Ask what makes Tech Design/Build & Remodeling Inc. unique in Rhode Island’s construction industry, and Ray Silva tells you a story:
A woman entered the company’s showroom, Greenville Kitchens & Baths, two years ago to browse the display of cabinets. The woman told Silva she planned to build a house.
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“I asked her if she had a design, and she said, ‘No,’” recalled Silva, the company’s vice president and lead design consultant.
“I asked her if she had a contractor, and she said, ‘No,’” he said.
“One thing led to another and before you know it I’m designing her house, her kitchen, and everything else – and then we started building it.”
And that is what makes the company unique. Customers find interior fixtures, design plans and contractor services under one roof. It is a rare combination of offerings that has evolved since entrepreneur John Anderson started the design firm to complement his insurance reconstruction business in 1983.
Until 1992, the company offered only design and remodeling services. Silva said he was designing new kitchens and bathrooms, determining exactly what cabinets and other building materials were needed, and ordering them from other businesses.
“We were farming the business out to other cabinet companies,” Silva said. “So I said, ‘Why don’t we open our own kitchen showroom.’”
So began Greenville Kitchens & Baths, housed in the same plaza as Tech Design/Build & Remodeling. On display in the cozy showroom are model kitchens featuring a variety of cabinets, sinks, countertops, tiles, etc.
The expansion of services is also a byproduct of employees’ talents; take interior designer Gloria Arteaga, for example. She does three-dimensional pencil drawings of new kitchens, which enables the company to show customers what they are buying before breaking ground. (Tech also uses computer-assisted drafting software to provide simpler renderings.)
By chance, the company began offering interior-decoration services in 1996 – that was the year Cheryl Ann Sibilla, an interior decorator, went to Greenville Kitchens & Baths to find cabinets for her new home in Smithfield. Since then, Sibilla, who has her own private decorating business, has worked part time at Greenville, where she helps customers choose color schemes and decorations.
With a growing reputation leading to referrals for jobs from New Hampshire to Baltimore, Tech Design/Build & Remodeling is poised to cash in on Rhode Island’s booming renovation business. During the past year, remodeling projects surpassed new home construction as the largest segment of the construction industry in the state, Silva said.
The firm is busier than ever. Last year it completed about 75 projects, ranging from simple kitchen designs to $100,000 and $1-million remodeling projects. Sales soared to an estimated $2 million.
Business also has improved despite the 2002 opening of a Home Depot – which sells kitchen and bathroom furnishings as well as designs – off Route 44, within a few miles of Greenville Kitchens & Baths.
“One of the best things they ever did was put a Home Depot over there,” Silva said, “because people go in there to get their kitchens designed and 15 minutes later they come down here. We fix the designs, and sell it to them. Everyone was nervous at first, but I think Home Depot has been a benefit to us.”
Another boon for business is consumers’ desire for high-quality building materials in their kitchens and bathrooms.
“Granite countertops are probably the No. 1 countertops right now,” Silva said. “Even in low-end kitchens, granite countertops are going in.”
Sibilla and Arteaga added that customers seldom hesitate to spend extra money to outfit their kitchens with $800 copper sinks and stone tiles costing as much as $100 each.
Tech Design’s reputation has gained acclaim in trade publications such as Qualified Remodelers Magazine, which recently placed the company on its list of “America’s Top 500 Remodelers” for the fifth time.
“The one thing people like about us is we’re a one-stop shop,” Silva said. “You can come here, get a design, get it built, and then you’re done – you deal with one company.”
