Construction and design company earns national awards

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The awards are a feather in the cap for Paine, who took over her father Ian’s Kelowna construction company. It was Ian who built the home for the clients who later hired Krista to complete the more than $1M renovation of a new home that earned IPC and Design the Gold award.

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“This was the biggest renovation job we ever received from a past customer,” Krista says. “They sold the house my dad had built and moved into a showhome in a prestigious neighbourhood in Kelowna. After five years, they wanted to make the home their own. They had already awarded the design to a local firm and reached out to my dad to do the build. When they found out my dad had retired, they called me and awarded us the project. They put their trust in us, and we’re extremely appreciative of what we were able to do for them.”

Regionally, IPC was named the 2020 Residential Renovator of the Year from the CHBA’s Okanagan Housing Excellence Awards (formerly The Tommies) and earned Best Renovation ($250-$500K), Best Interior Design (Renovation), Best Kitchen Design ($75K and under), and Best Bathroom Design (one for under $40K and another over $40K).

The company also picked up four gold Tommie Awards in 2019.

Paine started in the industry working with her father on construction sites. After graduating from the Interior Design Program at the BC Institute of Technology, she worked in Vancouver as a kitchen designer and later as a project manager for a high-end woodworking manufacturer in both Maple Ridge and Kelowna. After the birth of her daughter, Paine joined her father’s company with the premise that she would undergo two years of training before taking over.

“My dad ended up training me for four months before retiring to Costa Rica,” Paine says. It was around that time that IPC won a gold Okanagan Housing Award of Excellence (former Tommie Awards) for single-family detached home $1M to $1.5M.

The company is also known to have built the most expensive home in the Okanagan so far. The Lake Country residence recently sold for $12 million.

Not one to rest on her laurels, Paine attained her Red Seal Carpentry accreditation a year after purchasing Ian Paine Construction and Design.

“I wanted some more credibility. People were looking at my male counterparts for information, and I thought I could answer those questions easily. Getting my Red Seal gave me more confidence, and it helped to do the program with an instructor who was able to work with my schedule as a business owner and single mother. I was the first female trained by my instructor ever to pass the Red Seal exam,” says Paine, adding she is proud to see more women making a name for themselves in the building industry.

As an internationally renowned designer, Paine recently helped develop the new computer based exam for the Canadian National Council for Interior Design and was a guest and speaker at an international furniture design forum in Malaysia.