Stamford: a disused warehouse becoming offices with living space above

The brief

An underused building, brought back into use

At the end of July 2026 AJB Group was awarded the contract to transform a disused warehouse in Stamford into a modern mixed use building for Apex Demolition. The plan puts high quality office space on the ground floor and a contemporary apartment on the first floor, bringing an underused building back to life while keeping its character.

Apex Demolition and AJB have worked together before, at NHS Hinchingbrooke Hospital, where AJB set the shuttering and plinth blocks for a four storey staff accommodation block. A conversion is a very different job, and most of it is carpentry. The shell stands, so everything that makes it usable, the walls, the insulation line, the fire separation, the room layout and the openings, is built in timber inside it.

What we have done so far

Day one: external walls built for 150mm insulation

Work started on site on 10 August 2026 with full external walls in 6x2 timber, sized to take the 150mm Celotex insulation needed to reach the required U value. Converting a warehouse means taking a building designed to keep the weather out and making it warm enough to work and live in, and the wall build up is where that is won or lost.

A one hour fire break between the floors

Between the ground floor and the accommodation above, 30mm fire board forms a one hour fire break. Where one building has people working downstairs and living upstairs, the floor between them has to hold fire back for a set period, and that only works if the timber and board go in exactly as specified with no gaps at the edges.

The office layout in 4x2

On the ground floor, internal 4x2 partitions set out an open plan office, a kitchenette and a meeting room, with six new windows framed in to bring natural light into the space. By late August every internal room and wall on the office floor had been set out, turning one open warehouse floor into a divided, usable workspace. This is the core of first fix carpentry on a conversion.

A new front to the building

The existing brick front has been taken down so it can be rebuilt with a new front elevation of ten windows and two pedestrian doors. That opens the building up to the street and gives both the offices and the accommodation above the daylight a warehouse was never designed to have.

First floor walls going up

Upstairs, the external 6x2 timber walls for the apartment accommodation are being erected ahead of first fix and the 150mm Kingspan insulation infills. The first floor is where the building changes from workplace to home, so the same care over the insulation line carries on up. It is timber frame work built inside an existing shell.