THE PURRING PARROT UPDATE PAGE

Here you will find the updates and progress with the opening of the Purring Parrot in Point Loma

www.thepurringparrot.com

3015 St Charles Pl. Suite D, San Diego, CA, 92110

619-223-2326

We looked at many properties over the months and found what we feel is a great match for our project and with very accomodating building owners. Below is the buiding we will be in:

4/28/08 Website started and we managed to get 1 page up for an announcement considering we don't really understand web design and did it with a more professional program.

4/30/08 Spoke with contractor and should have estimates for construction and starting date by Fri.

After that we submit plans to the city and hope all goes smoothly with obtaining permits.

Started tutorials with Dreamweaver web program and hope to have website more complete by the end of the week.

5/3/08 We have our first estimate for work to be done and the permit process with the city has started. We are scheduling another bid for a second estimate. We have also completed most of the content for the lodging area of the website. Tomorrow we will go over what products to carry.

5/6/08 We met with another contractor today for a 2nd bid and should have an estimate by the end of the week. We have semi mastered Spry in the Dreamweaver program and I will try and post our home page tomorrow which Patrick did a great job putting together. Did more research tonight on merchant accounts for processing credit cards on line and in the store.

5/7/08 Computer programs can be very tempermental. We were hoping to publish our home page today but while adjusting the Spry menu bar it went all haywire and it took me most of the day to get it working correctly again. Then we noticed that the cat's head on our logo had some how shrunk to a disproportionate size compared to the body.

5/10/08 After a lot of difficulties and late nights, we finally managed to get a complete Home page up for our website, www.thepurringparrot.com . Our Dreamweaver skills have improved and now we are learning to use all the cool features. The technical drawing plans for the city and contractor should be done early next week and we should also have all estimates in from all 3 contractors and then pick who we will go with. Once we know what the building costs will be then we can see how much is left or needed to purchase merchandise.

5/14/08 We finally have up more webpages that are properly linked together thanks to Patrick, (he's a smart cookie). Still no word back on the estimates, but we have a meeting on Fri to go over some of the electric layout drawings so hopefully we will have a quote then. Still no word on the capital improvement loan, which we hope to get which would make things much easier. Our business license came yesterday so at least that is one hurdle down. Until we get the estimates on tenant improvements we cannot start selling retail. Our hope of opening June 1 is long gone so we are hoping for an opening date of the summer of 2008. I've been researching recipes for cats and birds of yummy meals to prepare as a treat.

5/22/08 The 'About Us' page has been added and successfully linked with the other pages. Paypal has also been successfully added to my cat sitting site. Drawings are being done for the electrical, gas, and plumbing for the city permits. We have some more estimates in and are waiting on a 4th contractor which has expressed interest. We have also been able to bring some of the costs down by using less expensive fixtures, etc. We may also have to change our business structure from a sole-prop to a partnership. Today more research on the products we are going to carry.

5/28/08 We made some more progress today and met with 2 contractor companies to get more finalized estimates and they are getting closer to our budget. We also got an update on the mechanical drawings and are hoping to have them by this Fri to submit to the city on Mon. Once submitted they can take anywhere from 1-3 weeks on average for the first process. The second process usually doesn't take as long, maybe 2 weeks. Once construction starts then it should take about 6 weeks to complete so we are looking at an Aug opening date. We had hoped to be open sooner but this will give us more time to try and get our on-line products up and running plus get some good bird recipes and bakery products established for in-store and on-line sales. We also didn't need to change our business structure yet and can leave it as is.

6/4/08 Floor and mechanical plans were submitted to the city and they ended up doing everything over the counter, so an extensive review was not needed. Some minor corrections need to be made which shouldn't be a problem, so hopefully construction will start in a couple of weeks. Tested some new varieties of bird muffins and cookies, a Spicy Bean w/ sprouts muffin and a high calorie sweet potato/peanut butter cookie. My birds liked them so hopefully my bird clients will give some good feedback. Accounts need to be set up with FEDEX and UPS for shipping of products. I am also researching catnip recipes.

6/16/08 More plans will be submitted tomorrow for the city and hopefully they will sign off on the corrections. We have a final estimate from one construction company and the cost increased 40%. Hopefully after meeting with them we will find out why the cost is so high. Hopefully we will also get another final estimate from another company tomorrow too. We have our Paypal account set up and will work on the shopping cart tomorrow. We also have our business banking ready to go.

We have been in contact with a flooring company about getting remnant pieces of vinyl sheeting for the flooring which will save costs. We have also been investigating collecting palm nuts around San Diego to sell as a parrot supplement since they are very high in nutritrents and plentiful, we need to make sure they are not sprayed with any insecticides and to become familar with queen and fig palm species. A search on the internet has shown that they are in high demand but hard to find in the U.S.

6/18/08 The city has finally signed off on all the plans so we are ready for permits. We have the final estimate in for the construction from the second bidder, which is just a little over what we wanted. The first bidder was about 40% over the orignal so we skipped that company. We will meet on Friday to finalize everything and hopefuly start construction by next week. Onn Fri we will also go out to try get a good low wholesale price on the flooring. We would like linoleum but might have to settle for vinyl.

6/20/08 We met today with the contractor and set a start date of 6/24/08 and hope to be completed by Aug 1. We picked out the flooring which is a vinyl interlocking floor and got our mailbox key! We are very excited to finalyy get the ball rolling.

6/30/08 The flooring has been ordered and should be here in a few weeks. We went with vinyl planks which are very water resistant and comes in a natural wood pattern. The floor was marked out last week and the framing went up today as well as the electrical outlets. The doors we were hoping to get will take 1 month longer then expected. The doors have to be to conform to city code and are not common so the hunt is on. I will try and get photos of the work being done up tonight.

7/1/08 No luck on the doors so we will go with what we can get. Decided on the tankless water heater, which will be a Noritz. Patrick is working on the internet product pages and has them very well outlined. We are hoping to test it this weekend. I have photos of our progress. The first photos are before any work has been done:

Area to the left of entrance	Entrance, kitchen to the right	Kitchen in corner	Area to the right of kitchen and back exit

These are photos I took 6/30/08. The framing and electrical outlets are installed:

Area to the left of entrance, aviary on left	Entrance	Kitty rooms	Aviary	Aviary and cat rooms	Hallway cats on left, birds on right	Kitchen

7/8/08: The flooring has arrived but we aren't ready for it yet, the sound board is up and I will go by tomorrow to get some updated photos. Patrick is working very hard on the shopping cart software. We tried understanding the Zen cart and Os Commerce, which are free programs but you have to be very well versed in code to really understand what to do. We have opted for a paid template from e-commerce.com. I didn't realize how complicated a shopping cart is with all the different types of shipping options. Our payment gateway will just be Paypal for now. Paypal does come with a shopping cart but the shipping part isn't in real time with updated rates and we want to make sure we aren't under or over charging for items.

7/9/08 The dry wall is up and the carpet for the hallway and entrance has been ordered. A nice bonus that we discovered today is that the rooms on the west wall will have windows for the cats to look out of. They are high up but we can build a kitty walkway or steps so they can while away the day looking outside. We were thinking that instead of the wiring going over the tops of the romms for that area it would just go up to the ceiling. I'm working on some more bird recipes and the check-in forms. Patrick was able to load the e-commerce template into our site folder. I have also found a supplier for palm nuts in Florida and may order them in bulk from him for parrot clients. There are palm nuts all over San Diego that ripen throughout the year but I don't have the time right now to make sure they haven't been treated with pesticides and that they are the right species of palm.

Below are some more photos:

SOUND BOARD FOR AVIARY	SOUND BOARD	DRYWALL FOR ROOMS	INSIDE AVIARY LOOKING OUT TO ROOMS

KITCHEN	ROOMS BY ENTRANCE	LARGER ROOM IN CORNER	ROOMS W/ WINDOWS	INSIDE OF AVIARY	LARGER ROOM

7/15/08 The windows and sliders have been installed and the carpet is here for the entrance. We have decided to hold off on the one-way tinting for the windows to see how our bird lodgers will react. I have many clients that own both cats and birds and they always seem to ignore each other. There was a lot of conficting information on-line once I started researching one-way glass and if it becomes an issue then we will have someone come in and give us a solution. The shopping cart template has been installed, thanks to Patrick and his patience. Computer code is such a high maintenance drama queen. If you leave one little space out in your code or if you use the same picture twice under the same name it gets very upset and POOF! your website can just disappear. Either way Patrick got it under control and the on-line retail area is born. We still have to upload our products, shipping, payment gateway, etc but at least he has the complicated data out of the way :) Our contractor is said he is still on target to finish Aug 1 and then we will need 4-7 days to get everything set up and ready for our guests. Check-in, clients forms and the terms and conditions forms are ready also and being checked over.

I have also been researching which brands of bird cages to carry and use since there are so many kinds out there. We are focusing on manufactuers that will stand behind their products and stress that their cages whether, powder-coated or stainless steel, do not have dangerous, or if any, high levels of lead and zinc, in them. Companies that can guarantee this are going to have more expensive cages but the quality and durability is worth the price. Three companies we are focusing on are King's Cages, California Cages, and Avian Adventures cages.

7/21/08 I found out that California Cages went out of business so we have now gotten set up with King's, Avian Adventues, Innovative, and HQ. I went by today and they were just spraying the texture on. 11 of the doors are in but they were too tall so they have to be trimmed down. Phones will be hooked up tomorrow. We have our computer equipment and will start purchasing some products from Cats Rule, Petsoup, and Drinkwell. I will also try and set up our merchant account account tomorrow as well as order the HEPA air purifiers. Patrick is picking out music for the website and finished setting up some of the pay prefrences and shipping for the shopping cart.

7/29/08 Phones are on but the wiring still needs to be done and we didn't have the "required" setup for the company to install it, which has been quite frustrating but we are getting there. Phone companies don't like to make things simple anymore. We have been painting and staining like crazy when we are not working are regular jobs so there have been many late nights and many more to come but we are ready for it. The finishing date for construction may be delayed a few days from Aug 1. Eleven doors are stained, coated, hung and done, except for hardware. Venting is in and we have painted the exterior part of the rooms. We discussed themes and assigned colors and schemes for each other. Tomorrow we hope to paint the rest of the door trim before they are installed which should make things easier. The lights are in as well as well as the flooring and the rest of the doors and Solatubes. We hope to have colors for the rooms and outside of the aviary picked out for tomorrow and then start painting them. I had an attorney look at our contracts for pet lodging to make sure both sides are protected. Below are photos of the progress of our work. We still ahev the trim to pain for the doors that are hung which will take awhile:

Unstained doors	Door frames	Stained doors	More doors	Painted wall

8/5/08. Painting, painting and more painting. We finished painting the kitchen, aviary, outside of rooms and have completed 11out of our 21 rooms. We are just giving them a general color and saving the fine details of the themes to complete once we are open. The floors were installed today and should be finished by tomorrow. We have our inspection on Thur and will hopefully not have any problems with. We have ordered our cat products but still need to get the birds cages and stands in as well as the HEPA air purifiers. Oh, did I mention all the painting we have left. Yikes! We are getting there though. I'll have updated Photos soon.

8/6/08 More painting today but we only have 6 rooms left. Flooring is done and it looks great. The appliances came and we should be geting the stove tomorrow. We also get the carpeting, baseborads, HVAC and final inspection done tomorrow. Solatubes we have to get installed next week. Here are the update photos:

Aviary	Kitchen	Front suites	Suites by office	Suites across from aviary	Corner suites	Suites across from aviary

8/12/08 We passed inspection today from the city of San Diego and are ready to occupy! We have bird cages and stands ordered, some of the cat equipment is here and we are almost done with the fine detail painting. Patrick has been doing a great job on theming the rooms, his work is much more complex then mine. The construction crew hopes to be finished by Friday and we hope to be open by Mon :) We are exhausted but it's a good tired. We also have the business cards here and have some contacts for artists, as well as some ideas for the walkways, etc.

8/15/08 It's crunch time again. We hope to do a soft opening this Tues or Wed and then a grand opening towards th end of the month. We will be uploading software, working on the rooms and will get some plants for the Aviary. My own birds will be coming to work with me but need to be retested for Psittacosis and PBFD as well as get their annual exam. I know they are healthy but our own birds need to adhere to the same standards as our guests. It will be a busy weekend!

8/22/08 Busy busy busy. We wanted to be open by Mon but some products were delayed and we still needed to get the office and everything else organized. Pet sitting has been very busy so they has slowed things down too, but we need the work to pay the bills. We will have our first guest Sun and will have his room all ready for him. Things are getting better organized and we will be getting no sleep before Sunday to make sure we are ready to offically open on Mon. Aug 25. We plan on the grand opening for Labor weekend.

8/24/08 Okay, we have decided we want everything perfect for our grand opening and will have it the weekend of Sept 6. There is still just to much to get done and we are still waiting on products to come in. This way we can get all the ramps up, software kinks worked out and the alarm, smoke and carbon monoxide detectors up and running. I will be taking the birds to work everyday and keeping regular store hours. I will try and upload some more photos tomorrow and we hve our first guest checked in.

I will still be doing pet sitting but on a very limited basis. Tami will take north county sits and Paula will take the others but they are just part-time.

8/30/08 We offically opened on Mon Aug 25, 2008 and have had 2 kitty guests so far that have thoroughly enjoyed their stay. I will post photos of their stay later here and on the Purring Parrot site. We have decided to go ahead and make the glass one way in the aviary, the security alarm is in and we are working on the pet cams. I'll be working on how to load inventory today and postcards. Patrick is getting creative with the kitty ramps and they are very sturdy. We had an 18 pound guest and he had no problems at all except for one ramp that wasn't wide enough to turn around, which has been resolved. We also have an artist with water colors displaying her work here.