This was our 10th morning as the sole innkeepers of the Bernerhof, and we finally have a minute to catch our breath. Carla just left to find a small storage unit for our outdoor/camping stuff and empty plastic bins. She will also pick up the few groceries we need for breakfast tomorrow and a couple of around the inn repair items. I am settled into our desk to start to make some sense out of the pile of receipts that I have accumulated for RC Hospitality LLC (since mid-December) and Bernerhof Inn Corporation (since January 1). This is the first minute that I have had to do any bookwork. I feel desperate to get caught up. I think it will take all day today and maybe part of tomorrow to get it all done to my satisfaction.
We only had one couple spend the night last night, Nick and Val. They are skiers and are spending the week here skiing all of the local mountains. We will be slow all week, with one couple checking in tonight for a one nights stay and another couple checking in Thursday night. Friday night, we will have 6 check ins and we have a full house Saturday and Sunday nights. We've been told that the winter will be that way, slow during the week and full on weekends.
Our heads were swimming when Steve was here with everything he was trying to teach us. It was too much too fast, but now that he is gone and we are actually doing everything, it is starting to make sense. We are starting to feel like we belong in this old Inn and it no longer feels completely foreign. Steve was great to learn from, in many respects, but it was a difficult 12 days because there were things we knew we were going to do differently, yet we had to do them his way while he was here. We are excited to be doing all of our baking from scratch, for example. I can finally say that I am a biscuit maker. After experimenting with several recipes, I have found one that I can consistently bake with good results. Carla's gingerbread scones, yesterday morning, were a big hit! We are also baking all of our own cookies and making our buttermilk pancakes from scratch. The guests seems to appreciate our efforts!
We've spent our first week as innkeepers cleaning, organizing, throwing things away, and storing things in the basement. We attacked the kitchen first, anxious to get it clean and organize it in a way that it makes sense for us. Dick Badger, the owner of the Bernerhof, agreed to hire Service Masters to come in and do a deep clean of the Inn. They have finished with all the rooms and the common areas and they are finishing the kitchen today. We are so relieved to have three years of grime removed from the surface of everything. The Inn already seems so much brighter and welcoming just with the deep cleaning. Next up is all the minor repairs. Kenny is working through our punch list. High priority is a new mattress for a couple of the rooms. We hope to have those here by Friday. I will follow up with Dick on that this afternoon. We also ordered new towels, which we hope to have here this week, as the towels are getting frayed and stained and we don't have enough of them. Our bathroom amenities (shampoo, conditioner, soap, etc) will be here Thursday. So many things were allowed to run out as Steve was wrapping up his tenure that Carla and I have had to scramble to make sure we have everything we need to take care of our guests.
We had an exciting night Saturday night. In addition to the normal excitement of a full house on a night that we serve dinner and the bar is open, we had repairmen in the kitchen looking for the source of the cold air that freezes our pipes on sub-zero days, and several appointments scheduled in our spa. During the middle of it all, a couple asked for an iron. As soon as they plugged it in, they flipped a circuit breaker and Carla and I headed to the basement to find the breaker box and try to get the power back to their room. There is one breaker box in the massage room of the spa, where there was a couples massage in progress. Of course, that's the breaker that flipped! So our guests were in the dark, quite literally, until the massage was done and we could get into that massage studio. Luckily for us and them, they were in a suite and only one of the rooms went dark. They were still able to get ready for their night out and we had their power back on before they got back from dinner. Later in the evening a gentleman came to the front desk to let us know that his door would not latch. I thought to myself, "No way, I haven't had any complaints about that yet, surely the door latches." But it didn't because the latch didn't line up properly with the strike plate. It was my good fortune that my partner Carla has some woodworking tools and I was able to chisel out a bigger hole and lower the strike plate so it would latch, all with the guests looking on.
And I gotta go. Too many interruptions. More later.
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Sunday, January 8, 2017
1/8/2017: We Are Innkeepers
I'm taking this conversation off of FaceBook and bringing it to my blog, too much to talk about on Facebook. :)
As a quick recap, Carla and I moved to Glen, New Hampshire on December 19th, 2016, to take over as the resident innkeepers of the Bernerhof Inn Bed and Breakfast. The previous innkeeper, Steve Lambert, stayed on until 8:00PM on New Year's Eve to train us. At about 8PM on NYE, he left to spend the rest of the evening with his family and Carla and I were left with the keys to the place. To say the least, it's been a crazy week!
We came out of the gate running, with a full house to entertain until midnight on NYE and to feed breakfast on January 1st. Before getting here we thought we would need help with breakfast when we had a full house, but we don't have any trouble handling 24 guests on our own. It can get a little hectic at about 9:30 or 9:45, when all the guests decide they need to squeeze breakfast in at the same time (we stop serving at 10:00), but in general, cooking and serving breakfast for 24 people is pretty fun. The worst part of breakfast is that when we have a full house, it's about a 4 - 5 hour operation, between prep, 2 hours of actually serving breakfast, and an hour or so for clean up. It's about 11:00 in the morning before we can begin our other tasks for the day.
Since Steve left, we've worked every waking hour of the day. This is not something we can keep up indefinitely, but for now it seems necessary so we can get caught up on some of the grossly needed chores, like cleaning and organizing the kitchen.
I don't have much time to chat now, but I wanted to get this started. I'll try to post consistently so that the blog captures thoughts and emotions as we are experiencing them.
Our overall impression, at the end of week 1, is that we are glad we are here. There have been bumps already, but that is to be expected. Carla and I make one hell of a team!!
As a quick recap, Carla and I moved to Glen, New Hampshire on December 19th, 2016, to take over as the resident innkeepers of the Bernerhof Inn Bed and Breakfast. The previous innkeeper, Steve Lambert, stayed on until 8:00PM on New Year's Eve to train us. At about 8PM on NYE, he left to spend the rest of the evening with his family and Carla and I were left with the keys to the place. To say the least, it's been a crazy week!
We came out of the gate running, with a full house to entertain until midnight on NYE and to feed breakfast on January 1st. Before getting here we thought we would need help with breakfast when we had a full house, but we don't have any trouble handling 24 guests on our own. It can get a little hectic at about 9:30 or 9:45, when all the guests decide they need to squeeze breakfast in at the same time (we stop serving at 10:00), but in general, cooking and serving breakfast for 24 people is pretty fun. The worst part of breakfast is that when we have a full house, it's about a 4 - 5 hour operation, between prep, 2 hours of actually serving breakfast, and an hour or so for clean up. It's about 11:00 in the morning before we can begin our other tasks for the day.
Since Steve left, we've worked every waking hour of the day. This is not something we can keep up indefinitely, but for now it seems necessary so we can get caught up on some of the grossly needed chores, like cleaning and organizing the kitchen.
I don't have much time to chat now, but I wanted to get this started. I'll try to post consistently so that the blog captures thoughts and emotions as we are experiencing them.
Our overall impression, at the end of week 1, is that we are glad we are here. There have been bumps already, but that is to be expected. Carla and I make one hell of a team!!
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