The Construction Source

DECEMBER 2020 So for us to come into a category with such beautiful homes, to compete with the best of the best, and to go up on stage and grab that award – it means a huge amount to us.” The award-winning home was actually Derek’s own home, which he conceived and built from the ground-up with his family in mind. He says that adds even more meaning to the award win. Though Derek was involved in the design from the very conception, the actual plans were drawn by Chris McNeil of Motivo Design Group, a local designer and design company that DNM frequently works with on their residential projects. “His style and our style jibe really well,” Derek says. “We start chatting, the ideas start flowing, and by the end a really amazing product always comes out.” On Derek’s own homes, one challenge was his own high expectations – he says he’s worked on so many interesting homes with so many cool finishes, and he wasn’t going to let the opportunity pass without realizing as many of them as he could for himself. Another challenge, Derek adds, was his relatively large family – he’s married with four kids, and his wife wanted bedrooms for all four kids, and she wanted them all on the same floor. “Those were our biggest challenges,” he says. “But I think we came out with an absolutely gorgeous house that suits our family really well. In every single room, there’s something head- turning, there’s a detail that really stands out.” As examples, he cites the 20- foot ceiling in the foyer, and the heavy timber stairwell leading upstairs –“right off the hop,” he says, “people are almost in awe of the whole thing.” The living room, meanwhile, is sunken – an older style that’s coming back – with a multi- sided fireplace connecting it to the deck outside, enabling seamless indoor-outdoor living. Out on that (covered) deck, there’s an outdoor kitchen, a mounted TV, and a full living area. “We love the house,” Derek says. “If we had to do it again, we’d build the exact same one in a heartbeat.” Moving forward, that’s the kind of glowing feedback DNM Enterprises wants to continue earning from clients. They also want to keep their clients and project diverse, and for the next two to three years at least, they will – they currently have a pipeline that long that includes custom homes, spec houses, commercial offices, and multi-family and mixed use developments. According to Derek, DNM’s work in the multi-family and mixed use sector is particularly exciting, because he sees those as the future of Kamloops. “People are condensing more into the downtown core,” he explains. “They want more urban lifestyles. They want to be able to walk home from work to their building, for their building to have all the necessary amenities in it, and they want their building to be withinwalking distance of all the fun stuff downtown. Those are some of the projects we have coming. That’s very exciting to us.”