Hi, I'm Michael Bell. From my workshop in Somerville I make kitchens, wardrobes and one-off joinery for homes across the Mornington Peninsula - and I'm the one on the tools, and the one on the phone.
Bellbird Building is me, Michael, and a small crew I've worked with for years. I take on a handful of jobs at a time so I can stay across every one of them. The person who comes out to measure up is the person who turns up to fit it.
What I will do is treat your project like I'd treat work on my own house. Done properly, on time, to the number we agreed.
Hand-built joinery from my workshop in Somerville. Spotted gum, oak veneer, painted MDF — drawn at the bench, made at the bench, fitted by the same set of hands. Nothing gets sent out and comes back not quite right.
Decks, pergolas and the internal joinery that finishes a room. Proper carpentry, not handyman jobs. If it has to last 30 years, it will.
Fifteen years on the Peninsula means a phone full of plumbers, sparkies, tilers, plasterers and stonemasons I actually trust. When your kitchen needs more than cabinetry to come together, I'll bring them in and stay across them, so you're not the one chasing five trades for a start date. One number, one person responsible.
Photos from jobs across the Peninsula and south-east. Want to see more? Ask me when we chat.
Somerville workshop
I started Bellbird Building in 2011, after years on the tools learning from builders I respected. The whole idea was simple. Run jobs the way I'd want one run on my own house. Pick up the phone when it rings. Finish what I start.
Every piece starts the same way. I measure the room myself, draw it up, and build it on the bench in Somerville - spotted gum, oak veneer, painted MDF, whatever the room is asking for. Then I come back and fit it. The person who took the measurements is the person who hangs the doors, which is why they line up.
I live on the Peninsula with my wife and kids. Most of my work comes from people who've had me through their place, or a neighbour who watched the job go up next door. That's the way I like it.
"Michael made every cabinet in our kitchen and fitted the lot himself. Three years on, every door still shuts the way it did the day he hung it. Nothing's moved, nothing's cracked. We'd have him back tomorrow."
Tell me what you're thinking. The more detail the better. Sketches, Pinterest boards, a rough idea on the back of an envelope, all welcome. I'll come back to you within two business days.
A client wanted somewhere in the corner of their office to sit down with customers. We worked the design out together - how many people, how long they'd be sitting there, how much floor it could take up.
It's a proper curve, not a few straight runs cut on the mitre. Base is Polytec Florentine Walnut, back is channel-stitched in Warwick Eastwood tan. Getting the flutes even round a curve is the fiddly part. They want to bunch up as the radius tightens, so they get set out before anything is cut.
It wraps a round marble table on a timber pedestal. All fixed, all level. There's a power point in the end of the base so nobody's running a lead across the floor.
A kitchen for a family in Mornington, with a butler's pantry behind it.
Fronts are Polytec Blossom White, benchtops are YDL Kalala Bianco. I ran the same stone through to the pantry so the two rooms sit together. Sink and induction cooktop in the main bench. Ovens stacked in a tall bank at the end, which keeps the drawer run underneath unbroken. The LED strip under the overheads points at the splashback. Aim it down at the bench and a white kitchen goes flat the minute it's dark.
The pantry does the hard work. Second sink, deep drawers for the appliances that'd otherwise live on the bench, and shelves you can move as things change. On the way through there's a display cabinet built into the wall, glass fronts, same stone and same doors as the kitchen.
A deck and a front ramp in Mount Eliza, so the whole ground floor could be got to on wheels.
Karri right through. It's hard, it's dense, and it handles the weather down here. The ramp comes up off the driveway to the front door on a long slow run, with an aluminium plate at the bottom so there's no lip for a castor to catch. Boards run the way you travel - quieter to roll over, and less to sweep out of the gaps.
Out the back the deck sits level with the door and carries on down the side of the house, past the spa, boards running out flush to the surround. One level the whole way. Nothing to step over between the back door and the garden.
Three pieces for a bathroom under a raked ceiling - vanity, shaving cabinet, towel cabinet.
The vanity is wall-hung, Polytec Florentine Walnut with a Stone Ambassador Firtina top. Drawers instead of doors, so nothing disappears out the back. They're cut around the basin waste, which is where the time goes on a job like this. Get it wrong and you've got two drawers that open halfway. Basin is a Robert Gordon vessel with the taps off the wall, so the top stays clear.
The shaving cabinet above runs the full width of the vanity and goes up to meet the slope. Towel cabinet on the far wall is the same walnut and the same stone, hung off the floor so you can get a mop underneath.
