Listed Building Renovation

Enterprise House in Hayes, West London, is a historic Grade II listed building dating back to 1912. It was originally the gramophone factory for His Master’s Voice and has been used over the years for manufacturing and R&D.

Our brief was to restore the entire five storey façade and the intricate, concrete rooftop watertank. We were also instructed to install a show flat in order to demonstrate potential fixtures, fittings and finishes for future development.

This was a challenging project in many respects. The building is situated in a busy residential area and remained part-occupied throughout our time there, with manufacturing operations continuing on the ground floor.

In addition, the building was in a state of considerable disrepair both internally and externally.

It required an extensive clean and making-safe throughout before any other works could commence. This included substantial asbestos management. The external works over five storeys required complex scaffolding systems.

And of course, working on a listed building meant close liaison with the relevant authorities to ensure consent.

In terms of the façade works themselves, we undertook reveal repairs across the whole frontage.

This involved treating the existing steel reinforcement and carrying out extensive, multi-stage concrete repairs including coating removal, specialist mortar placement and rendering coats, and Sika anti-carbonation coatings.

Next, we removed and replaced pointing across all brickwork panels and applied a Sika brick sealing product to ensure longevity in the repairs.

Another complex operation was the installation of 100+ 4mx4m Crittall W20 windows. All the apertures were repaired and formed in advance. Our quality control and due diligence ensured that each window was fitted accurately to its aperture, working with an extremely tight 5mm tolerance.

In conclusion, at Enterprise House we successfully restored the façade and very much brought the outside of the building back to life. Working on this historic building has been fascinating.