Life on a Treadmill

On July 3rd we were at the Dunlap 4th of July Parade in downtown Dunlap!  It was a terrific parade and went on for the longest time I've ever seen a parade last!  It seemed like everyone in the town came out and from surrounding areas.  The two mules in the picture above were my favorites! 

As for our Day Care, we are licensed now to open our doors and accept up to 20 clients a day.  It's been a long haul getting everything ready and passing all the inspections and I can hardly believe we're almost finished!  Right now, we're waiting on the "CHOICES" program to take effect August 1st.  CHOICES is operated as AmeriChoice and BlueCare, which has taken over the Medicaide Waiver program.   

We have clients waiting to come as soon as their new Care Coordinator's get the Day Care added to their Home Care services.

I haven't had much time OR energy to come up here and post lately and I'm sorry for that!  I have felt like I've been running on a Treadmill that wouldn't stop, lately!

In the meantime, we're still excited about all that God is going to do when He brings in the clients HE wants us to have!

We are LICENSED!!

We  had our FINAL inspection this morning by the Tennessee Adult Day Care Inspector and we passed with flying colors!!  We have a temporary license (until our regular license is completed and mailed) to open our doors on Monday, July 12th!!
We are praying for our first attendees!! God knows them by name!!

We Hired a CNA!

Today we went up to our building because we were having our TV Room furniture delivered and we had 4 Interviews lined up from all the Resumes we've collected.  By the end of the day, we decided on and hired our first part-time CNA! We're so excited! She's a sweet girl with a lot of compassion and enthusiasm and we believe she will be a real asset to our company and loved by our clients.

Sean, our contractor, is getting really close to being finished with his interior work.  The other day, they laid the concrete to extend the sidewalk out to the parking lot.  Today they were finishing up wiring and getting the Emergency Exit lights up.  They also finished with the wallboards and tomorrow Sean will be blowing the walls to texturize them and laying the handicap bathroom tile.

This weekend, we will be going up there to do some finishing and trim painting and whatever else needs to be done.  There are so many details!  For one, I will need to get backgound checks done, finish up the hiring paperwork on our CNA, order some shirts for her and we still need to go and buy an oven and a microwave, mirrors for the bathrooms and a million and one other little things.

As soon as we know we're finished, I'll have to contact the Fire Marshall again and the Adult Day Care Inspector to come out and do the final inspections.  I need to arrange another meeting with our Consultants and we'll need to try to determine an Opening date.  Then I'll need to alert the Chamber of Commerce.  They're going to come out and do a Ribbon Cutting Ceremony and take pictures and put a write-up in the local paper for us.

We're excited about doing business in a "small town", where all the people know and care about each other. Dunlap has a reputation of having a lot of very "good and caring people" and we're going to be proud to be a part of their community.

The picture of the birds at the top was taken at Alexian Village when we visited there.  I'm going to get a smaller cage and some small finches to put in the reception area of our Day Care for the clients to enjoy!

What a Day!

W

What a day it has been!  This morning, hubby left me asleep and went on to Dunlap to meet the Security Company representative at our building to talk about all that needs to be done. Of course, it's going to be much more than we expected.  Then he went to take care of the water, electric and gas.

While he was gone, I got dressed and started working on paperwork and details here.  I just finished a little while ago and it's 11:26 p.m.!  It's been this way every day for the last couple of weeks now.  Today I worked on employee forms and files and took so many phone calls from applicants, I can't remember how many there were!  I had to get each resume from my Email and print it and then make a file for it so my daughter and I can go over all of them tomorrow.  Then I'll have to phone or Email each one and let them know when we would like to meet with them for a personal interview.  We have a few very hopeful sounding applications.  I wish we could hire them all!  Unfortunately, we can only hire one for the morning shift and maybe a part-time occasional employee to fill in when the other one can't be there.  We're very reluctant to hire too many employees right off the bat since we're not sure yet how many "clients" we'll have the first month or so.

It feels good to be "almost finished" with most of the work though!  I'm exhausted but feeling very good about all that I've been able to accomplish now! I couldn't have done it all without my husband's help though!  He's sacrificed his free time to help me out and then works late hours at night in the living room with his laptop!  What a blessing he's been!

I'll try to remember to take pictures again on Thursday when I go out there.  They're delivering our TV Room furniture on Thursday and we'll be doing at least 4 face-to-face interviews for a CNA. 

We joined the Chamber of Commerce the other day though and they're going to link our website to theirs!  When we open, they'll send out a photographer to take pictures and write up an article for the paper and they'll do a Ribbon Cutting ceremony for us!  I feel like a celebrity!

Take care Friends!  More to come later!

Progress!

We went to Staples today and purchased a couple of office chairs for the office! They had some steno chairs in a hot pink on sale! I had to get them for our Caring Hearts office!  We headed to Dunlap after meeting our contractor to give him a check so he can pay his workers.  Believe it or not, we fit three large boxes with chairs in our Mustang Convertible! We had to put the top down to get the boxes in but we made it! 

We delivered the furniture to the building and checked on things and noticed that some water was pooling near the back of the parking lot but draining off quickly so no problem there.  Then our daughter met us there and we all went to the Cooky Jar Restaurant for supper before heading to the Bluegrass Festival at the Coke Ovens. We waited at the restaurant for my husband, who went over to the phone company to get our new phone number and make arrangements to have the  phones turned on the end of this month! It was still raining pretty heavily though and since we didn't all have umbrellas, we decided not to stay and to come back  tomorrow.  

Here are a few pictures of how the work is progressing so far!  I can't wait to see it all finished with the furnishings all in it and ready for our clients!!

 This is the Entry and Reception Area

 This is our office in the back of the building.

One of the desks we purchased from the previous owner.

Breaking up concrete and taking down walls for one of the Handicap Bathrooms!

 

This room will be our overflow dining room and computer station/craft area. We will put a round table in here and when it isn't being used as a dining table, it can be used for cards or board games.

Our Kitchen! We still need to buy a stove/oven!

This room will be used as a Quiet Room for those that want to rest away from the activity.

This room is the TV Room.  We purchased a sofa, love seat and a chair.  We'll have other chairs also in the room.  We still need to buy a large screen TV yet to mount on the wall.

Looking down the hall with Main Dining Room on right.  We'll be adding Emergency Exit signs and lighting in the hallway.  All of the doorways are being widened to 36" as per state code.

This room will be our Exercise Therapy Room where we will put a manual treadmill and stationary bicycle. It looks smaller than it really is! Right now it's being used for storage for materials for the workers.

Keep checking back!  I'll add more photos and updates as I can until we open and you can see the 

FINAL PRODUCT!

We Have a Key!

Today, we got the key to the building and the previous owner is moved out! Walls are coming down and plumbing for the handicap bathrooms is being done.

I placed an ad for a CNA in the Times Free Press for Sunday and Monday and also in the Dunlap Tribune coming out next Thursday.

Later after we left Dunlap, we went and looked at furniture at Rooms to Go and purchased some beautiful furniture for the "TV ROOM"!  That will be delivered next Thursday at our request, because we want most of the cutting of wallboard to be finished by then.  

After dinner, we went to Sams Club to price large screen TV's.  Found one we really like for a very good price! We haven't purchased that yet.  We needed a slight break in spending after buying the furniture! We're in spending shock right now!  :-)

Tonight I'll be printing brochures to take to the Dunlap Coke Ovens Bluegrass Festival tomorrow!

Keep checking back for more!

We have a signed lease!

We spent the day in Dunlap at our new building yesterday and our contractor, Sean Martin, began renovations on our building!  They got a lot done in just one day! Here is Sean pushing in a wall!  We're taking out a wall to make a larger room that will be used as a Dining area.

Today, we went back up there and signed our lease to purchase agreement and put money down on the building.  We also purchased from the previous owner, some desks and a filing cabinet.  She didn't have room for them in her new office as she is down-sizing and we could really use them! The Lord works in wonderful ways!  I forgot to take pictures today of the work they're doing but will try to remember tomorrow.

Last night after we left Dunlap, we met Sean at Home Depot, where Sean was purchasing supplies.  He was buying our handicap comodes and sinks and a hot water heater and a bunch of other stuff that would be fun for contractors to shop for!  We met him so we could give him a check to pay for the supplies. 

There is still so much that we'll hve to purchase!  Tomorrow, I need to put an ad in the paper for the weekend for a CNA. I also have to print more brochures for the Dunlap Coke Ovens Bluegrass festival!  We plan to go and meet the townsfolk and pass out brochures.

Already, word is starting to circulate about us coming to Dunlap and people are getting excited about our opening, which makes us more excited!  

More to come later!  Keep checking back for our progress!

If anyone needs a handiman, Sean's your man!  He does a great job and is a man of integrity! Very hard worker and very trustworthy!

Can't wait to see what it's going to look like after they're finished and everything is furnished and ready for our clients!  We want this to be like their own personal, private club!