As most of our older and long standing plot holders will re-call the Old Trading was in bad need of a refurb. The major part of this project was to get the old asbestos roof removed. This was something that even I had to admit defeat on as I was unable to source the work for free. So after a few months of pleading with the council and by showing them that we were making progress with our other projects I managed to convince them to pay for the removal of the roof. They arranged Gemco in St Albans to remove the old roof on Friday January 28th  and a month later we have almost completed the re-furb.

 

That was the hardest part of the job done or so I thought. On Saturday morning Peter Simpson from P Field and Mick Cowley also from P Field along with myself and the Community Payback Team under the careful eye of Maria the ever present one woman workhorse started to re-roof the Old Shed. The aim of this re-furb is to give the Payback Team a more permanant base, one that the roof does not leak in the rain and at the same time allowing us as a society to have that extra storage space for stock and materials.

We are extremely grateful to Kevin the Manager at Builder Depot in New Southgate for providing us a gift of 15 sheets of top grade plywood to use as the initial lining for the roof.

As you can see this was laid on the roof to give a stable base and also to provide support for the final roof covering.

Yes we did manage to get some tea drank during the work.

The steel corrugated sheeting was provided again as a gift from Steelmart in Shropshire where they provided us with 16 sheets of 12 foot corrugated roofing sheets. Derek at Steelmart is from North London orginally and was very happy to help our cause. He arranged for the sheets to be delivered to us.

 

We are now moving forward and will very soon start to work on the inside of the hut.

It is the plan to fit it out with electric lights and power sockets and to give it some paint on the inside to brighten it up a little.

 

We have made a start on the inside of the hut and have so far managed to give the old brick walls one coat of paint.

What I thought would be an easy task was to install the electrics into this shed was proving to be very difficult but never one to be deterred I ploughed on and finally managed to get some of the major players in the world of elctrical supplies to assist in our project.

 

Sourcing cabling seemed to be almost impossible but I am very thankful to both Irish Driver-Harris (from Wicklow in Ireland) and Prysmian Cables for coming to the rescue and providing us with enough cable for the electrical re-fit.

 

The light fittings and sockets are to be provided by MK Electrics again to whom were are very thankful for supplying the surface mounted metalclad socket fittings. All of these fittings needed to be securely fixed and the cabling run propely so I approached Marshall Tufflex with a request to provide the PVC Conduit needed for the work. I am happy that they were willing and their sales manager arrived on site with the neccessary fittings to get the work started. We completed the electrical fit out on Saturday 26th Feb and it all looks good.

 

Sign & Graphics have today March 4th erected our new sign onto the shed. I am very grateful to Steve who I have worked with for over 8 years for supplying and installing the sign, it sets off the front just nicely.