Day 70 (something or other) in the Big Bad Ischl House….

The eagle eyed amongst you will have spotted that I’ve not written an update for several days now and I’d hazard a guess you have a pretty good idea why too! 😂

I’ve even failed to cross post them from FB to the blog too (which I will rectify shortly) and I’m sure this will come as no great surprise… it’s been a bit manic round here of late. Just a bit. 🤪

It turns out that having a lightbulb moment is all well and good but somewhere along the line, it involves a sudden frenetic burst of activity to add to the already slightly hectic issue of returning the house to its actual functioning purpose.

As lovely as it’s been to spread ourselves out over the house and use various rooms for various different purposes, at some point these things have to go back to their proper function. Like everything in life, making a mess is easy… clearing it all back up again, on the other hand… not so much. Why is that? 🤨

There’s a load of other stuff to do too, put up signs, move things, alter the way we used to do things (breakfast service has to alter for example), obtain hand sanitizer stuff, suitable disinfectant, spare masks.. you name it, it’s on the list.

All this is bad enough but us, being us, had to go and add a lightbulb moment to the list which involved sudden and fairly extensive changes, including some building works… for a couple of enthusiastic, but essentially unskilled amateurs. 🙄

Undeterred, we consulted friends and YouTube (which between them are the source of all knowledge) and Mark did a tour of the local DIY stores obtaining various ingredients for it and I’m happy to report that the new partition wall is now well underway. It’s all quite exciting really.

Since my explanation of the lightbulb moment ended up in the comments thread of my last update, I should elaborate… we are building a new partition wall and doorway from our (communal) entrance hall to cut it off from the main guest areas.

I’ve mentioned before that our own private accommodation is split over two floors and to move between them requires passing through this hall. We don’t have a bathroom on the ground floor, so I’m sure you can imagine the issue here. We need to be able to keep both the guests and ourselves safe and segregated areas which allow for appropriate social distancing is an important part of that.

Since all of this Covid-19 malarkey looks like it might be a long term thing (and certainly, the measures we all need to take to mitigate any effects of it), we needed to make a long term change.

We are also changing the existing downstairs ‘lounge area’ to make a more useful information point, honesty bar, tea/coffee making and reception area. The main entrance for guests will now be on the ground floor where most of the guest rooms are located. Hopefully, this will adequately replace the loss of the upper hallway for guests which, whilst aesthetically a bonus, was pretty useless space in terms of an actual benefit for guests.

We also want to build a new terrace/deck outside the breakfast room for our guests, so they will be able to enjoy some great views and an extended outside area in the summer. This is in the planning stage and we were hoping we would be able to achieve it for this summer, but having consulted with some very knowledgeable people (thank you Ben!), we’re not sure if this is possible in the short two week window we have available so might, by necessity, become an autumn job.

So, there you have it, if only it could all be accomplished in the time it took me to write that, we’d be on to a winner! 😂

I had planned to finish the ‘diary of a corona virus lockdown’ on Day 70 as with re-opening, it seemed an appropriate time to pull down the final curtain on that particular story. But with the advent of the extra last minute project which a) delayed my final post and b) it would appear that we have at least one last thing to report on that is relevant to this period, so I will probably finish it off with a final ‘Ta-dah!’ moment, when the wall is built. Think of it as an encore… 😝

But I don’t intend to stop writing! I will continue to subject you all to updates or posts that you may find interesting… what we’re up to, maybe walks, local events, general waffle of my own particular brand and the odd silly story… you know… the usual stuff. I’ve been thinking about it a lot during these last few weeks and I think I have a few more stories up my sleeve you might enjoy and was planning to aim for a couple of updates of one type or another each week.

Not least because it turns out that Mark’s life is so much more peaceful now that I have an outlet for my verbal diarrhoea in writing, meaning that I subject him personally to far less of it on a daily basis. 😜 😆

It may be that these are posted just on the blog, as I doubt I’ll have time once we open again to do the double posting thing. So make sure you toddle over there and sign up for notifications of new updates, if you don’t want to miss them! Of course, if missing them is absolutely up your street then don’t sign up and relish the lack of inane waffle appearing uninvited in your daily FB newsfeed 😉 😂

Stay safe everyone xx