While the century-old lodge building is the anchor of the property, the business is known as Birch Lodge AND MOTEL. The last month or so has been an "adventure" in preparing the motel to open for this summer's tourist season. There has been an intensive effort to deal with deferred maintenance. 
The motel exterior has been scraped and painted, as have both Bill and Deb . . .
Then there were the windows... lots of storm sash came down and got cleaned and put back up....meanwhile inside....Some interior patching and repainting has also been done and some baseboards and doors refinished.
Deb has plans to repaint ALL the baths. The shower doors have been removed and are awaiting for the intensive removal of years of caulk. The tubs have the old caulk chiseled out and fresh caulk. New shower curtains are hanging. The tile scrubbed with brush and toothbrush. The bed frames were taken apart and cleaned and reassembled. All furniture was removed to make way for the carpet cleaning.
Commercial carpet cleaners were hired to scour each of the rooms. Drapes have come down and have been washed and rehung-- the rods and hangers of course, cleaned.
And Bill has learned - the hard way - literally at the feet of the master, Deborah, that there are differing levels of clean.
Bill was accepting of "Man-Clean". But no, above that level of clean is "Clean". The motel, however, is taken to the next level: "Deb-Clean". Deborah is not at all sympathetic to Bill's argument that some dirt might be historic and ought to be preserved . . .
As of Memorial Day, we have two rooms ready for guests, another will come on-line by the end of May and a fourth in early June. We anticipate that the other four rooms will pass muster as the season progresses. We have brought in satellite internet (the only option up here in this area of Paradise) - ask Bill how happy he was to crawl around under the lodge to snake cables and dig a 75-foot trench to bury the line to the dish(!?!?).
We have installed a wireless router so that guests can browse the internet while sipping coffee or soft drinks in either the Birch Bar or the Birch Lodge lobby.
We are in the process of having satellite TV installed and it should be up and running with new equipment the first week of June.
Oh and we've just achieved on-line reservation capability at the Birchlodge.com web site.
Whew.
No wonder we are tired.........maybe we aren't just getting old.....
Now all we need are some guests. How about you?????
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