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.