When Randall Chandler's eyes trace the intricate hand laid tile of his dental clinic, run up the gently sloping sides, meet with a cedar ceiling and gaze into a 12 foot by 10 foot atrium, he feels as though he knows every inch of the place.

He should. He designed and built it.

Chandler had dreamed of the kind of office he wanted to own. But he also knew of the incredible costs of such a dream. So, he decided the only way to get the office he wanted, and still be able to afford it, was to build it from the ground up--literally.

Chandler bought an empty field and had a concrete slab poured to the specifications he drew up. And starting eight months before he graduated, Chandler began spending hours after school, on weekends and during holidays sawing, drilling, hammering and laying wire and plumbing. By August of 1982, just in time for graduation, he finished construction of "every stinking inch" of the 1,900-square-foot physical plant.

The cost to Chandler, he says, was $20 per square foot, or a total of $38,000. He says that if you were to have a contractor build such a facility, you couldn't touch it for $120,000.

"If somebody else can do it, why can't I?" says Chandler, recalling the rhetorical question that led the student, with no formal construction training, to the decision to build his own clinic. "We kicked plans for the office around for a couple of years and then decided what we wanted, and just did it."

"You know," he continues, "if you're going to live in a place for eight, ten, twelve hours a day for forty years, trying to look for little ways to economize on the quality of the building is crazy.

"The question to ask is, 'What can you live with for thirty-five years.' Then, after answering that, we designed an aesthetically pleasing, enjoyable, comfortable office. And then we decided to add a couple of operatories and some other things so we could make some money to pay for the thing."

Dental Student, March 1983 edition

The Dental Student is a national magazine for students and recent graduates of dentistry.

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