Kowhai Guy - Graeme & Deb Howie

I’m Graeme Howie, co owner of Cleanlines DecoratingandProperty Maintenance Ltd with my wife Deb. We are proud to have been your ‘Kowhai Guys’ for the Southland Region for the last 5 years.

With 30 years experience as a painter/decorator in New Zealand, Australia and the UK I have had an interesting and varied career.

While in Sydney I met Deb who actually started as my business partner. We undertook numerous jobs from painting new buildings to repaints of Historical terrace houses in Paddington Sydney. One of the last houses I painted in Paddington was for the 6th Earl of Stradbroke who on completion of his house asked if we would like to paint on his estate in Suffolk, England. Well of course we said yes but were a bit shocked when we arrived on the estate to find that there were 200 cottages waiting for us. After 2 years on the estate (no we didn’t paint them all) we returned to Australia and settled in Port Macquarie, NSW for 5 years after which we returned to New Zealand just as everybody else seemed to be leaving.