult. Is removal in it, excluded, or a provisional sum you will be topping up? Is making the linings good somebody's job, or nobody's? Excluded is not a red flag; it is honest, provided the exclusion is named now and priced when it happens. Silence is the red flag. Hidden costs in a kitchen quote live in the part nobody wrote down.
Measure after the wall is open, not before
Sequence is the cheapest thing on this job and the most commonly ignored. You cannot take a final site measure to a wall that is coming off, and you cannot take one to a wall stripped but not made good either, because the new lining has a thickness and the stopping has a thickness, and 12mm at one end is the difference between a clean scribe and a gap you can post mail through. The difference between a plan measure and a site measure is the difference between a kitchen that fits and a variation you pay for.
The order that works runs: rough scope and a number back quickly, refurbishment survey, strip-out, remediation if needed, electrical and plumbing rough-in, linings made good and stopped, site measure, manufacture, install. The measure sits on the seam between the messy half and the clean half. Everything before it may move; everything after it is a workshop programme and would rather not. Our week-by-week renovation timeline assumes a house that behaves itself, and a 1950s state house is entitled not to. The walls will not be square either. Scribes, fillers and packers absorb that on install day. Cabinets ordered off a plan measure absorb none of it.
The kitchen is never the hard part. The hard part is the days between the old one coming out and the new one being able to go in, and nobody prices those days.
The cabinets are the known half of the job.
What goes wrong
- The survey gets skipped because it is only a kitchen. A sheet comes off on a Tuesday, somebody recognises it, and the job stops with a workshop slot already booked.
- A management survey gets confused with a refurbishment survey. One tells you what is visible; the other is the one you do before taking the building apart.
- Removal is priced but nobody books the notice. Those five days come out of your programme, not the removalist's.
- The kitchen is ordered off a plan measure to claw back a week. The wall comes back 20mm out and you pay a variation on a carcass already made.
- The electrician opens the switchboard, goes quiet, and will not energise new circuits without an upgrade. It is on the critical path and was never in the budget.
- The contingency gets spent on upgrades in week one. Week three finds rot under the old sink, where a tap has been weeping quietly since about 1998.
What to ask before you sign anything
- Is it a refurbishment survey rather than a management survey, and who is doing it?
- Is the survey booked before the demolition date? After it is not a survey, it is a discovery.
- Is removal in the quote, excluded, or a provisional sum, and who signs off an overrun?
- Who gives WorkSafe the five days' notice, and does the programme show those five days?
- Who arranges clearance, who pays, and who holds the certificate?
- Is the site measure scheduled after the strip-out and after the linings are stopped?
- Will the electrician issue a Certificate of Compliance, and is a switchboard inspection likely?
Frequently asked questions
Do I need an asbestos survey before a kitchen renovation in Glen Innes or Panmure?
If the house was built before 1 January 2000, which covers all the original Tamaki state housing stock, WorkSafe's position is that it may contain asbestos and that the only way to know is to test a sample. Under the Health and Safety at Work (Asbestos) Regulations 2016, a business doing refurbishment or demolition work on a pre-2000 structure must identify asbestos before the work starts, and a full kitchen strip-out is refurbishment. So yes: get a refurbishment survey done by a competent person before anything comes off the wall. If the place is a rental, WorkSafe's landlord guidance says the asbestos should be identified and removed, so far as is reasonably practicable, before the refurbishment begins.
Does stripping out a kitchen count as refurbishment or maintenance under the asbestos rules?
Refurbishment, in almost every case. WorkSafe's test is the primary purpose of the work: maintenance is care and upkeep that keeps a building in working order, while refurbishment is work aimed at changing or upgrading it. Their own illustration is that replacing a window frame with a similar one is maintenance, but converting that window into a ranch slider is refurbishment. Pulling an entire kitchen out to install a different one is plainly a change and an upgrade, so the identification duty applies.
Can I pull up the old vinyl and the black glue underneath it myself?
A homeowner working on their own home is not in the same position as a business, but WorkSafe advises strongly against working on asbestos materials without specialist training and says sampling should be done by a reputable contractor. Where a business does the work: up to 10 square metres of non-friable material may be removed unlicensed, more than that needs a licensed removalist, and friable material needs a Class A licence in any quantity. You cannot divide a large area into 10 square metre sections to dodge the licence. Vinyl tiles and their adhesives are on WorkSafe's list of home materials that commonly contain asbestos, so test first.
Do I need a building consent to replace a kitchen in an ex-state house?
A like-for-like kitchen swap usually does not need one. Schedule 1 of the Building Act 2004 covers repair and replacement of an existing sanitary fixture such as a sink where a comparable component goes back in the same position, and certain alterations to existing sanitary plumbing by an authorised person where the number of sanitary fixtures is not increased and no specified system is affected. Move the sink, alter structure, or change the layout in a way that engages the Building Code and that can need a consent and an LBP. Confirm your job with Auckland Council before you order anything.
How long does an ex-state house kitchen take, from the first call to a working bench?
The install itself is the predictable part: a single kitchen goes in over five to seven days. Everything ahead of it is the variable, running roughly rough scope, price back inside 24 hours, survey, strip-out, rough-in, linings made good, site measure, then manufacture and install. If the survey finds asbestos needing a licensed removalist, add the five days' written notice WorkSafe requires before removal starts, the removal, and the clearance. Those days run in sequence, not in parallel, which is why the survey belongs at the front of the programme.
Getting a real number for a Tamaki kitchen
You do not need drawings to get a number. Send the address, a rough sketch or a couple of photos with a tape in shot, and what you want to end up with. A trade-priced supply-and-install figure comes back inside 24 hours, plus GST. Holding a couple of units on the same street? Send the count and the spec and we will price the run rather than the one-off.
MTN manufactures in its own workshop in East Tamaki, close enough to Panmure that a callback is a van trip rather than an event, and turns out ten-plus kitchens a week. Twenty-three years, 2,000-plus kitchens, Site Safe qualified, and the work goes through head contractors like Spencer Henshaw, so the compliance side is familiar ground rather than a novelty. Supply and install sit under one contract and one invoice: no showroom margin in the number, and no gap between the person who measured it and the crew who fits it. On a 1950s house, that gap is where the excuses live.