This weekend we held our annual end-of-year review and 2026 planning meeting. Something John learnt from his corporate days is the importance of reviewing our company financials to see how we’ve done over the last year and what we need to improve. It helps now we’ve had a full year of bookings to look back on, although we’ve tested a few different things this year so it’s not that easy to separate out each thing to understand the impact it’s had and whether it’s been successful or not. We are really committed to making this a strong business – we’ve seen so many places struggle in the past year, and we’re keen to make sure we continue to grow.
One useful thing John’s established is our marginal cost, considering all the expenses we incur from having The Farmhouse rented. It helps to set a floor price that we can’t go beneath – this year when we’ve had a few empty weekends we’ve been tempted to heavily discount to try and get a last minute booking but haven’t had the data to know if it’s financially worth it. What we have found is that when taking into account the extra costs we incur each time we rent out The Farmhouse in the off-peak winter season, and if we paid someone to do the cleaning and ironing instead of doing it ourselves, we’d actually be losing money. That’s before you include all the time John spends maintaining the gardens and doing any maintenance to the property. It’s understandable that some places close when costs [heating and lighting especially] are higher and income is lower.
Once the numbers were done, we moved to the pub to chat through our own end of year reflections. John’s biggest reflection from the year is the satisfaction he gets when he reads through the reviews left by our guests on the various booking platforms. We’re lucky that most of our guests leave a review – it both helps future bookings and also is very motivational to read about how much our guests have enjoyed their stays and the memories they’ve made here – whether they’ve stayed for a weekend away or a longer holiday. It’s particularly lovely when guests have chosen to stay here to celebrate a special birthday and brought family and friends together. We worked out that we’ve had almost 300 people stay this year alone which is pretty incredible.
My biggest takeaway is more operational! As self-employed business owners who live on site, I notice how you end up working literally every day – John especially. Whether that’s cleaning, washing and ironing, gardening, liaising with current and future guests, making repairs or booking tradespeople to make repairs we can’t do ourselves, checking website prices and preparing performance analysis, he never has a day off. You really have to enjoy your work to do that and keep smiling!
Our carpenter has been busy working in the one-bed Cow Shed this week. He’s been focusing on installing the woodwork for the walls and ceilings in the bedroom and the ensuite shower room and has made fantastic progress. The rooms are really starting to take shape. He’s even had time to build part of the structure for the back wall. We’ve spent a bit of time thinking through the kitchen design – as we saw the stud wall go in we were concerned it was too close to the front door and guests would walk in to see a kitchen cupboard right in front of them. So after a bit of measuring and redesign we’ve landed on including a peninsula (a bit like ours) and shortening the length of the kitchen. Our carpenter has adapted the walls to include a built-in broom cupboard as well. It’s great to have someone who works with us to get the best solution rather than just following instructions.
A couple of weeks ago we asked our builder whether we could reduce the tanking in the building to expose more of the stonework (a feature we love in our own home). The tanking was put in during the main building phase and is designed to keep the damp and water out of the whole building. The lime mortar is porous so rather than rain seeping into the room, the tanking provides a barrier for any water ingress to run around and out through a pipe near our lounge. Exposing the stone wall will make the room a bit colder so we needed to get a thermal calculation done to make sure the room would still be up to current building standards. We had the results back this week and while we can’t drop the tanking as much as we wanted to, we can expose a bit more on the end wall. So our stonemason is going to return next year to point the wall and fill in a few gaps so it looks better. Then once a few other gaps have been sealed, we’ll get an air pressure test done to get it approved.
We also ordered the ensuite items from Easy Bathrooms to make sure they would be on site by the first week back in January to enable the plumbers to put in all the pipes before the walls are built up any further. I actually think our order is arriving tomorrow – another exciting step forward!
And we managed to do a little bit more in our house – having given up on any garden work until the ground dries out a bit more (the joys of living on clay soil). We’ve finally put up a mirror in our bedroom and I made a start oiling the wooden bathroom & ensuite doors. They hadn’t been sealed when we moved in and we’ve noticed water stains appearing where they’ve been splashed. Oiling them should help to reduce any marks – it’s a job that has taken a while to get up to the top of our to-do list but finally made it. Something we’ll definitely need to do in the one-bed before we start renting it out.
Ley Farm Cottages 