The choice to build the new studio / dem room / office (OK, from here on in it’s going to be DR3) could only be taken once several factors had been addressed.
Being in the building for 35+ years, we knew what needed to be updated, and non of them were small jobs, and a fair few I could not contemplate doing by myself.
It’s a tall / high building, with a ‘lantern roof’ that had fallen to the ravages of age.
The roof itself, being corrugated sheet, had started to become very porous, and several leaks had been repaired by myself from the inside.
The gutters simply did not work as they should, so the walls, although very (very!) thick, were constantly damp, and during winter, damage was occuring to the brick face. Victorian bricks were not fired at temperatures that we can do today, so are somewhat fragile, from face to centre.
So first off, the guttering was totally replaced front and back.
The next year, the yard side of the roof was fully sorted.
8 Months later, the road side of the roof was fully sorted.
That left the inside, finally, in a position to be kept dry and, hopefully, warmer. The ‘warmer’ part was important, as it consumed huge amounts of gas and electricty doing just that, as well as lighting it all.
We needed a toilet upstairs, and access to to what was to become the loft ‘void’ so that is where we began this part of the journey.
What was the floor to the new toilet was basically 3/4 chipboard that was all but rotted through, and need replacing totally, and also steel joist added below as it would need to support what was to become the loft floor. That meant big heavy duty pillars being built first, to sit those joists on, down on the warehouse floor.
