A lovely photograph (copyright Richard Law at Geograph) showing just how loved this building is now.

 Welcome to the reissue of my blog on how we converted an old pub into a dental practice - and how hard but rewarding it was.  This is a duplicate of my posts from that time.

Welcome to Highview Dental Practice's blog. Highview is a relatively small dental practice in Sedgley, Dudley, West Midlands - but with big ideas! Dentist Edmund Acheampong and his wife Anne (yours truly, the blogger) have been running Highview for ten years now from a second-floor surgery in an office block in Sedgley. We have many, many lovely patients who come to us for Edmund's expert care in spite of the fact that they have to haul up two flights of stairs. So ... thank you to all of you for putting up with the location and ... welcome to the future!

Some people may be aware that we have recently bought the Grand Junction public house, an old coaching inn based in the centre of Sedgley. It's been some three years since it was open as a pub and in fact Edmund and I never went in there. It's our plan to convert it to be our new surgery. We'd had our eye on it for a long time - and we've looked at many buildings in Sedgley over the last few years with a view to turning them into a dental practice.

The Grand Junction is a real landmark in Sedgley and Edmund and I are aware that it's very important to people living in Sedgley and Dudley. We also know that we've taken on a big job!

My plan is to keep you updated with how we're going on with the conversion and refurb work (a bit slowly at the moment!).

Some before pictures of the outside!

It has to be said that the Grand Junction does not look its best with all the windows covered in security shutters (thanks to Michael at Safe Estates for all his help, by the way). They are, however, absolutely vital to keep the place safe and secure. So these pictures are truly "before", in that it will be quite late on in the project that we have them taken down.

This picture shows how the pub straddles two of the main streets in Sedgley - High Holborn and Tipton Street. I love the old lantern above the front door - that's definitely staying (and I hope it still works!).



This shows the Tipton Street side. As you can see, four of the windows are blocked out, possibly due to the Window Tax, which wasn't repealed until 1851. The long window with the security shutter on it serves to light both ground and first floors. It's an old wooden sash window which is going to be repaired and reglazed as necessary.





Part of the car park with the exceptionally attractive toilet block in the front. Apparently in an earlier incarnation this was a butcher's shop! Boringly, we aren't planning to reinstate this as a butcher's shop (well, unless we can't make it work as a dental practice, of course).






Perhaps the most mysterious section of the pub! The area on the right is probably an old stable and no-one - not the architect, surveyor, vendor's agents, me and Edmund - has been inside yet! We confidently expect it to contain buried treasure or perhaps the remains of the previous landlord ...

And this is what it looked like inside ...

Everybody's favourite area - the bar! The pillars you can see in the centre are the absolute bane of our lives - they're holding up quite a lot of the ceiling. We're trying to turn them into a feature ... In fact, they are going to be a corridor
between two surgeries, leading to ...

... this corridor, which in turn leads to ...







... the cross-infection control room (formerly the kitchen about a million years ago). Hardly needs any work at all, really. In fact, I don't know why we got rid of the old range cooker. And let's face it, the old glass washer could have been used as one of those new-fangled washer-disinfectors.


Back to the bar. The main entrance will be moved from the far right corner to just beyond the circular table and will give full disabled access to the practice from the car park. Once we move the table and the seating, the area in the foreground will be surgery 2. Oh, and we are definitely keeping the carpet. It's so important to recycle as much as you can.

These two areas will form Edmund's surgery. It was a hard decision to get rid of the tiles.

A big thank-you to our bank managers

First of all, let me say a huge thank you to the best bank managers ever, Steve Pratt and Mark Harnett from Lloyds TSB Banking Group (or whatever it's called at the moment). They have been full of support, advice and - most importantly - money! Edmund and I can't thank them enough. There's a scale and polish with their name on it if ever they need one. Thanks guys!

It's going great!

The refurb works are going fantastically - a week ahead of schedule! All the room partitions are up, the toilets are no longer a big horrible area (now a big partitioned area with no actual toilets in them yet), the ducting for the dental chairs in place, and we're giving the cross-infection control room a lot of thought.

The builders, electricians, painters, plasterers are all great. They work like demons and are unfailingly courteous and helpful, even when I'm on site looking bemused and generally getting in the way.


This shows the partition in place for one of the two surgeries that we're having. The area by the window is going to be the main entrance and disabled access from the car-park.



Here's the main-door-to-be again on the left. The rest of the area will be reception (desk near the door). The door on the right of the scaffolding tower is to the toilets. All the wires in the ceiling will be covered by a new suspended ceiling once the ducting for the air-con system is in place.

And the toilets! Perhaps enough said. The

A bit of a problem ...

Just a couple of weeks ago this was a normal ceiling on the first floor, if rather high and covered in Artex that had seen better days a good 30 years ago. Then ... I got a call from the guys on site (thanks Chris!) who had spotted the ceiling's fatal flaw. It was collapsing. Bruce the architect agreed and down the plaster came. By all accounts it was one hell of a job and I'm just glad I wasn't there to see it. And thank goodness they did spot the problem, or else it might have collapsed on them (or even worse, a patient!).

First fixing done and dusted!

Look - no pillars! I hated them so much and now they've been incorporated into the design. The doorway on the left goes into Edmund's new surgery, while the pillars have been used to form a corridor.

Lovely plastering. Here we're waiting for the ducting for the air con and air tempering system to go in, then the suspended ceiling can be put in place.








What a transformation! The whole of the back corridor has been stripped back to the brick and replastered and the door you can see in the picture on the left has been blocked up.

When we bought the Grand Junction we never actually got to see what was in the room on the right - the old stable block. Well, we finally opened it up last week and it was very interesting, but unfortunately no buried treasure (quite a lot of broken old furniture, none of it antique, sadly).

 

The doors open at last! Edmund on (on the right) discussing what on earth we can do with the area with Gary from Compass, our facilities manager. The photo on the right shows an old trough (and some of the non-antique rubbish).

Here's Paul, our very patient builder, just about to remind us that we can do anything we like with the space, as long as our pockets are deep enough. Seeing as our pockets aren't very deep at all, locking the doors and waiting for another 20 years may be the best option.

Things are really moving apace. The toilet areas have all been tiled, a tasteful combination of pale grey and tomato (chosen by me, hated by Edmund). Surely they're not that bad, really??



Next, the suspended ceilings are going in, over the already-fitted air-tempering and climate-control system (it may be winter outside, but in my surgery it's spring).

Nearly there!

Some pictures of the all-but-finished magnificent new premises!
One surgery - completely finished and ready for patients! This is in no small part due to the fantastic work done by Paul and Chris, the builders, and by Rob Taylor, who removed the chair from the old premises and installed and tested it in record time.






Believe it or not, this is what the surgery looked like about three months ago! Who needs a drink at the bar when you can lie in a comfortable dental chair having a luxurious examination and scale and polish?








On the top is what reception looked like at the beginning of July. Below - what it looked like first week September. It's such a lovely, light area - and the floor looks beautiful. Although the old sticky pub carpet had its charms too.

Some areas still need a little work ...

The cellar is actually one of my favourite areas. While the rest of the pub has been gutted and messed around with countless times in its long history, it's my bet that the cellar is largely as it was a hundred years ago. Of course, it's cold, a bit eerie but it's full of character and maybe the echoes of former landlords?

And this beer barrel is actually full!!

A Big Apology!

It has been brought to my attention that I have spent too much time praising our wonderful, wonderful builders and electricians and far too little on our facilities management team, Compass FMB, led by Gary Champion and Jamie Cartwright. I aim to put this right here. Gary and Jamie have managed the Grand Junction conversion from the very start - ripping out the inside - to the very end: organising office furniture and the reception desk. Jamie is also my go-to guy for dealing with British Telecom. In all seriousness, they have been fantastically supportive, have organised the work to be done to a very high standard, to a tight time schedule and on price.

And I've also noted we don't have enough pictures of Gary and Jamie. Well, this is what Gary looks like:I still need a good picture of Jamie. I want to show him at his best, so watch this space!

It's all finished and perfect!

We're in and running now. The project has gone perfectly - to time and to budget. And doesn't the outside look great compared to how it did only a few weeks ago? It's hard to imagine that the whole refurb only took just over eight weeks.

Inside is even more of a transformation. This is what our lovely reception looks like now (including the lovely Stacey on desk):

And our fab new waiting area:
Just a reminder of the work involved to get to this stage: