#ThrowbackThursday: Demolition Before and After

Things are really starting to take shape in Phase 1 of our renovations project. It’s remarkable how quickly walls go down, come back up, and completely change the look of the space. I have a couple of photos here from before, and the current state of affairs. I’ll also answer a couple FAQs down below!

Before:

Visitors to the library will, of course, recognize where the bathrooms were, the old hallway into legislation (or more accurately for many people, the way over to the lounge), and the inside of the copy room. These walls are mostly all gone now, except for that rounded bit of wall in picture two (take note of that – it’s a load-bearing pillar).

Now:

Most of the interior walls aside from the pillar have come down, and look at that new framing!

From right to left:

The bathrooms? That’s our new IT room! We only need one door for that (and zero toilets) so everything unnecessary there has gone!

In the centre (where the pillar is now entirely exposed), we have the frame-in for our new copy room.

On the left, the new roughed-in entrance to the lounge.

The amount of light coming in is nothing short of glorious. As most of the old offices have been pulled off the windows, the new space should have quite a bit more natural light. We think you will really, really like it.

A couple of FAQs:

Are the bathrooms still there? As you can see, definitely not! Once the renovation is over, however, there is going to be one large, gender-neutral, accessible washroom that is located off the lounge. It should be better than the old bathrooms in literally every way imaginable!

Access to the lounge – wouldn’t it just be better to have the doors work with the security card for the building? Why yes, it would be! And it will! When all is said and done, we’ll do away with the punch code locks we have now leading into the lounge, and they’ll be swipe activated with the same card you use to bypass security. The front doors to the library will remain open (with a new coat room just to the left when you walk in), and we’ll be able to buzz people who don’t have cards through to the lounge from the library-side entrance.