Peppers Beach Club, Port Douglas: 46 apartments, refurbished around their guests

Stage by stage over three years, and the resort never closed

The refurbishment started with a two-room trial in February 2021 and ran in stages until March 2024. Aizer Group ran the 2021 and 2022 stages, McDas Projects & Joinery ran Stage 4 over the turn of 2022 and 2023, and Accor engaged us directly for follow-up work on three rooms in 2023 and 2024. Across all of it, around 46 lock-off apartments were done.

Peppers stayed open the whole time. Stages went in blocks of four to six apartments, each finished in a week or two, with guests in the rooms either side. The rule on site was no noise before 9:30 in the morning.

What went into the rooms

• New lighting through each apartment: LED downlights, plus the pendants and surface fittings chosen by the designers
• Switching consolidated and simplified, so a guest can find the light they want
• Television points moved to suit new joinery and wall-mounted TVs
• Dual USB power points at the bedsides and benches
• LED downlights in every refurbished bathroom
• On Stage 4: a four-spot light over the hallway, power, data and TV cabling behind new joinery, low voltage shelf lighting, a feature pendant over the dining table, and power extended behind a new, wider bedhead

The small problems that decide a room

Joinery is designed on paper and fitted on site, and the two rarely match to the millimetre. On Stage 4 a TV point had to move 300mm to clear a new cabinet panel, and in six rooms the fridge power point was moved so the new cabinet doors would close. The bedhead switching had to go in inside a narrow window, before a bedhead nearly three metres wide was fixed over the top of it.

None of that is visible to a guest, which is the point. The electrician on a room refurbishment is the trade most likely to find out that something does not fit, and the one best placed to fix it before the next trade arrives.