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!