Reno Blog 2 – The Hard Part and The Hard Hats

The Hard Part

This is the part of the renovation process that can be the most difficult.

Mary and I struggled for literally years trying to find the perfect home for our growing clinic. After a few false starts, we suddenly found the perfect place: an easily accessible location, spacious, great for events, room to grow, a place we could infuse with our creativity along with the ability to achieve the highest standards in clinical excellence and…parking parking parking!

But it needs work – a lot of work. Transforming what was once Upsdell’s grocery store to a center of clinical excellence for skincare is a huge undertaking. To polish this Guelph gem, we (we in this case meaning mostly Mary) created a floor plan that would incorporate some of the beautiful historic elements of the building (exposed yellow brick long covered over on the buildings exterior) whilst mitigating the challenges of a traffic flow coming from both the front street entrance and the likely more common entrance from the parking lot at the back. We landed on a final design, secured the funds and gave the green light to our chosen contractor, Van-Del. Then we stood back and watched (and winced) as our lovely vision of the future to be turned into this:

Ummmmm……..yikes!!!!

This shows the necessary stage of evolution and excavation that we knew was coming with the new sanitation line …but still!!! Even though we knew the building had to get much worse before it got better, it’s hard not to think, “What have we done?! I’ve paid someone to demolish our clinic!”

Wait a second….that sounds familiar…

It occurred to me that there are also so many parallels that can be drawn between what is currently happening with our space and that of our clients who often find themselves in process of healing from treatment.

Our space. Your face.

Although we are a non-surgical clinic, the healing and rejuvenation process from some of our more interventional treatments can feel much like, well, how we are feeling watching the above transformation.

Patience and faith are key. It will be beautiful, and definitely worth the hassle…it will take some time though.

I wish I could wave a magic wand and “Poof!” give patients the luminous, healthy skin they desire…..just as I wish I could wave the same wand over the disaster zone that is currently our space, however…..I can’t. Patience and faith.