Due to the damage caused to the building we take the fabric of the building back to the brick work, along with replacing some key timber joists. We had to increase the strength of some original timbers to support our 21st century apartments and the increase in weigh that would cause. We endeavoured to keep the solid internal walls erected to minimise cost and time, and then create the footprint of each apartment with stud work that was then fire boarded.
Each apartment had new electrics, new plumbing and we installed new kitchens, bathrooms and flooring throughout. We also had to tackle the lobby area and refuse space by fire boarding these, plus installing a new frontage that was passed by the local council heritage department.
Due to these apartments being on the rental market we had to comply with the fire regulations so a new AOV was installed along with a wired fire alarm system that fed back to a central panel. So we had to appease the local fire department, heritage department and conservation office so we could pass the discharge of conditions set by the planning department, a private building control and then council appointed building control team and then letting agent had a few pieces of advice that would help the spaces rent faster such as including white goods.
This project was a huge learning curve and we had some massive bumps along the way such as our building control team stepping away from us weeks before the project ended, fire and water damage that was uncovered once we removed the flooring, we have encountered cluster flies, spontaneous opening of the AOV during a rain storm – this is to name a few!
But you can see the end result was well worth all the hard work
