Tommy & Lefebvre Reconstruction: Part 7

In the previous post of the series on T&L demolition and reconstruction, I covered the construction of the foundation and basement level, and left off when the ground floor was a shiny white concrete slab.

Between then, in mid-November 2009, and nine days later, the skeleton of the entire building went up.

Starting at the back, near the parking lot, is the access to the basement, the walls for which we saw poured in the previous post.

Moving up along McLeod (seen here looking from Bank), we can see different lengths of metal laid out for the filling out of the skeleton. The boulevard between the building and sidewalk along McLeod was left unfinished by the Bank Street workers until the T&L construction got further along.

The trusses that form the floor of the second level go around the perimeter of the building, leaving a two-storey showroom floor in the middle of the building. A big change from the confined space of the old store, which was spread across three connected buildings.

At the corner is a wedge-shaped piece that is cantilevered away from the building and curved on the outside. This will form the distinctive entrance.

The border of the wall up against the neighbouring building, which contains the Vietnamese Kitchen restaurant on the ground floor, is still unfinished. In the foreground is one of Bank Street's decorative bike racks.

Inside the building is a stairway leading to the mezzanine/office level. A worker in the foreground attaches a red safety flag to a wire that is difficult to see. In the back, workers assemble the cinder-block rear section of the building.

Back a few days later, still in late November, there was some welding going on. Note the alignment of the truses on the roof level, reflecting Bank Street's skew from the rest of the street grid. That was evident during the demolition of the main building of the Metropolitan Bible Church, in photos I haven't yet gotten around to posting.

Still just a few days after the previous photo of this end of the building, a wall is being built bordering the Vietnamese Kitchen building, and the bike racks have been covered up for protection. Note the heavy-duty ladder-like structure on the ceiling of the first floor, next to the nearest post. That's reinforcement for the building's rear exit, which you can tell by the step in the foundation.

In early December 2009, the second storey floor was finished. If you zoom in, you can see the rendering of how it is supposed to look when completed. The design was updated since the early rendering posted in part 5.

And here's a shot looking down the McLeod street side, with the 400 McLeod condos in the background.

In the month since the first photo was taken in this post, a lot of work was done, yet the details are hard to see at first glance. The Xes at the far ends of each wall have been filled in, there's some scaffolding going up on the left, but not much else.

I'll try to get the next post up in two days, but I've got a lot of meetings this week, so it might be a bit longer than that. In the meantime, check out the archives, including the other Tours and multi-post series (click "older posts" at the bottom to view more).