Yesterday, finally, we took over vacant possession of "The Old Manor" - henceforth to be Well House Manor. Regular readers and friends will know that this has been a long time in arriving, and that we now have months of work to do converting a B&B with a backlog of upgrades and maintenance into a business hotel, fit for our training courses and delegates.
The first picture here is a "before" that I snapped yesterday. Not strictly a "before" as we already have communications in place - wireless broadband, phone and even TV in "The Cottage" that will become our luxury suite.
Our solicitor - who had helped smooth through the transaction - dropped by to see. Just a courtesy call as he's made a real connection with 'this one', and I have to say that I have been happy with how he has helped and advised - I would point others to Howard at
Sylvester Mackett. It was very interesting to hear some of this comments / ideas / suggestions too - another idea and view on some of the elements.
The arrival of a skip to help up with some clearance emphasises how overgrown parts of the garden and the entrance driveway are, and how much we have to do. Indeed, the previous owner had been delayed in her move out by over 24 hours because the removal van couldn't get it. But our skip driver was made of stern stuff and drove within inches of the outbuildings in order to get around with minimal tree damage. Ah - but that all should get so much easier from Monday when some of the tree work starts.
Inside, our task is massive. We've started stripping back in a couple of rooms, and we're having a work party up there today. In this view, you see Lisa taking early steps in converting a kitchen area into a customer lounge. The paper on the walls is old, somewhat caked in grease in that room, and it's the first of many we need to tackle.
Indeed, I ought cut short my post and head for "The Manor" now ... updates to follow!
(written 2006-06-03, updated 2006-06-05)
Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
M300 - Well House Manor - Behind the scenes [203] Holes in on line information - (2005-02-05)
[677] Sympathetic development - (2006-04-09)
[769] King Edward VII - days of empire - (2006-06-20)
[813] Monday Morning at Well House Consultants Melksham - (2006-07-24)
[868] Smoking, or no - (2006-09-16)
[897] Too much for the National Trust - (2006-10-18)
[927] Hotel door furniture - (2006-11-15)
[931] Before and After - Well House Manor - (2006-11-18)
[939] Swipe cards for hotel rooms - Security issues - (2006-11-23)
[951] What happened at Geekmas - (2006-11-28)
[1000] One Thousand Posts and still going strong - (2006-12-18)
[1083] Behind the scenes - (2007-02-17)
[1105] A week is a long time in the life of a conference centre - (2007-03-10)
[1159] It can take more that one plus one to get two. - (2007-04-22)
[1179] Sizing sheets and other domestic issues - (2007-05-07)
[1189] Meet, greet and welcome - (2007-05-16)
[1285] In the army, or in civvie street? - (2007-07-31)
[1311] What do people look for on a hotel web site? - (2007-08-20)
[1319] Customer feedback - lifeblood of a business - (2007-08-25)
[1369] One business, four different angles! - (2007-09-28)
[1371] Hotel in Melksham at Christmas - (2007-09-29)
[1441] On cancellations, rebooking, and pricing schemes - (2007-11-22)
[1490] Software to record day to day events and keep an action list - (2007-12-31)
[1515] Keeping staff up to date on hotel room status - (2008-01-22)
[1520] Terms and Conditions - Hotel, England - plain English - (2008-01-26)
[1571] Await guests in the early hours - (2008-03-12)
[1637] Providing exceptional service - and carrying on doing so. - (2008-05-09)
[1854] Three Seasonal Pictures - (2008-10-25)
[1900] Table Topics - (2008-11-22)
[1904] Ruby, Perl, Linux, MySQL - some training notes - (2008-11-23)
[1948] Blame Culture - (2008-12-17)
[1957] Why are cooks bad tempered? - (2008-12-22)
[1973] Required Request - (2009-01-03)
[1991] Rules for a King - (2009-01-13)
[2125] We have lost a regular business guest - (2009-04-10)
[2247] A day in the life of a hotelier - (2009-06-18)
[2396] Easing off in our 50s? - (2009-09-06)
[2910] Robust - testing the system - (2010-08-09)
[2916] Testing the robustness of our hotel and training systems - holiday and sickness times - (2010-08-11)
[2960] The Well House team - September 2010 - (2010-09-19)
[2961] Initial handling of phone calls and walk in visitors - (2010-09-19)
[3093] How many toilet rolls - hotel inventory and useage - (2010-12-18)
[3743] Sunday - no longer a day of rest - (2012-05-28)
[3844] Rooms ready for guests - each time, every time, thanks to good system design - (2012-08-20)
[3961] Well House Staff Party - (2012-12-22)
[4302] Sunday is never quiet at Well House Manor - (2014-09-21)
[4365] The changing face of Christmas - (2014-12-26)
Some other Articles
Domain Listing Center and Domain Registry of AmericaPython modules. The distribution, The Cheese Shop and the Vaults of Parnassus.We can offer a room, but we can't operate on a dogHow to debug a Perl programA visit from the solicitorLast week - picture of the Perl courseFinishing up in DhahranThe eye(Perl) Callbacks - what are they?Coloured text in a terminal from Perl