In the process of planning for our Grand Opening Celebration (you do know about it, right? you're invited!) we were discussing showcasing all of the elements we incorporated which focused on sustainability, and environmental concerns. I'm reluctant to jump on the bandwagon and make a big fuss about how "green" we are (like every other company today) but then again, it truly is important to us, and I'm sure those of you who know us will recognize it as genuine concern.

1. No Commute
The clinic is deliberately located close to home so we can reduce our fuel consumption. Kristin's previous commute was about 30 miles round trip, now it's 1.4, and she almost always walks or rides her bike. So she'll now use about 3 gallons of gas per year commuting, if she drives once per week. She was using about 6 a week before!

2. Supporting Local Businesses
Keeping it in the neighborhood is also key to doing business locally - we know the businesses around here, and we're buying from them, recommending them, and giving out gift cards to them for our referral program. Keeping our business part of a neighborhood (instead of a metropolitan area) helps people keep their lives focused locally, which further reduces fuel consumption.

3. Natural Light
The space we chose has abundant natural light from skylights, and we struggled to use it as best we could, basing the whole design around it. Where we needed ceilings, we used relights (interior windows) to use whatever natural light we could get. During the greater part of the day, the whole hallway, treatment area, laundry, and kitchen need no additional light at all.

4. Compact Flourescents
We used them wherever possible - unfortunately there's a few fixtures where these still don't work (a couple due to size, a couple because they're dimmable) - but the majority of the lighting we *do* have to add to our natural light comes from compact flourescents.

5. 100% renewable
We've signed up for the "Green Source" option with PGE, which means 100 percent of our electricity usage is offset with renewable resources - about 85% wind, and 15% biomass.

6. Paper reduction
We're still in the process of going entirely paperless, but almost everything we do is digital (faxing, record storage, emails) with very little printed material.

7. Recycled Paper
When we do have to print, it's on 100% recycled paper. Our business cards, mailers, printer paper - everything.

8. Heating and Cooling
The building's orientation and construction (masonry) keep the temperature pretty moderate and stable, so we don't anticipate needing lots of energy for heating and cooling. The owner of the building also added a lot of additional insulation on the roof while remodeling. Actually, once in the winter while I was working in the space, it warmed up for a couple of days, but remained 10-15 degrees colder inside the space the whole time!
We also incorporated fans into the design of the space to keep pushing the heat down from the open area above - you can really feel the difference, even with the fans on just slightly.

9. Tankless Water Heater
We have a gas-powered tankless water heater, which means the water is heated on demand, instead of keeping a 75 gallon tank heated 24 hours a day. The only drawback appears to be that the water takes a bit longer to heat up, so I suppose we're using more water than we should in return for a reduction in fossil fuel consumption - so...

10. Dual-flush toilet
...hopefully we're offsetting that increase in water use with this - it's got two buttons, let's just call them button "number one" and button "number two". I'll let you figure out what they're used for, I don't have to spell it out for you do I? And button "number one" only uses a half-volume flush, which is what's used most of the time.

11. Fleece exam pads
For the exam rooms and kennels, we're using fleece pads instead of cotton, since they dry so quickly, and therefore require a lot less energy.

12. Humabuilt Doors
We really wanted wood doors to contribute to the warm feeling we were trying to achieve, but luckily found an option that we thought was the best of both worlds - Humabuilt Doors. They're made from wheat chaff - which is annually renewable - pressed into a particle board, and then covered with a thin, nicely engineered maple veneer. The result is a beautiful door that looks like solid wood, and is about halfway between the weight of a solid-core door and a hollow one.

13. Natural Finish
The doors are finished with a clear wood wax called "Osmo Polyx Oil" which is really beautiful and durable, and easy to repair when needed. It's made of ingredients like sunflower oil, Carnauba and Candelilla wax. It's got a very small amount of (benzene-free) mineral spirits in it, but other than that it's all natural.

14. PaperStone
This stuff is truly awesome - it's dense like hardwood, durable, beautiful, and it's made from recycled paper and natural resins. And when I say dense and durable, I'm serious - we went through 3 jigsaw blades just cutting the oval for the sink! One of them was embedded so tightly I thought it was going to have to become a permanent part of the countertop. A few stats:

A 1" by 60" by 144" (we used about twice this amount) slab of PaperStone Certified (versus a regular phenolic composite manufactured from virgin fiber and a regular, commercially available, solvent-based resin) saves:

• 1233 gallons of water
• 2.03 million BTU's of energy
• 131 pounds of solid waste
• 254 pounds of greenhouse gases
• 55 pounds of petroleum-based phenol
• 22 pounds of natural gas-based methanol

Plus it's dimensionally stable, and amazingly tough structurally - it has a compressive strength of 45,000 psi and you can cantilever it 4' with less than 1/16" deflection.

15. Salvaged Redwood
Our shelves up front are reclaimed railroad timbers from the great people at EcoPDX here in Portland on North Interstate. They typically reclaim Indonesian hardwoods and make furniture, but at the moment they have a huge pile of reclaimed California Redwood railroad ties from a dismantled goldrush-era railroad. They split them and glued them for us, and we built them into the design. You can still see holes from the railroad spikes, and staining from the oils that got into them.

16. Mango hardwood furniture
Yet another way we managed to get some really nice wood without cutting down trees in a tropical rainforest. Mango plantations are a great source for beautiful dark hardwood, since the oldest trees stop producing fruit, and are felled to be replaced by new ones.

17. Marmoleum Floors
In a couple areas we wanted floor covering (near the kennels) and went with Marmoleum - which is a "true" natural linoleum, as opposed to the PVC-based stuff that passes for linoleum these days. It looks cool, comes in a million colors and patterns, and it's made from linseed oil, jute, and rosin - no harmful chemicals are used, so there's no long "offgassing" period like there is with vinyl flooring. Plus when it eventually does wear out, it's completely biodegradable.

18. Low/No VOC paint
Most of our paints were extremely low VOC or no VOC paints - Benjamin Moore Aura, Yolo, and Devine Green. VOCs are emitted from traditional paints for years after they're dry, and some are known carcinogens.

Okay, enough already. That will teach you to get me started. If you're still here after all that, you deserve a drink on me. Come to the Open House and take me up on it! It's this Saturday, June 14th. General Public from 3-6, Industry/Friends/Family from 6-8, then from 8-midnight we've got space reserved at the Backstage (behind the Bagdad Theater) for food, pool, and beer.

Well, it was another one of those late nights at the clinic. (Yes, the post is right 1:05 AM!) The kind of late night where I forget to eat dinner and have to bargain with the poodle for a few extra minutes (over and over again). Luckily, she is very resiliant and will nap for long periods of time before she asks to go home again.

This time it was a marathon painting session of the back room where our dog kennels, oxygen and nitrogen, server room and general storage are. It's a small enough room to make it fun. The stakes are also pretty low since it's storage but it is a part of the hospital we spend some time in so I wanted it to look nice and finished. My friend Cheryl Janis (interior decorator, feng shui consultant and Editor in Chief of Planet Pink n Green) came to the clinic on Friday for a decorating help session. She already helped pick the colors and the furniture and consulted with us on the design of the clinic and it was great to have her over for some finishing touches. She single handedly rearranged the living room (waiting area) furniture and, using everything I had already placed in the room,  made the room so much more inviting - amazing! We walked through the clinic taking notes on what the space could use when we came to the back area (which I just wanted to wave my hand at and move on to the good stuff but she lingered). Cheryl asked questions about how we were planning to use the space. She talked about the Feng Shui areas of fame and relationship/love which are combined in our back space and offered suggestions for decorating and making it a vibrant space. Number one - finish the space.

Hence the marathon painting session. I finished most of the room in Devine Almond to match the Digital Radiography Suite. Cheryl explained that pink is a great color to use in the love/relationship area of a space but I was bound and determined to use only the colors I had on hand. My first thought was to to use the Aura Wisteria which is a lavender color - close enough to pink, right? When I was looking for the Wisteria, I remembered the Devine Peaches and Beans that we used in the bathroom! Perfect - that color is so happy and it really brightened up the space and peach is definitely close to pink! I painted it on the main wall in the back and then decided to use it for Mr. Oxygen and Mrs. Nitrogen's house (see Michael's earlier post on requirements for passing final inspection!). The floor in that room and the DR Suite is black and we decided to paint the ceiling black to match. Oooooh, the Peaches and Beans looks so awesome with the black!

Black paint freckles!

I had already painted the DR ceiling on friday (that was quite an adventure!) First of all, I didn't bring a hat and was a little worried about getting black paint in my hair. But, being ever resourceful, I grabbed a surgical bouffant cap and wore it for protection - perfect. Then I encountered another snag when I started to warm up with all of that overhead work I was doing. I was wearing my usual painting clothes except I had a nice t shirt on under my painting fleece. I was getting hot and wanted to take the fleece off but I didn't want paint on my t shirt. Picture this: me in my paint splattered overalls, stripped down to my camisole, and wearing a bouffant surgical cap. Thank goodness there were no cameras present. I did the same cap trick tonight but this time I remembered to wear the paint splattered t shirt. I did take some self portraits for this post (sans surgical cap) for your entertainment. Michael is out of town and would have done a much better job at capturing the black splatters on my face but these will have to do. 

Painting overalls, painting shoes and messy hand

I've been getting a lot of requests lately for more pictures of the clinic. We'll get there, I promise but there are still some finishing touches to add before it's photo ready. Michael's photographs do capture the space well but it's nothing like seeing it in person. So we'd like to invite you come by and tour the new clinic! Saturday June 14th is our big Open House. From 3pm-6pm is the general public open house and from 6pm-8pm is the private veterinary industry open house. I hope you all can come and check out the hard work you've been reading about - I know you're curious! It will be a lot of fun!

yeehah!!!

We had a minor complication with the inspector today involving something the Fire Marshall already signed off on, then he sort of shrugged it off, and said "want me to sign the final on this?" - do you think anyone ever answers that question in any other way than a booming and emphatic YES?!?! That's what I did anyway, so he signed it, wished us luck, and disappeared. So, as of 3pm today, we were officially OPEN FOR BUSINESS!

We can barely use the phone system, the software's not ready, the shelves are empty, the credit card processing machine just showed up this morning, we still need to put up the door trim and baseboards. But the phones have been ringing - lots of existing clients, and even a couple new ones already. We've got six appointments scheduled for tomorrow already, and a few surgeries on Friday! So, despite having a lot to do still, we're open, and we already have a little momentum, which feels great!

Sorry this didn't get posted until so late, I know some of you were dying to know how it turned out - but we're just getting home now, and I still need to rig up some temporary patch so we can produce statements for clients tomorrow when we charge them. So I've got to get back to work, just thought we'd share the news.

CLICK HERE for a nice big image of our completed inspection card :)

Well, one final (?) gripe about the permitting process, then you won't have to listen to me whine anymore.

As Kristin mentioned, JUST LAST WEEK we heard that our modest little oxygen tank requires its own sprinkler, and a vent, and a fresh air supply, and a 1-hour fire rated enclosure. Yes, just LAST WEEK - after months of permitting, reviews, discussions, phone calls, emails, inspections, and corrections... someone just finally figured this out.

Well, we got that sorted out - it turns out we don't really need all that - just a separate "room" for our oxygen. Apparently nobody at the city bothers actually READING the code, so I have to do that for them. I think maybe they sort of *glance* across the pages, see the word "sprinkler" in there somewhere, and make the rest up. I'm serious. And since they don't even read the code, I'm hoping they don't read this blog either. Or if they do, I'm betting they won't see it between the time I post this and the time they sign the card tomorrow morning. They can read it all they please after that :)

So anyway we built a tiny little wall, with a steel door on it, and the Fire Marshall came out today and, after scaring me with a couple new suggestions, said he'd sign off on it as it is... and there was much rejoicing (hooray!)

We also got our final approval on our mechanical permit today... additional rejoicing ensued (hooray again!)

So all that's left is to get the final inspection completed - last time he was out, in addition to the oxygen tank incident, he pointed out that we needed a smoke gasket on the back door, and a door closer... fair enough. I put those in, and called him back. Hopefully when he comes out tomorrow, he'll just nod and sign the card... then I'll scan it and post it here in victory... wish us luck!

Also - the REAL website has been released! All this blog activity is groovy and all, but we need a general-purpose sort of site. It's not all final, or perfectly functional (the record-access parts aren't hooked up yet) but it's generally all there, and looking pretty nice thanks to a spectacular design by Lia at Avive Design, some excellent copy written by Kristin, and some mediocre photos by YT (no Drew, not the girl from snowcrash).

So, go check it out by clicking on the "Mt. Tabor Vet Care Home" link on the top of this page... or in case that one's too subtle for you, here's a more conspicuous one...

http://www.mttaborvetcare.com

let us know what you think! You can also check out the "Portland Picks" website - we're running an ad there all month on the lefthand side of the front page.

starting to look like a genuinely official place of business, is it not?

Wow! Things are incredibly crazy around here and in such a good way it's hard to complain. As an example let me just tell you that I woke up really early this morning for our trial surgery day with a planned 4 surgeries and two added on. Michael got home and into bed right as my alarm went off at 5:30am. We've been pulling a crazy schedule to get these things done but it does look like we'll make our Crepes Suzette opening day!

Our beautiful new sink

Ok, to start with we had our final plumbing inspection last week and I did not have any verification that the sink had been certified. Apparently sinks can be made all over the world, especially China and are not certified for safety. NOT ok in a business. We emailed the company we got it from who emailed the supplier and no licensing or certification. I had a hard time finding that sink and now I was faced with finding another. Not only did it have to be certified, it had to be the right size to fit the faucet that was already on the wall AND it had to be in stock locally because we wanted the plumbing inspection in 2 days in the morning so the final inspection could be that same afternoon! Talk about pressure. Well, I went around a few places and was having trouble finding anything. Finally I remembered A Ball on W. Burnside near where we used to live. They were so wonderful there. She had 4 certified vessel sinks in stock and started telling me the colors over the phone. When she got to gold...I rushed right over! The size was perfect - even better than the red sink and I must tell you, it looks great! (Even better than the red sink!) So it was put in the next day and we passed plumbing inspection the following day. Whew!

Then it was final inspection a few hours later. Our same framing inspector came out (the one that wanted us to insulate over our beautiful exposed fire brick!)  Well, it was interesting. There were some pretty big scary moments around our oxygen tank. There were all sorts of safety precautions they were talking about us putting in. A single sprinkler run to the back, venting the space - that would have been impossible! We'd have to go through 2 floors or into someone's backyard and we would not be opening anytime soon! Luckily, our Hazards inspector got things straight and we don't need to do the sprinkler or the venting but for some reason, unlike any other veterinary hospital in the area, we need to build a room for the oxygen and nitrogen tanks. It really is the best of all of the options for us and our framer, Derek built the room yesterday with a fire rated door. It looks really funny - we're talking about putting a welcome mat in front of the door.

Puddy - our first surgical patient!

And then, my friends, there was the trial surgery day I was talking about earlier. What a day! Not only passing my husband like ships in the...well...morning but not even anticipating all of the craziness that could happen that day. Both Katie, our veterinary nurse, and I arrived early. She got to the clinic at 6:30am because we were expecting an emergency early shipment of our pain medication and anesthetics that wouldn't be there until later in the afternoon originally. Ok, I did order everything in advance BUT things got a little weird at corporate because my originally shipping address for the distributor was to my home. A big no-no for controlled drugs! They had been sending all of my things lately to the clinic so how should I know that I needed to check on that?! Anyway, they came early. Our kitty patients had stayed the night and were there. We went to get started and realized that I forgot to order the preanesthetic profiles we needed to run bloodwork on them ahead of time. Oh yeah, no artifical tears either and the sterile water for the antibiotics (if we needed them) was on back order. There were other issues that I just can't bore you with right now. I took a trip over to visit my friends at Rose City Veterinary Hospital and they were nice enough to loan us some things. Granted, I didn't know about the eye ointment at that time and needed to take another of many trips out to Walgreen's. (I'm on a first name basis there now!). While at Rose City I picked up 2 more strays that needed spaying and neutering - that is 6 surgeries total on a day when we were discovering we didn't have everything that we needed!

To make a long story short, we ended up doing 3 of the surgeries and will pick up the rest next week. We definitely were ambitious even with the 4! Between using new equipment and discovering the things we needed and didn't have it was a long day with just doing 1/2 of them! But I can tell you, for as stressful as it was we are all grateful to have had this trial run with these shelter animals - they received services for free and we got the chance to run through our surgery protocols before we open. 

Friday we are doing a trial appointment day with friends and family and final inspection should be the day before we open! - I'll keep you posted.

It was a mad flurry of activity this weekend! We've gotten a lot more done and it feels like there's still so much to do! I feel a little guilty sitting here writing this. I put on normal clothes this morning to remind myself that I'm a real person instead of my grungy painting/working overalls. I know you guys are as excited as I am to see our progress, so it's all in the name of the common good right? Thanks for helping me out here!

Mom and Dad painting

So my parents flew in from Los Angeles for their second go around at clinic tasks. Of course we had them painting but that wasn't all! There were doors to be stained, cabinets to be hung and handles to be put on (my dad wants the breakroom named after him!), clean up and cardboard to be broken down, switch plates to be put on and kennels to be moved -that was a feat! My mom and I even laid down the baseboards in the kennel areas. I also ran over to Fabric Depot with my mom, mother in law, Barb and Katie, our veterinary nurse to pick out fabric for the reception counter and found the perfect one! I am so lucky to have a mom that sews and she took the fabric back with her today to make the curtain (oh yeah, she's making the exam blankets too!)

It wasn't only my parents that were there helping out! Michael's parents just moved into town to their new house in Vancouver, WA and in the midst of their unpacking and organizing their lives they put in hours to help at the clinic.  Barb and Jim are expert painters and they painted a couple of the rooms and primered like crazy at out painting party. This weekend they were helping breakdown cardboard for recycling, staining doors and Barb had the unrewarding task of painting the concrete that runs under the brick - it's a tough job and it's slow going and she did a great job!

Kristin with Dr. Jackie Nielsen at the FCCO fundraiser (aka furball)

Thank you all for checking in and for being so supportive. Gotta go change into the overalls and get my booty back to work!

It was a pretty exciting long weekend for us, with a lot happening. Our lab equipment was delivered and installed, our digital radiography system was installed along with the dental xray system, and the electricians hung the ceiling fans and light fixtures. Then on Saturday, we painted like mad, and then hung out drinking and eating pizza afterwards. Thanks VERY MUCH to everyone who came out to help us paint, we were really seriously relieved to have gotten so much done in one afternoon. And thanks to everyone who stopped by to hang out, have a few drinks, and check out the clinic - it was really nice to see everyone there!

Omar setting up our lab equipment	Electricians installed the ceiling fans
light fixtures from Schoolhouse Electric	Paint and maple doors

Digital radiography system installed, and working! This is our test shot of Katie's dog Frida who was kind enough to pose for us

Dad	Mom
Lia	Barb
Ben	Katie

Hopefully tomorrow we'll actually be flipping light switches in the space, turning on our lights! Kristin and I put bulbs in them all today, and the electricians have been finishing everything up quickly - things are moving fast!

Sheetrock, taping, and wall finishing are proceeding smoothly (heh heh, smoothly) and it's starting to look like a real place. The doors are going up too! We'll be painting a few key areas over the next few days so we can be ready for our digital radiography machine on Thursday, and our lab equipment which is also coming on Thursday.

We'll keep you posted - until next time, here's some pictures...

view down the hall from the front	comfort room doorway and window

treatment area with the wet tables in place

Humabuilt doors, ready to be hung. These doors have a thin veneer of maple, but 85% of the volume of the door comes from wheat stalks, so it's annually renewable

Wow it's been over two weeks since my last construction update - sorry about the delay. Let's get down to business...

Week 5 (3/17 - DONE)
The majority of the rough electrical was completed this week, and work continued on the pressure piping for Oxygen, Nitrogen, and Vacuum systems.

Week 6 (3/24 - DONE)
Okay, well - the original plan was to be done with drywall by the end of this week, but in fact by the end of the week it hadn't even started. So, we're now officially 1 week (or slightly more) behind. However, this week we *did* get everything else completed:

• Rough Electrical: Completed, and approved to cover up
• Rough Plumbing: Completed, and approved to cover up
• Network Cables: Completed, approved to cover
• Medical Gas System: Inspected and approved, still pending some extra paperwork and permitting. I had to work HARD to find someone at the city who wanted to look at this system. Nobody thought it was their turf, yet everyone figured someone wanted to look at it. Eventually I found "Special Hazards Inspector" Bob Happle who works for the Fire Marshall, and he was excellent. He came by, inspected the system, told me how to file the permit (which will land on his desk) and gave us the okay. So, despite my previous bitching about the city, there have been quite a few good people to work with there, and Bob is certainly one of the best so far!
• HVAC Venting and Gas Line: Completed, and approved to cover - this included a vent through the roof for the dryer, the water heater, the bathroom vent, and the medgas evacuation system.

So, with all those subtasks completed and all the approvals lined up neatly... we're ready to SHEETROCK!

We also had the "Wash 'n Roll" truck come by to groom DeeDee - it's a cool RV turned into a mobile grooming service. They did an excellent job, and they were very good with DeeDee!

BEFORE	AFTER

Week 7 (3/31 - THIS WEEK): Derek, the contractor doing the framing and sheetrock, had a hard time finding guys to do sheetrock this week - everyone was working on other projects. So Monday and Tuesday went a little slower than expected, although he got some leftover framing tasks completed, which was good. But Wednesday he found a crew of 4 guys who came in and sheetrocked ALL of the main walls and ceilings in 1 day! Wednesday night it looked like there had been an explosion in there, what a freaking mess - my tidy and orderly job site had been ruined, but at least the sheetrock was up!

So the rest of the week the drywall guys are taping and mudding, and derek is hanging doors and window frames. It's starting to look really different in there. I'll hold off on sending sheetrock pics until they get the joints taped and sanded, it looks pretty ugly in there at the moment.

Week 8 (4/7): The plan next week will be for us to paint a few critical areas in the evenings like the bathroom, breakroom and the lab area, so we can hang the cabinets and countertops, and the plumber can get in and do his finish work (hooking up sinks and wet tables). Hopefully we can also get the electricians started on some of the finish work up on the ceiling (pendant lights and fans). Then, next weekend, we'll be painting like mad.

Week 9 (4/14): Now the electricians can really come in and finish up. We'll also be bringing in a lot of equipment, and getting the floors cleaned and re-finished with a couple final coats of sealer. Then, towards the end of the week, we'll start setting up equipment, bringing in furniture, touching up paint, and putting down carpet tiles.

So, technically if all goes as planned, we could still *possible* open on Earth Day (4/22), but it seems unlikely that we'll be able to get all of that together by then. So, the next holiday to shoot for would be May Day (5/1) which is either "Loyalty Day", "International Workers' Day", or some pagany druid thing, or a day where you put flowers in baskets, or something - I don't get it, it's sort of a strange multi-purpose-holiday with a lot of functions all trying to stack up on that one day, but they may need to make room for one more... MTVC Grand Opening Day!

DeeDee feels much lighter on her paws since her haircut

Belmont Sunset, after that crazy day of hail, snow, sun, and rain - btw, "Belmont Sunset" would be a good name for a drink, something with carrot juice in it maybe, and tequila... not sure yet. I'll work on it.