Room 10 at the Birch Ridge Inn deconstructed

Room 10 at the Birch Ridge Inn deconstructed

Work continues unabated at the inn as Mary and I complete our various between season tasks.

Outside the inn, many of the tasks are completed. Mary still has one or two gardens she wants to work on, and our excavator still needs to do some finishing touches to complete some landscape work, but overall the outside work has progressed nicely. With the grass being cut on a regular schedule, and the gardens all around the inn starting to show nice flowers, the outside of the inn is beginning to pop!

Our inside activities are also moving forward smartly.

Last weekend I rebuilt the sky lights in the restaurant. All of the seals on the windows had degraded due to the harsh Vermont climate. It was an interesting job with a few good and bad surprises. On the good side, the frame for each of the three sky lights is held on to the building with just 4 little screws. On the bad side, the plexiglass windows of the sky lights were held to the frame with 5 bolts. Of the 15 bolts total, weather rusted half of them solid. To get them off, I had to break 7 of them, and hack saw off an eight one. But I was able to completely rebuild the 3 sky lights for $55 in small parts, versus replacing each one for $500 a piece.

In the guest rooms, deep spring cleaning is progressing nicely. We always break the rooms down after the winter so we can take a very close look at them.(We do the same thing in the late fall.) The punch list of things needing to be repaired or replaced is getting smaller each day.

The big physical project for the next week is the complete refurbishment of Room 10, the French Provincial Room. The wall paper ceiling border is being replaced with carved moulding, similar to what we have previously done to rooms 5 and 8. Once that is done, we will be completely repainting the room from ceiling down to the trim. With the weather getting nicer, it is hard to stay inside all of the time, but at least Room 10 has nice big windows that look off to the gardens and the forest in back of the inn.

In the virtual world, there are a whole collection of new internet campaigns we have launched to spread the word about Birch Ridge to different audiences. Just as we do for the physical inn, every year I conduct a "Spring Cleaning" of our marketing efforts, eliminating underperforming programs and starting new efforts. We recently entered into an agreement with The Knot to promote the Birch Ridge Inn to brides for weddings. We also entered into an agreement with Resorts and Lodges to promote the inn to the general travel market.

Of course, all work and no play make Bill and Mary dull people. We have been able to get out and play a few rounds of golf at Green Mountain National between the rain drops of the last 10 days. I am happy to report that Green Mountain is in great shape.(You should really come to Killington and play golf!) The new irons (Callaway Razr X HL's) I acquired a few weeks ago are being dialed in nicely. My last two rounds had scores in the 80's; something that has not reliably happened since I had surgery on my left shoulder 2 years ago. Mary is working her game as well. She had her clubs "regripped" so she is just starting to get used to their new feel. But she is driving the ball very well.

The official start of summer, the Summer Solstice, is just around the corner (June 20th this year). With our restaurant reopening 2 days later on June 22nd, I am sure we will be keeping our heads down for the next 2 weeks as we work to finish off all of our spring projects.

And of course with summer approaching, where ever you may be, keep the ball in the fairway and don't forget your sun screen!