In this episode of Shed Life we talk to Reon Paterson, master franchisor of Smith and Sons in New Zealand, qualified builder, and a bloke who told us about the time he broke his fibula pig hunting in the Far North while being swarmed by hundreds of wasps. We cover 30 years in the building industry, an OE in London, and what Reon thinks is genuinely broken about the way most homeowners approach renovation projects.

Reon opened up with the pig hunting story, which is worth the listen on its own. He and three others were coming out of the bush on Waitangi weekend when one of them stepped straight into a wasp nest. Two ran downhill. Reon turned to run uphill, caught his foot wrong, and cracked his fibula. The wasps hit him anyway, about twenty stings by the time he crawled clear. A 16-year-old towny kid on his first ever hunt had to navigate out through the paddocks with a GPS unit to get help. The kid copped a couple of electric fence whacks and got chased by a mob of steers along the way. They came back with a side-by-side, drove Reon to Kaikohe Hospital, and he went back to the farm for the barbecue after.

We then go back to where it all started. Reon grew up on a sheep and beef farm near Tikui, went to school in Patea, and in 1994 did a student exchange in a small town in Colorado. The school told him he would not be graduating so he could just pick a couple of classes and enjoy himself. He came back a year later with an American accent without realising it. His family sorted that out quickly.

His apprenticeship ran from 1994 to 1998 in South Auckland under a builder named Ron Booker. Reon talks about how different it was back then, doing their own concreting, insulation, and roofing on every job, and how that made for a better grounding than what most apprentices get now. Booker also gets credit for predicting the leaky homes crisis years before it happened, telling young Reon that one day he would just drive around with a silicon gun stopping buildings from leaking.

After finishing his apprenticeship Reon headed to London for five years. He and a mate named Richard Sullivan overstayed their working holiday visas and started a company called Two Guys Construction. They printed some brochures, got on mountain bikes with saws and levels sticking out of their backpacks, and posted flyers through the letterboxes of houses in Chelsea and Fulham. The phone rang. They went from a Suzuki Rascal van to a Ford Escort panel van and made good money doing fitted wardrobes and small renovations for people in expensive suburbs.

Back in New Zealand from 2004, a cold call in 2011 got Reon into Smith and Sons. He bought the Takapuna territory, became one of their most successful franchises, and eventually bought out both the North Island and South Island businesses to become master franchisor for New Zealand.

A big part of the conversation covers design and build, which is Reon Paterson's main passion in the industry. His argument is that the traditional path of going to an architect first, spending $20,000 on working drawings, and tendering to three builders competing on price is a process designed to produce cost blowouts. Builders under pressure to win work leave things out and low-ball allowances, and the problems start the moment you break ground. Reon's approach is to get the builder involved at concept stage, produce scaled drawings for around $5,000, price those honestly, and give clients a real feasibility number before serious money is on the table.