New website

The new website is up and running now at www.reedspharmacy.co.uk. There will be a few things to add to it, and I can't quite blog there yet but I'll pick it up over there as soon as I can.

Thanks for following so far. See you at www.reedspharmacy.co.uk!

The new website

Advance notice - we've seen the new website, and it's looking very good. Our designers are just putting the finishing touches to it, then we'll announce the address and this blog will continue there.

The response to the new Globe has exceeded all our hopes and expectations and the chief challenge we face now is keeping it looking good. There are a lot of shelves to dust, but fortunately Debbie is a fanatical cleaner and is only too happy to grab a duster and the glass cleaner. Unfortunately she also believes that bleach is one of mankind's greatest inventions and we have to remind her that not all surfaces respond well to chlorinated chemicals. Children, for example, tend to lose their shine if they're scrubbed with Domestos.

As we've said - watch this space.

A fortnight on...

Things are going very well. We've had a huge number of very positive comments about our rebuild and the way we've kept the character of the building.

There have been three criticisms that I'll try to deal with now.

1. It's the other side of the road. Yes, it is. Moving it wasn't an option so we rebuilt it where The Globe was.
2. There's no parking. Again, undoubtedly true. But there wasn't at our own shop. There are drop-off areas for most of the day in front of us and a half-hour parking area in Edward Street. City premises just don't come with car parking now.
3. You haven't got a big neon green cross. It's a listed building in a conservation area, so the scope for signage is very limited. We have a traditional signwriter painting signs for us but he has very limited access during the week so it's taking a bit of time.

Our new website is almost ready, so as soon as we have an address to announce I'll post it here.

As far as the flats are concerned, the builder thinks it will be about five weeks before we're ready to decorate, so they should be ready at the end of September or early October.

We're open!

There are still a few things to sort out like phone lines and computer networks, but we're up and running! Feel free to visit. Bring plenty of cash - you're sure to see something you'd like.

The Last Farewell

If all goes to plan, this should be our last weekend at the old premises before we cross the road. There are still a number of teething problems to sort out, mainly involving phones and computers, but the team are on it and we have to trust them to sort it all out in the end.

We lined up at lunchtime for a last picture in front of number 10, for which we will retain a lot of affection.

From left to right: Debbie, Angela, Gillian, Rachel, Rosemary and Heather. You'll see them all in the new place.

Counting down

The shopfitters are cutting, nailing, sticking and sawing at pace and assure me that they will be finished by Saturday evening ready for the builders and decorators to return for a last whizz round.

Now that the shelving units are in place and we have toilets fixed to the ground rather than wrapped in large sheets of clingfilm, we can begin to see what the new place will look like. We took our staff for a sneak preview and I think it's fair to say that they are energised at the thought of having a new, clean work environment.

With the new place comes some new ideas. We've always tried to stress our personal service, and we'll do that more over the next few months. We have three completely new ranges of product with which I'm personally very pleased, none of which are currently available in the Truro area.

It's a few years since we last had a shopfit, but I recall that then we had some customers who were worried that we would put up our prices to make them pay for it. That won't be the case. If prices go up, it's because prices are going up everywhere. We will have some slightly more expensive lines because we're looking for some high quality products, but we've also been very pleased with the response to our £1 specials and we'll keep those running when we move. (These are items we can sell for a pound or less, which we may not be able to get again at that price.)

If you've walked past The Globe in the past week or so you may well have seen Stuart, Dave and Chris working late into the evening to get it ready. They tell me they're enjoying being in Truro and that they think you'll be impressed by what you see when the doors open. We hope they're right!

Fitting out

The shopfitters have been hard at work since Monday and already you can see the building taking shape internally. We opted for wooden fittings rather than metal. They're more expensive, but they suit the building better and they can fit awkward little corners. Here's a shot of the dispensary. The front fitting will be behind the counter so we can serve you with medicines by just turning round.

The wheelbarrow is about where one of the tills will be, but there'll be another at the other end of the counter, so we hope to reduce queueing.

The kitchen has had a great amount of work done on it, with new walls, windows, ceilings and floors, and now the units are in place too.

The place is a beehive much of the day, with three shopfitters, painters, electricians, plumbers and a lot of carpenters hard at work, but now we're really moving forward at pace.

I'm not going to give too much detail on this blog from here on, because I don't want to spoil the surprise when we fling the doors open at the end of the month!

Enter the shopfitters

The first part of the downstairs rebuild is pretty well complete now. The carpenters have been replacing any rotten sections of panelling with sympathetic replacements. To make this more effective, some sections have been moved from one room to another, so the café has entirely original panelling, with all the new stuff going into the treatment room.

The electricians have also been busy installing the downstairs lighting.

You can also see the frame for the automatic doors that will greet you when you enter through the double doors. The black padding is only to prevent them being damaged and will be gone soon.

It's hard to believe, but both the builders and the shopfitters agree that the shop and café will be ready on the 22nd. New stock is beginning to arrive so we can make a bit of a splash when we open.

We've awarded a contract for traditional signwriting. The previous signs were made of vinyl and have been difficult to remove - so much so that we've had to put a plywood front on some of the signs - but the new ones will be handpainted, just as they would have been 172 years ago when the Globe was opened.

And now in colour

If you walk past The Globe now you'll see that the exterior has been painted in its new livery of two shades of green. At the same time the painters have been at work on the ceilings inside, and now that the vents have been installed it's looking much more like a finished building.

The water butt is not a feature that will be staying.

The pillar to the right that doesn't reach the ceiling is destined to be the last piece of demolition downstairs, but it is protecting a down pipe.

We're working towards an opening date in late July to give us some time to get new lines in stock once we can have them delivered there. Watch this space for the date!

To infinity and beyond

Well, perhaps not infinity, but certainly up to the roof.

The scaffolders have been to erect the scaffold for all the exterior work, and people have been busy inspecting all the things that they couldn't see clearly before. It's clear that some work needs doing on the roof but the render has proved to be in better nick than was expected given its great age.

There is a slight optical illusion here. The men erecting the scaffold are a normal height, not half the height of the building. They're just nearer the camera.

The interior is moving on apace. It's fascinating to watch the plasterboard being cut and fixed. I almost get the idea I could do it.

Board already

The electricians have moved on for the moment, and James and his lads are now framing and boarding out the cabled areas. This, for example, is the ground floor where the coffee shop will be, now damp-proofed and cabled.

At the other end, the preparation area is taking shape now that the boards have gone up.

Over the weekend the scaffolding will go up to allow the external render to be examined and repaired. Since this has to involve traditional methods, repairs take some time. This is a good point at which to acknowledge the co-operation of our neighbours at Godolphin Chambers and the Wig and Pen, who have kindly allowed us to put scaffolding supports on their land. As I've remarked before, our neighbours on all sides have been extremely helpful in this project and we hope we will be good neighbours to them in our turn. There is certainly a lot of relief locally at discovering that The Globe will no longer be a pub!

The block already has one good pub, and we were delighted to see Tim and Georgie getting a good review in the West Briton this week. It was well deserved, and we'd encourage everyone to try eating there, though preferably not on the nights when we want to go.

The Sound of Silence

The flats are above the pharmacy, so we need to put some fireproofing and sound quilting between the levels to make both parties more comfortable. Now that the electricians have weaved their magic with large quantities of cable, the padding has been going in between the floors.

It won't be long now before the place looks tidier because a lot of the framing will be concealed. We were especially impressed by the gadget in the middle of this picture that allows one person to fix a ceiling panel on his own and keep it perfectly horizontal.

The ducting has now snaked its way up to the roof space.

There's still a lot to do, but you can now see the internal layout a bit more clearly. It's looking more like a pharmacy and coffee shop and less like a derelict pub.

The body electric

A fairly grand way of describing the arrival of an electrician, but we were very pleased to see him. He's been hard at work all week and late into the evening running an awful lot of cables, as you'll see from the picture below, which is one corner of the café area.



You'll spot several generations of bricklaying even in this one area. The portion between the windows appears to be a different age to the part under the window, and the area to the right above the door is different again. Then the section covered in white cement may well be block construction.

This sort of jigsaw puzzle can be seen by the fireplace too.

The chimney breast seems to have had a corner clipped off at some point and it needed to be restored, but you'll see that there was also a channel carved in the wall to the left which was behind the panelling and led to another little fireplace. This had now caved in so the builders removed the debris and filled the holes to reduce the risk of further collapse.

Martyn's team has been doing some work on the lintels and sills so there is now a lot less risk of the windows falling out into the street than has been the case for many a long year. Sometimes when you take a piece of cladding or panelling away the temptation just to put it back must be very strong, but we're trying to do it properly. The Globe has been here for 170 years and we need to put it in shape for the next century.

I get knocked down, but I get up again

It's coming to something when the person who is planning the refit says he's surprised how much has changed since he last looked in.

We had a visit from a Food Safety officer to check the plans for the café met with his approval and I'm pleased to report that broadly they did. In fact he gave some useful advice for a couple of small rearrangements to make it work more efficiently and help to keep it clean.

If you've walked past the front you'll have seen some strange woodwork over some downstairs windows. That is there to stop them falling out. The lintels over them are being replaced from the inside so they are looser in their frames than would normally be the case.

We've had a couple of little hiccups that have disrupted the clockwork planning and it now looks as if we'll be up to a month later opening than we hoped. The saving grace is that the delay is to include improvements. The café is going to be much airier and brighter than we imagined, and that should help to make it a very welcoming place. And, of course, the people we have will be doing their best to make it so.

The Duct Man Cometh

On the assumption that staff and customers would like to breathe from time to time, it becomes necessary to put in some ducting and air exchange machinery, and Saxty Engineering from Perranporth have been on site for the last couple of days helping to make this happen.

I will freely confess that I don't begin to understand the way they work out where ducts have to go, but I can admire the bright, shiny metalwork they are putting in place. Here's a sample from what will be the new disabled toilet.

Any child who enjoyed playing with Meccano will appreciate the fun that having a kit this big must bring.

Having opened out the lower floor, it would have been nice to leave it airy, but we have to include fire breaks to ensure that those upstairs can escape, so new walls are having to be erected. This is the screen that will wrap around the staircase.

The café seating area is dramatically different now the ceiling has been raised. To show the difference, this is a picture of the front window. The ceiling level in recent years has been below the top the top of the window frame. The supports ran into the two holes and the ceiling was then suspended from them. You can see how much has been gained by returning to the original ceiling height.

We have been contacting signwriters to organise traditional signage for the exterior. We're determined to use local people when we can, and we've received some quotations we're working through.

If all goes to plan, we should be moving in ten weeks. A week ago that seemed less likely, but the progress that is being made is encouraging. I'm just glad I'm not in charge of it all.

Going up!

It occurred to me that my last post would have been improved by a photograph or two, so we tiptoed into The Globe over the weekend and snapped away.

Here you can see the old-looking beam and, above it, the modern-looking ceiling that was concealed. You can also see at the right hand end a piece of original wall that was out of sight and can now be exposed.

At the opposite end, things are less exciting. A fairly modern piece of wall above, and comparing the two pillars shows that the one nearer the camera has been beefed up to take the beam - though there is nothing substantial supported by the beam.The picture also shows how much height has been gained by the removal of the false ceiling. The room is nearly a third taller.

The studwork continues, and here you can see the smaller consultation room at the back of the pharmacy beginning to take shape. In fairness to our builders, the wood is straight and parallel. It's my camerawork that makes it look bowed. The little fireplace at the back will be preserved but will be concealed when we finish.

I am conscious that we haven't shown much of the upstairs work. This is the kitchen, where you can see some fine laths.

The wall was largely held together by the tiles, hence the clean look of the laths when the tiles were removed, because the plaster had crumbled away.

Not all the woodwork is quite so handsome. This is the side wall, one panel of which is in very poor condition and is being dried out.

This is the front bedroom in the existing flat. The photograph doesn't do justice to the yellow of the walls, which looks rather like an explosion in a custard factory. It is likely that our tenants will want us to change that.

Finally for now, this is the front sitting room. The floor boards are up to investigate the extreme curve on the skirting board. The advice we have is that the wall probably settled soon after The Globe was built, and therefore the joists were resited in new cradles to support the windows. Over the years this has bent the skirting board upwards and resulted in a hump in the floor. This adds character to the room but plays havoc with a game of carpet bowls, unless you like indoor crown green bowling. The builders will do some gentle remedial work to straighten as much as can be done without major disruption, guided by our structural engineers.

The ventilation ducting is now being fitted, so The Globe continues to take shape. We must start to think at what point The Famous Old Globe will become The Famous New Globe.

A tale of two ceilings

Call me old-fashioned if you like, but I tend to the view that one ceiling is plenty for any room. The ceiling in the café area is a low, beamed affair, and originally we were asked by the conservation department to preserve it.

However, when it became necessary to remove some asbestos between the walls, a small area of ceiling had to be removed, and we were all surprised to find another, rather more modern ceiling above it.

It seems that at some time the owners have dismantled an old ceiling, replaced it with a modern one, and used the old bits to create a false ceiling below it. In the light of this, we asked for a rethink and the conservation department were very prompt in coming to see for themselves and agreeing a variation that allows us to recapture the original room height. That means the tops of the windows will no longer be clipped off by the low ceiling, and hence restores the proportions of the room.

The downside is that it means that the panelling will no longer reach the ceiling, but it will come up to a dado rail and then the upper parts will be painted with breathable paint. We will also make good the lower ceiling in the small lobby, which is original.

I have been known to have the occasional grumble about the Council's planning team in the past, but it is only fair to say that we have had excellent service and great co-operation from all concerned thus far. They have been as keen as we are to bring this old building back into daily use and modernise it sympathetically. I won't pretend I can visualise it perfectly, but as the new walls begin to rise I can see how customers will move around inside the building. We hope they will like what we've done.

Taming the Wild West

In my worst moments, I have been compared with Basil Fawlty. I'd like to think that the only reason for this is that I'm tall and my wife isn't, but I suspect there may be other reasons for it. You may recall that in one episode of Fawlty Towers, Basil employed a builder called O'Reilly who put a door in a weight-bearing wall and used an ordinary piece of timber as a lintel. That is something that could all too easily happen to me, because I am putty in the hands of plausible builders.

It is for that reason that we have surrounded ourselves with a good posse led by a marshal who knows how to tame the cowboys. Martyn Bennett is acting as our clerk of works, ably assisted by James Quick as site foreman, and together they have ensured that I am not landed with any cowboys. Highshore Construction are doing the bulk of the building work, and so far it's all going very well.

I'll mention everyone sooner or later, but for the moment let me pay tribute to two other key advisers. Richard Faux of Crescent Retail Installations is providing the shopfitting and design service, and has been slogging up and down the motorway at unearthly hours to do it. Stephen Tucker of SMT Associates is liaising with the various planning and building control departments, and the two of them are producing ever more complex drawings which I barely understand, though I disguise this well by at least knowing which way up they go. Their ability to have a conversation they both appear to understand while imagining the three-dimensional layout of the interior and marking in the air where a particular electrical socket or air vent will be is quite spectacular.

Just to prove something is happening inside now, here's a sneaky peek at the ceiling frame that James and his team have fashioned over the new dispensary and medicines counter. They've gained a few inches of precious height and smoothed out a lot of the ups and downs in the ceiling heights.

It may not look much, but it's the start of something big.

Master of the House

If you know the musical "Les Misérables", you may recall the song that gives this post its title, sung by the innkeeper Monsieur Thénardier, in which he notes all the little extras he manages to slip onto his guests' bills. Meat goes a lot further if you can add the occasional cat, and it is quite reasonable to charge for the wear and tear guests put on the mirrors.

There are times when I wonder whether his descendants work for utility companies. I can understand that there is always a bit of uncertainty about the estimates, but there seems to be a practice of not including items that were going to be needed, if they don't form part of the main work. Thus, you get a quote for a certain amount, and then they tell you later that the necessary safety testing will be another £500.

This strikes me as a cracking wheeze, but unfortunately there is very little scope for pharmacists to do the same. For example, we can't make up someone's antibiotics and then tell them it will be an extra 20p for us to put a cap on the bottle.

The building is beginning to move quickly now. The necessary pillars have been beefed up or built, and the new steel girders are in place, so the last time I looked in the men from Highshore Construction were busily framing out the ceilings. No doubt the next twelve weeks will pass all too quickly.

We've seen a few people pushing their noses up against the windows to see what is happening. There's no need - we'll post photos on here from time to time to keep Truro posted on its new pharmacy and café

Cables and copper

This is the point at which I express admiration for the various people working with us who get excited about wires, pipes and drains. I'm glad somebody does, because a building that didn't have them wouldn't be much use, but I sit in the midst of conversations, not one word of which I really understand, as learned people argue about routes, first fixes, access points, comms rooms and hubs.

This project involves a lot of people working together. In no particular order, these include Kevin from Bush Telegraph, who are installing our phones; Paul from ADT, who is responsible for alarms and closed circuit television, Bill and Priscilla from Positive Solutions, who supply our tills and computers and arrange the secure NHS broadband we have to have, and Peter who is installing the ducting so we don't asphyxiate during the day. Fortunately, David from Crescent seems to speak the language of them all, and has been keeping track of everyone's needs. I have high hopes that when the building is finished, the right wires will be in the right places.

The electricians are about to start work. This is the bit I understand (to a point). I'm reasonably good on plumbing too, because I know water needs pipes, and any other way of delivering water to sinks and basins will end in tears. But when it comes to Cat5 and twisted pairs and Broadband secured in a particular way, I smile benignly and leave them to it. Each to his own.

Our best guess at the moment is that everyone will be off site by 17th June (our daughter's birthday) so we can move in on 20th June (our 30th wedding anniversary). Not much partying that weekend, though.

Turning point

The asbestos men have been and gone, and we've reached a turning point in the refurbishment. We've cleared out what's going, and now we're ready to start putting new things in.

The structural steel is on its way and the electrician will be moving in to start work. The wiring is being concealed so far as possible, so he needs to be the first one involved. The whole building is being rewired, because it wasn't worth trying to tease out which bits of wiring were new and which were elderly; better by far to know it's all modern and up to standard.

I've spent much of the last week signing contracts for alarms, CCTV, telephones and so on. On top of that, we have to apply to a lot of people for permission to move. The one thing they have in common is that they all charge a fee.

Nevertheless, we know it will all be worth it in the end.

Fiddling on the roof

I had an unusual experience last Thursday. The roof is designed so that there are two peaks running across the building with a flat roof between forming the valley. The flat roof was leaking so the builders had been up to inspect, and thought I might like to go up there too to see what they found.

I don't have much of a head for heights, but somehow being between the two roof-crests seemed quite safe, so up I went. The view of Truro is very good, and on a sunny day the cathedral looks golden and inviting from up there.

The builders wanted me to see the handiwork of a previous builder, probably long gone to his reward. Call me a pedant, but I think tiles ought to be fixed to the battens rather than flapping about, and I quite like the roof felt to extend over the gutter so the runoff drops in. I also think that flashing ought to be tucked under something rather than leaning negligently against the adjoining wall, and even I know that a soakaway drain only works if it is lower than the surrounding flat roof, not if it is 1½ inches higher. That lot aside, everything was hunky-dory.

It will cost a few bob to put that lot right, but it will make the flats a lot more comfortable. And it will remind me to check my own roof at home a bit more often.

During my flights of fancy, I had contemplated asking if we could install solar panels on those roofs, where they wouldn't be seen. I now realise that if we had done that they would probably have fallen into the floor below, so I think we'll leave well alone.

Onwards and upwards

So far I've concentrated on the ground floor redevelopment, but now it's time to talk a bit about the upstairs changes.

The public toilets for the pub were at the western end of the upper storey. You then came to the front door of the manager's flat, which spanned the middle of the floor. Beyond that there was the pub's kitchen, a storage room and a function room.

I like the function room, except for the carpet. The panelling is warm without being oppressive, and the bookcase is wonderful if, like me, you love books. The fireplace isn't functioning, but it has a handsome surround with inset tiles.

Here are a couple of pictures so you can see what I mean. Unfortunately I didn't snap the bookcase, which is opposite the door.

Last week I met one of the gentlemen who installed the long table. The extension leaves drop on once the frame has been opened out with a crank handle. One of the delights of this whole exercise has been that we've met a lot of people with a connection to The Globe, including a past landlord, the descendants of a Victorian landlord, and a retired gentleman who helped with some building there when he had just left school. We'd be very pleased to hear from anyone who has a story to tell about The Globe.

In the rebuild, the function room remains intact, though we plan to replace the large table with more flexible separate rectangular tables. The manager's flat is being enlarged by including the area of the two public toilets and then being divided into two, so we shall have a front flat and a back flat, each of them one-bedroomed. There is no car parking with them, but we hope they would be suitable for retired people who are mobile enough to get upstairs, or perhaps younger people who don't need a car.

Our plan is to clear the upper storey now, so all required demolition has been done before any building takes place. The next step is to complete the ground floor and rewire the flats, then we'll carry out any building, with the finishing of the flats done after the pharmacy is open so as not to delay that.

The creation of flats was one of the reasons the council gave for approving the application. They are very keen to encourage people living in the city centre, and we're delighted to play our part in making that happen. On my travels around the country one of the main sources of jealousy I encounter is that we can walk to work in around ten minutes, and I should probably do it more often.

Before and after

It's time to look a little more closely at the changes. A pub has little booths and corners that any kind of shop wouldn't want, so we needed to open out the lower floor so far as we could. At the same time, there are some historic features we don't want to spoil, and the next few pictures show these.

In the café area there is some wooden panelling. Some of the modern wood has been stained rather darker than it needs to be, so we have to look at lightening that wood and providing more consistent lighting. No two wall lights seem to be the same, which either adds to the charm or drives you daft, depending on how you look at it.

You can see part of the old flint wall we'll leave untouched, and a corner of a modern black fire surround that may find itself replaced.

The second feature we need to keep is the floor. Parts of it are old slate or granite, but other parts are more modern slate. 

As you can see, the slate is very dark, so we need to add as much light as possible elsewhere. We also have low ceilings, which means the lights don't spread very far and we need a lot of them to light the interior.

We also need to keep the Victorian winding staircase at the back.

The ceiling may look very quaint but it's actually modern. Those beams are pieces of ordinary 2x2 softwood nailed to the ceiling and painted dark brown.

As we opened out the lower floor we have removed some of the wood cladding on the beams and areas of modern ceiling. Coupled with removing some interior walls it's surprising how much difference that makes, particularly because it has shown that the ceiling was lower in some areas than it needed to be. To illustrate the point, here are a pair of photos taken from roughly the same spot looking towards the front doors.

The item in the foreground of the lower picture is part of the bar that is headed for recycling. You'll also note that the floor has been covered with heavy gauge polythene to protect it. In the background you can see yet another type of wall light.

This is a good moment to thank our neighbours, who have been very understanding, particularly Graham Morris in Edward Street who has allowed us to keep a skip in his driveway so we can get rubble off the site as quickly as possible.

There is still plenty to do, and it doesn't look much like a pharmacy yet. But it will.

Ask no questions, tell no lies

Every year pharmacies have a conduct a Community Pharmacy Patient Questionnaire (CPPQ) as part of their NHS contract. The questions are fixed, but you can add one of your own.

This has always seemed to us to be a pointless exercise. Unlike GPs and NHS dentists, we don't have patient lists, so if a patient isn't happy with the service they get from a pharmacy, they just move with the minimum of fuss. Obviously that becomes harder if there is just one in a town, but in Truro, where we have five pharmacies, it still gives plenty of choice.

This is not to say that we think that patient opinion isn't worth having - just that the CPPQ is an inflexible and time-consuming way of getting it. To give an example, we have to collect 125 questionnaires. In every year, 123 or 124 have rated us excellent or very good. That's nice to know, but it doesn't help us improve.

This year we asked patients what we don't do that they would like. The answers were interesting, partly because the wish list included a lot of things we already do - cholesterol testing, for example. One patient asked us to install chairs for patients, which leads me to wonder what she thought she was sitting on when she filled it in. A couple asked us to install a consultation room, which we have had for several years. It's small, but it exists. We don't use it as much as we'd like because it's small.

In The Globe we will have two consultation rooms. One will be for our everyday use, and will be in the corner of the pharmacy alongside the dispensary. The other, near the front doors, will be available for hire by other healthcare professionals, so we hope to have other services we can offer on our site. For the first time, we'll have customer toilets, including a disabled toilet, and of course we'll have the café so customers can have a cuppa and a sit down.

That extra question on last year's CPPQ has given us a number of ideas, so we must thank the anonymous contributors who made the suggestions. By all means use the comments box here to keep them coming. We can't guarantee they can all be worked in at this stage, but we'll certainly give them all some thought.

Restoration

Just after Christmas, we paid a visit to Warwick, where we had lunch at the Thomas Oken Tea Rooms. I can recommend the pork pie.

Thomas Oken died in 1573, and the tea rooms occupy his house, which is therefore around 450 years old. Despite this, you can see from the photograph that it has electric lights. (Check out http://www.okentearooms.co.uk/index.htm for a fuller description.)

Bringing old buildings up to date is a challenge, and one we face at The Globe. The building has been in only intermittent use for some time now, and would need quite a lot of repair whatever we did with it. Converting it into a pharmacy and café is not at all straightforward, but we have been touched by the degree of goodwill from planners, local councillors and the council's conservation staff.

The Globe is a grade 2 listed building dating from around 1840. Older Truronians will remember when the bar was on the right side and the double doors opened into an internal courtyard. There were a lot of partitions inside that divided the space into small booths or enclosures, and a lot of pillars. The floor and ceiling levels don't line up across the building. Some of the old-looking features are bogus (the ceiling beams consist of bits of 2x2 stuck together in pairs) but some original features are still there. With the help of Dr Gale at Cornwall Council, and Stephen Tucker of SMT Associates, who has been advising us, we have been able to identify the antique features we need to keep.

The frontage is going to be unaltered. There is some restoration to do, but the plan cannot be changed, nor would we want to. Inside, the old granite and slate floor is staying, as is the slate floor that was laid in more recent times. There is a Victorian staircase at the back that will be staying, and a couple of old fireplaces that will not be visible, but will be preserved behind the shelving units. In the café area some wooden panelling will help to make it feel cosy, and there is some original wall. The section in the café, and a length of wall in the new dispensary, will be left uncovered, and the rest will be preserved behind shelving. The shelving, by the way, is being cunningly anchored so as not to damage the old wall.

All this adds to the cost of the work, but we think it's important. After all, you can't put history back later.

On the other hand, buildings have to earn their keep. We have to have burglar and fire alarms, we need a lot of electricity sockets and readers will be pleased to hear that there will be indoor water closets.

We are the last people to want to vandalize anything historic, but if we try to freeze buildings at a point in time, they stop being useful. And the toilets would be in the back yard. None of us would want that.


25 years and a new look

We completed 25 years at Reeds on September, and decided it was time for a bit of a spruce-up.

When we arrived in 1985, we wanted to create a look and a logo. We chose British Racing Green, partly because we liked the colour, and partly because our competitors were using burgundy or blue. The black and gold shopfront became green and gold, and we had a logo that reflected a traditional hanging sign. It was an oval showing a pestle and mortar, historically associated with pharmacies, with the Reeds name above.

In those far-off days of the eighties, logos were created by designers in workshops rather like mediaeval monks in scriptoria. The lettering was rubbed on from large Letraset sheets, so we were limited to available typefaces, and the logo was drawn freehand by an artist. They then made a bromide (rather like a photographic slide) from which copies could be made. There were two difficulties with this - matching the colours was inexact (you'd be surprised what some printers thought British Racing Green was), and as the logo was enlarged it tended to blur.

Anyway, we finished up with this:

A quarter of a century later, we thought this looked a bit sombre and it needed recreating anyway. Having seen samples of their work, we asked Creative Direction in Walsingham Place to come up with some proposals for a new look.

Of course, there is more to that than just a new logo and colour scheme, but I'll save the rest to tease you. For now, we'll show off the logo we chose. Although we said we had a completely open mind about colours, we plumped for two shades of jade.

The pestle and mortar are still there (though drawn more realistically) but now they've been joined by a carboy. The lettering is more modern and the word "pharmacy" reminds people of what we do.

We're very pleased with it and you'll see it more often - embroidered on the new staff uniforms for a start, thanks to Alison and Monty next door to us at Keywear.

We would have done this whether we were moving or not, but it should help to give the new pharmacy a fresh look without breaking with our past.

First things first

The astute reader will note that there is something in this picture that would be an unusual feature in a pharmacy. The bar has been dismantled and has gone to a good home. This little photograph shows you a couple of the features that make this conversion challenging.

To the left of the hatch you can see a piece of the original pub wall. The Globe is a listed building and features like this have to be preserved. Most of the wall will be kept behind stud walling to allow an air gap but that particular section will be on view in the new dispensary.

Observe the ceiling beams. They butt up against the cross beam bearing The Globe's name. They don't pass through the beam yet there is a gap behind it over the bar area. In other words, those beams are purely decorative and don't support anything. To make that possible, there are rows of steel pillars out of shot to the right. The early days after our acquisition of The Globe were therefore spent in getting structural engineers (MBA, Chapel Hill, Truro) to do some difficult sums about the likelihood that the whole lot would remain standing if we could take a pillar or two away.

We also had surveyors from Sumo Services busily mapping where the drains go. It's always reassuring to know that you aren't discharging your sewage straight into the Leats running behind us.

Structural steelwork and drains aren't exciting, but the lack of them could be, so we're pleased to report that we have both.

Welcome to our moving blog

That isn't "moving" as in emotional. It's "moving" as in starting off on one side of the road and ending up on the other.

Reeds has been at 10 Frances Street since Bert Reed came back from the war and set up his own business. Bert and Vi retired in May 1973, when Jim Catterall took over, and Gillian and Graham Brack came in September 1985, so we've been here over 25 years.

The pharmacy is cramped now, and the dispensary staff have very little room to move. It's also difficult to give people the privacy that we would like, though we have had a small consultation room for some time.

We tried to plan a refurbishment, but we came up against two problems. We can't move the outside walls, and there's a thick old granite wall across the middle of the shop that we can't move either. Whatever we do, we can't gain square footage.

When the chance to buy The Globe opposite us came up in May 2010, we started negotiating, and we completed the deal on 11th August, 2010. This blog looks at the process of turning a 19th century listed building from a pub into a pharmacy and coffee shop.

Hold on - a coffee shop?

There was a restaurant area in the pub, with a kitchen upstairs. It seemed a shame not to use them. There are lots of coffee shops in the city, but not many with good access for the disabled. Our customers have always liked the fact that we had chairs for them. Now they will be able to have a sit down and a cuppa in the same place.

Of course, we know nothing about running a coffee shop. We've visited plenty, but we have enough to do looking after people's health needs, so we had to find someone to run the coffee shop. But that's another story.