We found our sanctuary’s home in October 2020 — a lush farmland just 15 minutes from downtown Chapel Hill. With open pastures, creeks, rolling hills, and acres of forest trails, it’s the perfect place for animals in need of refuge to heal as we connect them with children who benefit from spending time with them..
From the start, we’ve focused on conservation and green building — clearing the land responsibly and preserving its natural beauty. From the start, our sanctuary has been fully solar-powered. Once we moved into our Welcome Center, we connected to the grid and are tracking readings for a specified amount of time. We are then returning to solar power, with the possibility of selling solar back to the energy company – while also keeping connected to the grid as additional insurance. <div><br></div><div>Since we started building out the property, we have used energy-efficient, chemical-free systems. We’re also creating pollinator habitats and teaching visitors the importance of sustainability through outdoor programs and educational resources.
There’s still much to do, but we’re proud of how far we’ve come!
We made it! We are finished and IN THE BUILDING! We are not open to the public yet, as we are still working out all the kinks of actually being finished and getting to house a number of seriously adorable pups and kittens.
Landscaping still to come!
And progress on the Good Dog Cottages is already well underway!
Exciting Progress at Beautiful Together Animal Sanctuary!
Between August and January we completed an incredible amount of work as we built out our animal sanctuary. We have:
And one of our biggest achievements? We have officially completed the build out of six individual care suites, including two adoption lounges for our community to further connect with the many orphaned kittens and puppies we will care for at the sanctuary. These dedicated spaces provide a safe, comfortable, and nurturing environment for our youngest rescues as they prepare for their forever homes. We also cleared all the rough ground and have begun landscaping around the building, ready to add the first touches of greenery and beauty to the sanctuary grounds. It’s been an industrious few months, and we couldn’t be more excited about the progress! Every step we take brings us closer to fully realizing our vision: a sanctuary where animals in need receive the care, love, and second chances they deserve. A huge thank you to our incredible supporters, volunteers, and donors who make this possible – we can’t wait to share even more updates soon!
In early 2021 we had purchased an exceptionally used tractor – as in over 50 years’ used. We got it for a wonderful price, and it served its usefulness – but working to fix it again and again finally proved to be too difficult. Although we were fortunate enough to be able to borrow tractor time from from some very generous people multiple times, we finally realized that we most definitely needed to finally get on our own. August marked our very first month with our new (much-less used) tractor, which has served us quite well so far!
We also laid out some new concrete pads, built a new well house, and got started on electrical work throughout the Welcome & Pet Adoption Center.
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One of the first things we did when starting interior work in the Welcome & Pet Adoption Center was to insulate it. This was quite an effort given the the height of this building – but it’s something that will pay off for years to come.
We also laid down the flooring for the Cat Cafe & Lounge!! It’s amazing to see how it clearly shapes the entire space, so we can better visualize how that 1700 square foot lounge will look when it is fully built out.
We continued our build of our Welcome & Pet Adoption Center, finished the roofing, and started the build out of the lean-to sides to create additional programming spaces and outdoor enrichment areas for the animals. We also cleared more of the outdoor area behind the center, in order to start landscaping our activity center, welcomed more volunteers who helped to beautify our space, and continued to activate our well!
We made significant progress on the build of our 6,700 sq ft. indoor/outdoor Welcome & Pet Adoption Center in March and designed our Sanctuary Cat Cafe & Lounge! We now have the siding up, the roof on, and our windows installed. As we continue to build out our outdoor components, we are also preparing to dry in the interior!
We finalized the framework, started placing siding and framed out all the sections for the windows. There will be a LOT of windows, as we designed this space to very much feel like you are connected to the beautiful farmland that is home to Beautiful Together Animal Sanctuary. Next up we finish placing the siding, put up the roof, and we start to place the windows!
We received the framework that we have meticulously designed over the past year and we currently have a team on the ground building the steel structure of our Welcome & Pet Adoption Center! Given that it is winter, we are expecting plenty of stops and starts due to weather. But we will keep pushing ahead each and every day.
We poured concrete for the foundation slab of our Welcome Center! We’d had to reschedule this quite a few times because of excessively rainy weather – but then were blessed with a full week of dry sunshine, and our awesome construction crew worked from dawn until way past dark, laying down a perfect slab on which we will build the center, along with a front and back patio. We also set up all or our plumbing and drainage areas to enable all of our operations within the center.
Next up is building the Welcome Center structure where we can greet our community, offer pet care education, host a variety of youth programs, volunteer orientation programs, foster care appreciation events, community programs and much more! This will also be where we can offer an interim space for homeless pets and their puppies or kittens to have a quite place to decompress. Mamas who have given birth in the shelter need to be pulled as soon as possible as overcrowded shelters can be quite dangerous for vulnerable puppies and kittens. Having a quiet area for them, a safe harbor after the stress of the shelter, allows us to care for them medically and give them the attention and affection they deserve, while also working to find them foster homes – and then permanent homes – once the babies are a little older.
We are officially SOLAR POWERED at Beautiful Together, and we could not be more excited about it! Since Day One, we have made it our mission to build out our property with as much of an eye on green building and conservation as possible, so to be able to power our entire clinic operations at the sanctuary with solar power is a huge win for us. We will continue to build out all additional structures at the sanctuary with solar power, along with additional eco-friendly power generating methods, too.
We have also further beautifying our grounds – from planting new grasses and flowering plants to setting up a covered outside area, adding bright and colorful picnic tables, benches and more. We fully welcome volunteers to help us build out our sanctuary property! More updates to come but, after three years of working on all the invisible omfrastrictire parts that enable us to finally build all the visible parts of our sanctuary, we are thrilled to be fully solar powered!
