When breakfast was done we whisked away the dishes, put a fresh cloth on the table, topped with a vase and we had a living room again. We then changed out of food service attire, put our construction clothes on and went back to renovation work. We had two rooms open in May, two more open by Fourth of July and were working on the Whirlpool Suite, which had been rented for the first weekend in August.With the deadline looming, we began working until well past midnight, taking care to do the quieter tasks while the guests slept. We were still painting in the bathroom the day before the guests arrived, but by 3:30, a half hour before check-in, we were congratulating ourselves for getting everything ship shape.
That is until I opened the windows in the Suite sitting room and realized that we had neglected to put in the screens. One window didn't have a screen to start with. The others had been taken down to be scrubbed and rinsed, but we had neglected to put them on the list of things to be done before check-in so they were leaning up against the garage where I had put them to dry.
Since we had no air conditioning in those days, opening windows was essential for air circulation and cooling in the evenings. Unfortunately the mosquitoes were quite content to spend their evenings indoors with the warm bloods. Fortunately, the guests headed for dinner immediately after arrival, allowing us enough time to haul out the ladder, put the screens up and hammer few nails into the window frame to hold them in place. If the guests noticed either the deficiency when they arrived or the improvement when they returned, they were polite enough not to mention it.
Eventually we gave up on restoring all of the original windows and installed energy efficient (and bug proof) units. And everyone except the mosquitoes has been happy ever since.
Posted by Innkeeper David
