After completing the #fitout at Earth to Roots, I pretty much moved straight onto this job, around September 2023. The previous tenant had been a Bubble Tea shop, and it was absolutely filthy!
This sweep shows the upstairs of the old shop. The white patches on the wall are where I removed several mirrors, the mirrors were stuck to the wall with adhesive and had to be smashed off. Here is a tip: don't do what I did, and try to use a heat gun to soften the adhesive. The mirror still needed smashing, and guess what? Now it was a hot mirror, so I was being showered by shards and particles of hot glass. That was the first of several unpleasant tasks in this stagnant, grease coated dive.
#Demolition is not that interesting to write about, so suffice it to say, everything you see was smashed out and removed, by me alone. I then began setting out for the stud-work.
Because there was enough space, I decided to construct the #timber #frames on the floor first. Furthermore, the rear wall is directly adjacent to a stairwell, meaning that lifting in full size #plasterboard would have been nearly impossible once #constructed. The rear wall had to be pre-boarded before lifting. Now this I couldn't do on my own, this is where my assistant, David, comes in, late as usual! Here's a picture of David posing in a #doorframe I made up on another job:
Before erecting this framework, I had to remove a lot of plumbing, and electrical fixtures, wiring, etc. It is important, when performing these tasks, that the relevant utilities are properly isolated. This means turning off power at the consumer unit, and water at the stopcock.
Now the rest of the plasterboard had to be fitted to both sides of the #studwalls, but first, #door frames must be installed. If you don't follow this process, you end up with inaccurate #cuts on the board around the doorway, and a more difficult frame install. Here are some pictures of the plaster-boarding:
After the boarding comes the #plastering, but in the meantime, we have electrics to go in. when working on #site you need to know the process; you board up one side of the walls, and leave the other side open, for the #plumbers and #electricians to do their bit. After they have been, you can see where the plugs will be, and where the pipes will come out. Most electricians will leave a hooped wire to show you where to cut the board to let the wire come through. In this case the plumber was me, so I installed the drainage and hot and cold feeds for a small #handbasin that would be in the room. Things didn't quite work out to order and there was a long wait for the electrician, so we cut in all the boards, and fixed them temporarily. The ceiling was over three meters high so it was all hard work. Whilst we waited on the electrician we concentrated on #prepping the walls for #painting, and installing a #kitchen downstairs, plenty of drainage and plumbing to do for that....
I don't have any images of the downstairs, because at this stage it was a grease infested nightmare, and all the work undertaken was very basic, not really worth showing off at all. it was a straight kitchen across one wall, and lots of #MDF boxing to cover up the #drainage and #plumbing work I did, using h.e.p pipe and 40mm grey waste tubing. Not very eye catching. So lets move on to plastering...
When it comes to plastering, staging is very important! Some plasterers use stilts, but these have been banned on large sites, obviously anything goes on private jobs but we, at E.H.S, try to be as safe as possible. I the first video I am plastering over a stairwell, this made the total height more than 5 meters at one point. In order to get over this I constructed a temporary floor over the stairwell, leaving enough space to access the basement level. We then set the ladder on this platform, and one on the top of the stairs, spanning the gap with #scaffolding #boards. This is far from ideal or safe, but because of my experience on site, I was able to deal with this circus act! we used the same setup inside the room, in the second video, but it was far better. when plastering, preparation is very important. The plasterboard must be securely fixed to the #studwork, plenty of #drywall #screws, driven just under the surface of the board, and not further. all joints should be covered with scrim tape. Joins should be "broken" when fixing multiple runs of board in vertical levels, to increase the strength of seams. This is achieved by staggering the boards so the joins of one row are on a different mullion to the joins of another. A mullion is an upright timber in stud-work. This practice is most crucial when fixing plasterboard to ceilings. There is a lot more to be said about preparing different backgrounds, and mixing plaster, but I think that's enough for now. Lets move on...
On the left is a giant leap forward to when we had painted the walls, assembled some #Ikea #shelving, and #fabricated a #counter on site. On the right you can see, prior to this, the unfinished counter, and unpainted walls. The counter-top was #reclaimed from the previous counter, and I had to join it in the middle, and cut it to size. This I did with biscuit joins and wood glue. The joins must be firmly clamped, for the specified term depending on the glue. I used sash clamps to achieve this.
When reclaiming a worktop in this way, it is important to remove any finish from the surface. There are several ways to do this, but in this case, economy was important so we used the belt sander. Subsequent sanding with a mouse sander and orbital #sander, bought the worktop up to finishing standards.
Alright we are drawing to the end of the #project! next up is the sign #construction, this being the greatest challenge, and the last task of all.
O.k so this was a major work. On the floor you can see the massive frame, just under 4.8 meters long. On the trestle stands, you can see the two halves of the sign, each one is a full Tricoya Medite MDF board, with a 45 degree cut to the short edge, being the joining edge. They have been pre-primed to prepare them before #installation, and protect them until they are painted by the sign painter. Next problem was getting the sign up and installed. I initially hoped to fix the #wooden frame to exiting metal #framework that was uncovered behind the old sign. There was an issue with this as we found the framework to be badly compromised upon close inspection. We removed this frame and located the ancient timbers behind. these were solidly fixed. so we lifted the frame and fixed to these timbers, using screws and steel brackets. after that we had to fix the two halves of the #sign, screwing them to the timber frame, and using PGB Adhesive to secure the boards to the timber frame. All in all it was a drama that goes far beyond this explanation, and the end result was admirable, if I do say so myself. At this point I got to shout out Kemar, the proprietor of Power Herbs, for not being scared to get stuck in and lifting these heavy and cumbersome components into place with me. Also Sign and Print from down the road needs a shout out for hiring their staging to us. We finished installing the sign at about 7.45pm on the day of its install, and we were knackered, but relieved. There were several hairy moments along the journey, but we prevailed!!
And there it is, you wouldn't be able to tell it was fixed in two halves from the photo. That is due to some tricky work with two part filler, sanding, up and down a ladder, done by me the day after the install. After this the sign painter came and finished the job (see below).
All that remains is for me to show you a video of the interior when the job was almost done, and encourage you to pay a visit to, in my opinion, one of the greatest, if not the greatest, herbal apothecary in the whole of London city. Goodbye!
Here is the video of the interior near the end of the job:
The painted sign and exterior (not painted by E.H.S):
Go on and search Power Herbs on Google, pay them a visit!