Getting more rooms ready – and our first bookings!

Unsurprisingly, this has been another non-stop week – a very productive one though. Our main goal was to get the remaining bedrooms and ensuite cleaned and furnished, and unpack all the kitchenware we’ve been ordering in the evenings. Even our Evri driver commented on how many deliveries we’ve had recently – it’s hard for us to get to the shops with work and all the jobs we’ve got on, so almost everything has been ordered online. We’ve had at least one delivery every day for the last two weeks, usually two or three during the week!

John has been working incredibly hard – firstly cleaning out the farmhouse fridge and then sanding the kitchen worktops and oiling them before we unpacked everything to go out on them. You’re supposed to do this annually but it’s been quite a while since we got round to doing it, so the difference now is very noticeable. The room looks so much better too with everything put and tidied up. We switched the aga off after we moved to save oil, so he’s cleaned it thoroughly – it looks so shiny and new. It also means the dining room table – which we were using for storing all the kitchen items – is now accessible again, so we could put on our new table protector and wipe-clean tablecloth. So many of our friends have panicked when their children are faced with our cream tablecloths, and we want our guests to feel relaxed so we thought a wipe-clean one would be better all round!

His second big job was to deep clean all the carpets with a Rug Doctor hired from Homebase. We never really cleaned them when we moved in, and the difference is phenomenal – the bedroom carpets almost look a different colour. It’s so much easier to do without furniture so we’d held off building everything until he’d finished.

So on Saturday, when the carpets had dried, we carried up all the boxes that had been stored in both half-finished barns and in the farmhouse, and spent a fun afternoon building furniture. The master bedroom looked empty as we’ve not put as much furniture in as we did when we lived there, but adding some beautiful framed quilts my mum had made has helped to add a splash of colour and reduced the empty space. Although it wasn’t particularly easy – the walls are all stone or brick and it did feel slightly over the top having to use an impact drill to hang some pictures! I finished tiling the gap above the shower in the ensuite during the week – we’ve matched the tiles as best we can although they’re still a little darker than the original ones. It’s been one of those jobs we never got round to while we lived there, but we can’t really expect guests to use a shower with plasterboard and foam around the top.

I’m really excited about the second bedroom. We’ve replaced the bed with a zip and link bed to give us more flexibility, but the best thing (I think anyway!) is the mirror. I’ve been looking for the right mirror on and off for a few years and I finally found one that matched the industrial theme we have going on. It’s finished the room off nicely.

We’ve also cleared out another part of the house (under the stairs – which meant John finding out exactly how many shoes I own!) and cleared and cleaned the hall. We’ve replaced the sheep key hook with a cow and calf one that is more securely fastened and so won’t fall off – it’s exciting that we’ll have guests finally using the branded torches my brother’s friend at Print and Promotion kindly made for us when we moved in.

And (hopefully for the final time) I spent the weekend painting doors to get rid of the yellowing paint that we inherited. They’re a bit streaky but look so much better than they did. I also took the opportunity to touch up the door metal that I’d missed when I first painted everything a few years ago – mainly in the back rooms. It looks a million times better now the rust has gone – although as soon as I’d finished I noticed bits on the back door I’d missed! One more go…

It feels like a lifetime ago that the plumbers were here to finish off the remaining jobs – although it was actually only Tuesday. They were amazing enough to move our washer dryer down from the farmhouse to the laundry for our guests to use (the utility room will be locked for us to use as storage) and installed our dog and boot shower! We’re so excited – we put all the pebbles in on Sunday evening and it looks just as we’d hoped. Now the electricians just need to wire up the water heater so there’s warm water, and we need to get a sign and it’s complete – any dog visiting can be treated to a nice shower after walking in the hills.

Our building contractor and architect came over on Tuesday to look through the snagging list, which meant our builders also came back for a day later to work through the outstanding jobs. This included planing down the kickboard in the games room (which was too big once the floor went down), and adding the final door to the laundry cupboards (which had arrived late). I’ve been spending most evenings sorting through the bedding and towels for each room, which in most cases includes both a double and a twin set where we have zip and link beds. It’s been strangely rewarding to move into the laundry cupboards and get it all tidied up – I don’t want to buy any more bedding for a very long time though!

Our electricians are due to come back next week to finish off various jobs – one of which is to install our first EV charger. This required John to spend Sunday sweeping the residual building and general dirt and disposing of the various weeds that had grown along the wall. We also had a pallet of reclaimed bricks that we’ve not had time to do anything with – he moved them all up to the kitchen garden where we plan to use them when we get time.

In other news – we had the Environmental Health officer visit us this week to assess us for our jams, chutneys and jellies. On a friend’s advice we’ve created a detailed spreadsheet that tracks the ingredients we buy, each batch we make and what we use in each (noting down serial numbers in case of product recalls), and then which batch is sold through which channel. It’s helpful for us to know what stock we have and what our best channels and products will be, even though it’s a bit of effort to fill in. We’re very relieved she gave us the top Food Standards Agency rating of five!

Finally – John has been keeping on top of our books – making an inventory of absolutely everything that’s in the Farmhouse, including all the bits we’ve ordered, and booking them against our company accounts. He’s been loving all the random things I’ve been ordering!!  The first sections of our guest information pack have been written, including instructions for using the Aga and the Sonos speaker system, plus the key ‘health and safety’ section including our fire risk assessment.

While our listing went live on cottages.com a few weeks ago, we only appeared on the main websites like airbnb and Booking.com last weekend.  However, not only was the listing information incorrect (stating we only had one bedroom), but it was also discovered that the prices uploaded to the system were higher than intended.  Both issues have since been addressed, and we now have our first two bookings for the coming weeks!