goodbye to Brisbane

I have to admit feeling a bit sad about leaving Brisbane for the first time. I have been moving fast looking to the future for weeks now. This week was no exception until I did the last few wipes of the kitchen sink yesterday. I'll admit to crying a bit then and actually I'm crying now. Brisbane was a known. I was comfortable there, in my own domain. It wasn't perfect but I KNEW what was good and bad. There will be much to discover in the new neighbor hood, I find myself worrying about the unknowns that might be... what a waste of time and energy that is and I'm plenty short of both. I'm hoping writing this might help as these days of the actual transition are tough. I'm needing some rest and I miss working my dogs and teaching my students!




 The floor removal at Brisbane was full of unpleasant surprises. The tiles were not screwed together as I thought, they were bolted with winged molly rivets.


Here is a shot of the little bastards...... there was no easy answer, they just had to be drilled out and the then the little bits pushed through with a metal stick and all the slivers vacuumed up.

















 At least it was just the tiles around the edges of the room but some tiles had four on each corner and some along the sides as well.... it took David 7 hours of drilling to do three sides of the room.




















The following day we had my family (Jason, Sheila and their three boys) Tammy and Elena, Karen Charles and David and I to take the floors up. Step one was popping all the little rubber plugs out of the floor, this as it were was the "fun" job when all was said and done.
























Washing every one was not so fun
Sheila did it for hours, oh yeah and then we have to get them dry







When we started lifting them up there was water under all of them!! We flipped them over and put fans on them (great idea Karen!!).

The next day I had movers come and get them and know they are in storage at great expense! Wanna buy some flooring???

Karen on a stack : Then the stacking started, lots of stacking, over 400 tiles

we figure they weighted about 30 pounds  

Jason and Kyle on the last three tiles!!

 the empty room on Oct 31 2011, this is with no tiles, the lines are dirt.

Good bye Brisbane, so many good memories we will take with us that will last forever

A new phase is here

Today is OCT 21 and I think we can move in by the first!! It will take many things to work but so far I have been a lucky lady as many things are just falling into place.

Last week was the beginning of the finishing touches, we will be in this stage for a while. It will over lap with the moving stage. A big part of the move will start on Saturday (tomorrow).




Robert put in the sliding glass doors
this week and we had instant transformation.
The big 8 foot glass door was my big, unplanned splurge. Getting TWO of them (one for each training space) was just pure decadence!
It is beginning to look like more than just a warehouse now.
Blancett mentioned the cleaning of them and Kelly and Tim told me horror stories about people and dogs running into glass doors.
Kill Joys.
I reluctantly shopped for window decals tonight, it's that or I'm thinking the darwin effect could come into play on this one.





this will be the student lounge area















Tuesday was the freak out day this week when the
 floors arrived 10 days early with no notice, most of you know this because I finally had to pull the plug on some classes.

The truck driver was HOOT!! Lucky that one of my favorite craigs list
 buddies (Jeff with a JRT named LUCY) was there doing a dump run! If he had not been
 there we would have never gotten the flooring from the truck to the warehouse. As it was we all heaved and hoed and pushed and pulled. Each roll is 650 pounds and there were three rolls on each pallet.  The pallets were breaking like match sticks and kept getting stuck on everything, I broke my "please don't get hurt" number of reps in shortest amount of time on Tuesday.











This is my good buddy Logan! He is Mom's great nephew and they stopped in by chance and got in on the action. A trip to McDonalds was the only logical next step. Mom, Logan, Jeff and I had a splendid lunch to celebrate the arrival of the flooring

Hey I'm getting caught up here!! Only 3 days behind
but I do need to add Tim's ceiling, my floor project update and Mom's craig list adventures to really have you totally up to speed.

cob webs and painters

I'm behind with the updates by a full week again !! OH WELL!
This week it feels like we will never actually run dogs in here and there was not much to do last week .... but HUGE progress was made before then! :


The painters have come and gone.... my good friend from way long time ago Andy Smith brought in his crew and did a crackin' job! talk about amazing !







patching the walls was a really big deal, there were many many holes, guess who blew the "before" shots on the "before and after" gig ? yeah.....

this was the first color test, I loved it but it was a bit too dark
I found out on the third change it ends up on the walls, not in another little square next to another little square, good thing I loved it!






















these guys worked like crazy, even on sunday!
the way to a mans paint brush the same way as to his heart... DONUTS

this is taken from the mezzanine! look how small those guys look!!

At one point during the paining there were like 6 people working.

I kept thinking "WHO IS PAYING all these people?" oh yeah.... then I would remember....

the cob webs on the 28 foot ceiling were driving me nuts so they had to come down some how and I wanted to change all the light bulbs at the same time... so Andy let "us" (my favorite word!) borrow his scaffolding. I thought we only had it for one night and Robert had to work late that night. SO at MIDNIGHT Robert climbed a later ON TOP of the scaffold and I pushed him around from light bulb to cob web to light bulb. I spent the time rotating my thoughts from CPR and triage review to my insurance policy details. I went from asking Robert "can you get that one?" to "OK OK, that is good enough ! Stop reaching over so far" to "ooooh you gotta get that big one over there"...... cob webs are down! lights are in!













fearless Robert on ladder on scaffold! I think the cob webs bugged him too, that, or he is very indulgent man!!















The ceiling had more treasures than the rain forest style rope-like cob webs. The bat shaped pinyata for example  (hell ... I wish I could spell, even spell check is stumped on this one! You know, the child's game from mexico where you bit open a cute object and candy falls out)  . I had mixed feelings about him (her?), I think maybe because halloween was is so close, or maybe because he (she?) was there first after all. Maybe he (I'm calling him a boy) longed to be set free or maybe he loved it there, having his private warehouse. I decided he had to come down but the garbage can seemed a bit harsh (picture Tim rolling eyes now) 

I was stoked to find him a new home with one of the painters !! (Bet the wife loved seeing that come through the door, kids or not)

with new lights and paint the place looks like a palace, honest you guys are gonna love it...

 thanks Kaj and Monica for helping with the colors, only the top designers will do!!

the wood people part two

oops posted to quick on that last one:
this is Kit and his buddy, they paid for wood with apples from santa cruz that were nothing special and never got eaten. But they were fun non the less....

I decided I best to go with possibly a higher class chap and made some calls. Within a day carpenter Dick Draxler (old buddy and past land lord) took some of the plywood. He promised to mail a check..... one step up from apples !  I did not get a photo of Dick.... DRATS!

I remembered that my dear friend Belinda Head (former ACE instructor and damn fine agility competitor) had recently become subject to bouts of obsessive, compulsive building of things.
There is a name for that, I have no idea what it is but I know there are two distinct types. Belinda belongs to the group that actually FINISHES the projects.
That being the fact we feel it safe enough to encourage this seemingly harmless pass time, so I called....

I was at the chiropractor and ask her if she could use some wood. YES! Belinda is helping us build a chicken coop. " 'course she is" I say. I told Belinda that I thought the building gig was cute and all but getting chickens was pushing it. After building her family a chicken coup that is was creatively  designed  both functionally and esthetically she's now craving a next generation coup. Clearly peddling the whole "it'll be fun, just think fresh eggs everyday" bit to innocent families in the city is the best way to keep her "building the perfect chicken coup" dream alive.  I have fresh eggs every day too, it says so on the carton.

I set it up for them to get there together, I sealed the deal by throwing in Mom for more bait, they both love Mom. Truxton saw Belinda teach Ricki the difference between trash and treasure when it comes to wood. After a little trouble with logistics and automobiles it was decided a second trip would be needed to actually take the wood away......


In closing : This is my personal little project.... I have been working on it
for three weeks now. Tip of the day: remove the base board before you try to fit sticky tiles down. If you don't... you'll be sorry. Yes that is a urinal, were uptown I'm tellin' ya!

the wood people

I'm still getting rid of wood from all the demolition. It has been quite a cast of characters.
Kit is building something at his girlfriends parents that he is going to live in, clearly this propnot quite up to the term "house" but be did not say "shed"

decisions, decisions

At some point I need to tell the story of how I got the space we are moving into. It is a great story. But not today.
HEY!! anyone want to know the real difference between LOWES and HOME DEPOT?? read this blog, the truth will be revealed at the end (HINT: it is the reason you would chose one over the other at night time)

Things are moving at a very fast pace at 677 Toland. I'm too tired to blog most night so I'm getting WAY behind with progress report and photos.
My days have been filled with decisions that I will have to live with for a very long time. While I'm a slob in actual practice my education is in art and design and I take ascetics very seriously. Fortunately I have students like graphic designer Monica DuClaud and the team of designers Tim and Kaj to advise me. I love decorating so for me that is the fun part. Monica and Tim and Kaj are so wonderful to take it all so seriously. As a result things like color are coming out nicer than I ever imagined!! Tim and I plan the other details constantly.
Every decision is multi faceted. Take the flooring in my (and mom's) office for example. Linoleum or carpet?  Mom gets to advise on the materials,"linoleum she says... "easy to clean, Brink and Ty are getting old, the poop and vomit factor strongly point to linoleum". Off I go find the perfect linoleum, find it, buy it and have them hold it. Up comes the hideously stained carpet to show the tiled floor covered with carpet glue, a  not so great  surface for linoleum. Call Mom, she says "well Brink and Ty are old and linoleum is so slick and the fact is carpet would provide way better traction and  be MUCH easier to install" Back to Floor Craft, find the perfect carpet, exchange it for the linoleum, the end, no? NO!
Have to match new paint to the new carpet now and kiss off the effort to find the perfect paint to match the now returned linoleum.....

Pretty much the same exact story is repeated for the bathrooms. The choosing, the matching the returning and on it goes.

So now that both rooms are done can anyone tell me how the paint in the bathroom and the office could possibly look like the same friggin color?? Someone already asked me "how come you painted the office and the bathrooms the same color". Please don't ask me that. They not the same and have been chosen from a highly sophisticated palate, thank you very much.

Every step requires a team to get it just right.. the lights, the floors,  the walls, the reception area, the crating area, the kitchen area. Every steps requires consideration to budget, safety and convenience to both dog and client. I have some great photos of the progress coming soon!

PLEASE help me find home for free scrap lumber for fire wood, it is too expensive to pay to go to the dump!!!
QUIZ:
LOWES vs HOME DEPOT: is it the products?  no! The service? no! (maybe Lowes is better)  is the impulse items at the check out? YES !! After 9:00 pm you will find me at HOME DEPOT, they have candy instead of batteries at the check out stand!! you heard it here first!!
PHOTOS SOON

week three

It is my pleasure to introduce Robert! He is doing a ton of the work as well as being the first person that saw the space, I brought him to advise me. He shrugged his shoulders and said "sure, we can do this". Robert makes everything and anything seem possible! He has a solution for everything!

He is the one that has his equipment at Brisbane and he will be moving with us from Brisbane, he is one of the ace family for sure!