The St Ferrer Impact Build 2026 brought together the St Ferrer team and project partners to transform the home of one Melbourne family experiencing hardship. What was originally planned as a simple exterior refurbishment grew into a whole-home renovation, delivered in just one day.
At 5:15 pm, there was still a couch being assembled in Angelina’s lounge room. Around the house, tools were frantically being packed away. Painting touch-ups were continuing. The last of the landscaping was being finished outside. 15 minutes later, Angelina and her children were due back.
It had been 11 and a half hours since the St Ferrer team arrived that morning, and the house they were about to walk into looked very different from the one they had left. More than 80 people had worked across the property that day. 40 Impact Partners had contributed to the project. Bedrooms, bathrooms, the kitchen, living spaces and exterior had all been worked on. Outside, hundreds of square metres of landscaping had changed the way the family could use the property.
What started out as a lick of paint on the outside of a house turned into so much more for one Melbourne family.
When The St Ferrer Impact Build was first imagined, St Ferrer Director Chris Bertacco described the idea as a traditional Australian working bee. The thinking was simple: use the skills already within St Ferrer and its network to do something tangible for someone who needed support. Paint a house and tidy the garden. Get a group of people together and leave the property better than they found it.
After several years of fundraising, St Ferrer wanted to do something where the connection between giving and its impact was much closer. Then came 97 nominations for the recipient of The St Ferrer Impact Build.
Angelina had lived in her home for 11 years. When she bought it, she saw a house with potential and a big backyard where she imagined her future children playing. As the years passed, maintenance began to build up and became increasingly difficult for her to manage.
“Everything kind of just got on top of me and life happened,” Angelina recalled. With one income and three children to raise, the work she once imagined completing gradually moved further out of reach. The house continued to fall into disrepair.
When St Ferrer began inspecting the property, it quickly became clear that there was an opportunity to do much more than paint the exterior and work on the garden.
One Thing Led to Another
The lounge room showed just how much the generosity of our partners could expand the impact of the project. An old gas heater was affecting the layout of the room. Removing it opened up the possibility of changing the window. A new window then made a wall-to-wall entertainment and storage unit possible. But none of it could happen independently.
As Peter Kendall, St Ferrer’s Construction Operations Manager, put it: “It just all led one thing to another.”
Once Atlas Windows and Doors committed to the new window, the rest of the idea started to come together. Trades could rebuild the wall, and the old heater could go. A new entertainment unit from Connected Spaces could give the family considerably more storage. Peter saw the lounge room as the biggest single change to the house because of the number of separate contributions needed to make it happen.
The same thing happened elsewhere. In the boys’ bedroom, the existing beds were positioned in a way that meant the room could not properly accommodate a bedroom door. The answer became a custom-built double bunk, designed and fabricated to use the room differently and give the boys more usable space.
Then the kitchen grew into a project of its own. Elite Commercial Joinery fabricated a new kitchen off-site so it could be installed as part of the main Build Day. St Ferrer Director Daniel Burmeister later reflected that the finished kitchen might look like something completed in a day, but much of the work that made that possible had happened well beforehand.
As more partners offered their help, the question kept changing from what do we need to do? to what else can we do for this family? Heating and cooling were added by Air Systems Engineering. JB Hi-Fi and The Good Guys generously donated appliances. Toilets were replaced by DLR Plumbing. Doors and windows were repaired. Landscaping expanded.
The house itself was even locally re-levelled beneath the lounge, dining and laundry areas when the team discovered the extent of the floor movement. It had grown well beyond the original working bee.
The Day Before the Day
Calling it a one-day transformation does not mean everything began at 6:00 am on Friday. For that day to work, the week beforehand had to be carefully sequenced.
Asbestos was removed separately, and electrical preparation was undertaken while access and power could be controlled. The exterior and decks were washed, ready for painting on the Build Day. Lawns were mowed in advance, so fresh paint would not be affected by flying debris.
Cabinetry, appliances and benchtops were delivered. Floor protection by Protecta went down, and belongings and furniture were moved. That preparation meant the property was ready for dozens of people to arrive at once and start moving.
Peter described coordinating the day as a matter of making sure every major contributor knew exactly what they were there to do before they arrived. At 6:00 am on Friday 21 August, the St Ferrer team was on site. At 7:00 am, the wider group gathered for the pre-start. And then almost every part of the property became a work zone.
At one stage, more than 50 people were working outside. Around 15 were in the lounge room. Across the project were carpenters, electricians, plumbers, painters, joiners and landscapers, along with supplier representatives and volunteers.
Daniel had a fitting description for it: “The most organised chaos I’ve ever seen.”
There were moments that captured what the project had become. Crafted Cladding and Construction and Castle Carpentry and Cladding, two businesses that would ordinarily compete for work, found themselves side by side rebuilding the lounge room wall and installing the new window.
Elsewhere, people whose contributions would never appear in the finished photographs were making the day possible. Fetch Recruitment provided site managers to help cover St Ferrer’s other active projects so team members could be released for the Impact Build.
The Scale of the Transformation
There are plenty of numbers that describe what happened. 40 Impact Partners, more than 80 people on site, 139m² of interior renovation and 822m² of landscaping.
There was a new kitchen. Three new split systems. Two new toilets. A new hot water system by Powerbay. New appliances and furniture. Fifty-four native plants from Bunnings. Seven large skip bins worth of material removed from the property by Rhino Bins.
Inside Before & After
Outside Before & After
Finishing Properly
After Build Day, two St Ferrer Site Managers volunteered their own time over the weekend to complete final painting touch-ups. St Ferrer arranged nearby accommodation for Angelina and her family on Saturday night while those final works continued.
On Monday morning, Impact Partner Cleanaux returned for a full deep clean of the property. Renovation dust was removed, rooms were reset and the house was prepared for the family to properly move back in that afternoon.
The point was never simply to stop when the photographs looked finished but to give the house back as a home.
40 Partners Asked How They Could Help
The scale of the first St Ferrer Impact Build ultimately came down to how many people were prepared to say yes. Some supplied products and others gave labour and brought equipment. The wider community contributed $3,550 through GoFundMe.
Peter said the response from St Ferrer’s existing contractors revealed something the business had perhaps underestimated about its own relationships. Almost everyone they approached wanted to help.
For Daniel, the significance of those contributions was simple. Nobody involved should underestimate what their time meant to Angelina and her family.
What began as a plan to paint a house and work on a garden became a renovation that reached every part of Angelina’s home. It took months of planning, a week of preparation at the home, 40 Impact Partners and one very long Friday to bring it together.
The result is something Angelina and her children will live with long after Build Day is over. Before the build, Angelina had described walking through the house and seeing another problem wherever she looked. Afterwards, she saw something different.
“Everywhere I look, I feel like it’s a home now. It’s a real home, the kids are safe, the dog’s safe. I couldn’t ask for anything more.”
A heartfelt thank you to everyone involved in our first St Ferrer Impact Build. We look forward to bringing this initiative back to the community in 2027. If you would like to be notified when nominations or partner opportunities open again, please contact the St Ferrer team.
