The Quest - Close To Home

When we last left our intrepid wannabe Motel owners (us), we had been working with our local Realtor, looking around Pocatello, with an eye towards opening a bed and breakfast in town. Previously, we had looked into a small motel in Washington and a large hotel in Pendleton, both ending decisively against our favor. (Note that some of this may have been covered in previous posts a bit...)

We thought about it a lot and decided that Pocatello needed a Bed and Breakfast, the only other lodging in town are larger chain motels and the Black Swan, so we asked Jared, our Realtor extraordinaire to look into some potentials.

Most of the houses we looked into I failed to take any photos of or I did and they've wandered off onto some stray media somewhere, but I thought it was time to dive back into the story of our thus far failed attempts to break in to the hospitality industry.

September 22, 2008 -

We met up with Jared, who had arranged for a pretty full morning of looking at houses, duplexes and other potential buildings. We looked at a larger apartment complex by the library that felt a lot like an old western hotel that someone had turned into apartments. I liked the feel, and it had an attic room that intrigued Lindsay since we couldn't get in to see it, but overall, it was too expensive and would have been a lot of work to convert back into a motel, undoing the work the current owners had done. Since looking at the place, the property has been sold and is still apartments.

The next stop was the Pink House, another apartment building about a block from the college campus. It was an older building, stuccoed in a salmon pink. At first glance, it seemed to be pretty trashy, but when you looked again, you realized that it was primarily because of the color and the unkempt appearance of the grounds. The building itself had a lot of possibilities and good lines. We wanders around most of the apartments, chatting with the college students that lived there, fascinated by the creepy warren of rooms and tunnels in the basement and the gorgeous upstairs rooms, all long and unique with odd storage spaces. Eventually, we decided that this too was beyond our means. I belive this building sold, but it's been a while since I've been by it.

The Yellow house was next. This was a single family home off of Center street, one of our major interstate outlet roads. Set a few houses back from the road, it was an older house whose decor had a unique style. Shag carpeting, multiple fireplaces, bizarre wallpaper, walls of mirrors... I loved the place. It also had a huge garage/shop and a good chunk of parking in the rear of the property. We could have created 3 guest rooms and a dining room from the upper floors and lived in the basement. This house stayed on our list until we eventually gave up on the Pocatello Bed and Breakfast idea. It sold fairly recently and I can only hope that the new owners leave the metallic wallpaper in the bedroom intact.


After that, we moved on to view The Frat house, a building that remains on my shortlist of places I secretly still want to own.


Located on 4th ave by the cemetery, the Frat house is perfectly located for an easy to get to Bed and Breakfast. Back in the day, it was an actual frat house, though I never researched to find out what fraternity. From the outside, it's pretty unique looking, it has a large square frame and the front of the house is paneled in dark wood, while the rest of the house is white shingles. It's not a traditional look for a B&B, but it would have been pretty striking.

Walking in, I was instantly in love with the front room/dining area. Still floored in the original wood, the entry is wide, friendly and has tall ceilings. I could imagine it decorated for Christmas or reading a book in front of the fireplace. It connects to a pretty nicely spaced kitchen with a pass through bar area that would be great for serving breakfast to guests in the mornings.

Downstairs, there is two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a laundry area. My favorite detail, the one bathroom that still boasts two toilets and three showers from its frat days.

Upstairs there are three bedrooms and a master bed that had its own bathroom, bonus room and entrance.

Overall, the place would have been great. Unfortunately, we couldn't sell our house and we ultimately discovered that doing a lease to own on a private residence that we would then turn into a business was unlikely, as the owners would have to cover the increased insurance premiums. After we looked at it, the owners took the house off of the market and recently placed it back again as a for sale by owner. As of two days ago, that sign was gone, so I assume it has finally sold. Sigh.

Book Review - DROWNED NIGHT by Chris Blaine

DROWNED NIGHT by Chris Blaine
2005, 324 pages

What a fun, odd, little series of books this is. The novels of the Abbadon Inn, are, as best I can tell from only reading this one, and looking up the others online, are a group of unconnected novels, each revolving around the mysterious and imposing Abbadon Inn located in Cape May, off of the Atlantic. Drowned Night tells of a family, come to run the Inn as temps, who hoped to put their troubles to rest and escape to the beach a bit. Unfortunately, there is a dark presence tied to the Inn and it's past. Chris Blaine (Nee Elizabeth Massie) weaves an interesting story, as ghosts, an evil presence, some horrible beast and creepy locals blend together to make the poor family's summer a bit more than they anticipated! I liked this book. At first, I kept wishing the author would make up their mind about what kind of book it was, whether ghost story, supernatural Horror or Monster Massacre, but in the end, its all tied together pretty well, and there's some great atmosphere and ideas in the book.

I love the Inn, naturally, as it's a gorgeous old Victorian Mansion, and while I kept picturing it taking place in the Pacific Northwest, rather than off of the Atlantic, I think that was more my own stubborn mind than anything. While I don't think the story totally worked (The evil creature/ghost/presence was never really explained...) I'm intrigued to track the other 2 books down and see how they fit in the mythology.

7/10

Next - The Closers by Michael Connelly

09/22/08 - Pocatello, ID - House Hunting

A couple of days later, we met Jared at Gate City Real Estate to begin looking into buildings around Pocatello that might fit for a Bed & Breakfast. (After an excellent breakfast at Red Hot Roasters, and a stroll around the neighborhood)

He had a pretty full list lined out for us, including a few we asked about and some surprises as well! Our first stop was one at the top of our list, but also one we were pretty sure we wouldn't be able to purchase. For all of these houses, we had come up with code names for them, to give them a bit of personality and help keep them straight in our heads. We aren't sure, but we think Jared might have thought us crazy for the code names.... At any rate, we went to see the Pink House first. The Pink House was an older building, currently used as apartments. It was less than a block from the ISU campus, and had been used pretty hard by the tenants. They were asking $299k for it, and with the amount of space and proximity to the college, it was probably worth it, it just wasn't something we could afford. Of course, not being able to afford something had never stopped us before, so we dove in! The Pink House, so named for the odd salmon pink colored stucco on the exterior, was really intriguing. There were five apartments in it, three below, one above and a large one on the main floor, and the building had a lot of character, lots of sliding doors, high ceilings, little cupboards built in. It was also obviously home to a pretty good sized pile of rowdy college kids, as evinced by the beer pong table, fence of beer cans, dings in walls and Bob Marley posters in places of honor. Lindsay fell in love with the attic apartment, partly because she's obsessed with attics, and partly because the tenants were a couple of cute co-eds with a cat, rather than loud frat boys. It was clear that with years of renovating and remodeling, the Pink House could become a really cool place, but it was too much money and work to seriously consider. There were a lot of interesting catacomb-style basement corridors and the craziest boiler system any of us had ever seen too.

Our next stop was one that Jared lined up, that we'd never seen before, afterwards dubbed the Yellow House. Obviously, the Yellow House was named for the exterior, bright yellow siding. It was just a block off of one of the main roads into town from the interstate, just far enough back to avoid the street noise, but easy to find still. It had a small apartment upstairs, with bedroom, bath, kitchen and a small living room, which we thought would be pretty easy to turn into 2 beds and 2 baths for the B&B. The Yellow House was full of odd little details, and some of the most phenomenal wall coverings I have ever seen in my entire life. Clearly, an older person had lived here previously, as there was a pretty decent security system installed, and it just kind of had that vibe, but whoever it was, they had some great taste in decor. The bathroom wallpaper was a metallic silver with gold and bronze fish, which beautifully set off the pink bathtub. In one bedroom of two on the main floor, it had an entire wall of 3 foot deep storage and the other had an entire wall of mirrored tiles. Clearly, where some people thought one of something would do, the previous owners of the Yellow House decided on 7 times that. The basement had an additional bathroom, family room, bedroom (With shag carpet) and an oddly sunken pantry/storage area. It also had a roomy laundry room and separate bonus room. The Yellow house had a nice sized yard too, with RV parking, a 3-4 car garage/shop, a little covered patio and a garden area. I really liked it, it had a nice feel and a lot more space than you'd think from the road. Lindsay was obviously dazzled by the wallpaper, and had trouble seeing it's potential.

We then hopped over the train tracks to the West side of town, where we toured a building that we kind of tacked on at the last minute, a big yellowish apartment building that had the feel of an old western Hotel. I call it the Old Hotel, Lindsay calls it The Yellow House... much to my confusion. We could only look at a couple of apartments, but the Old Hotel had clearly seen a LOT of work lately, all of the electrical was replaced, and all of the carpet and fixtures looked new. It had something like 10 apartments in it, on 3 floors, and while it could be a gorgeous place, it would have taken thousands of dollars to convert it, undoing much of the work already piled into it by the current owners. Lindsay is still obsessed over it however, because we never got to go up into the attic....

For our last stop of the day, we headed back towards the college, to the Old Frat House. Located about a block from Pocatello's gorgeous cemetery, the Old Frat House was a revelation. From the outside, it's very unique looking, all tall sides and sharp corners, essentially a box with a tall roof, but it still had a lot of personality, and inside we could instantly feel the potential. The Old Frat House had a spacious main room as you walked in, with 12 foot ceilings and old hardwood floors, opening up into a couple of staircases and a nice, modern kitchen. On the main floor, there was only a kitchen, main room, mud room, half bath, and some closets, which was kind of nice from a B&B logistic viewpoint, it would offer some separation between the guest rooms upstairs and our living space downstairs. On the second floor, there were 4 bedrooms, all quite spacious, and each sporting 2 closets, clearly left over from its Frat days. There was also one bathroom off of the main hall, and a second off of the huge master bedroom. On the third floor, we found an amazing attic room, with its own set of closets and plenty of room for Lindsay's crafts and writing. In the basement, the Old Frat House had another bedroom, a small den, a storage room, laundry area, one full bathroom, and one bathroom that I got a huge kick out of. Clearly all still remaining from the Frat days, the second bathroom in the basement had 2 toilets, 4 sinks and 3 showers in it, and the toilets were just chilling together without any kind of privacy measures taken at all. I loved it. Obviously, we could see the potential in the building immediately, it had such a great feel walking in, and enough rooms to comfortably fit guests. The only real problem we saw was the lack of private baths, but we figured with the half bath on the main floor and the crazy mutant bath available to guests as well, we could overcome that. It also had a nice sized yard and off street parking for about 5 cars.

All in all, it was a really productive day, and we were pretty surprised and excited by how many good choices there were in Pocatello. Nearly all of them we viewed would make a passable B&B, and there were still 4 or 5 we couldn't line up viewings for!

Jared had also arranged for us to go look at the interior of Greystone 2 days later, and we needed to start in on the prospect of getting our house for sale, a project that we had been prepping for for months already at this point, so that we could afford to build a B&B!


(Sorry about the lack of photos for this post, I was using Lindsay's little camera, and was hesitant about taking photos of homes where people lived, and as of recently, my computer is broken, and hers has no Photoshop, so I'm a man with no cropping ability! I'll try and update with some photos later.)

Our next step: Closer To Home

As we worked on our dream to own a Motel, Lindsay and I quite often found ourselves in a reflective mood, looking back on our lives in Pocatello and what we would miss or be happy to leave behind. One thing we kept coming back to was our large group of friends, family, associates and for lack of a better word, connections we had in Poky. I ran a gas station for a few years and in that time built up a group of friendly customers in virtually every aspect of life, from college professors to construction crews, and Lindsay had steadily done the same a block away at Budget Tapes & Records. As we talked more about it, we started to wonder whether we should look into doing something closer to home. Obviously, a motel on the beach was out of the question, and Pocatello already has a few excellent wedding facilities and a a romance themed hotel, but it was lacking a different aspect of hospitality, a Bed & Breakfast.

There had been a B&B in Pocatello a few years back, a block from where Lindsay had grown up, and according to the scuttlebutt when we looked into it, it no longer existed because she had made enough money to open one on a tropical island. That sounded like a pretty good reason to consider it to us! On the trip home from Pendleton, we began seriously batting around the idea of starting a B&B in Pocatello. Unfortunately, we kept butting up against the likely ROUS of startup cash again, but thought that with our drive and ambition, the right location, and using our network of people in Pocatello, we could build a thriving little business and get our foot in the door.

When we arrived home, we immediately started in, looking up properties and contacting our Realtor extraordinaire, Jared.

The hunt was on, yet again!

Book Review - HOCUS CROAKUS by Mary Daheim

Hocus Croakus by Mary Daheim
2004, 384pgs

Growing up, my family used to take a lot of Road Trips. We weren't well off, and it was the closest thing we had to a real vacation, so every once in a while, we'd take off, car loaded, and explore the mountains of southeastern Idaho. There would be rolling hills and dangerous crags, deer, elk, moose, chipmunks and Sasquatches, hairpin turns and dangerous descents.... I assume. I always had my nose buried in a book. Road trips were a time for me to block the world out, crack a library book and read to my hearts content, stopping for potty breaks (A Marley family tradition) and grub. Since I've gotten married, most of that has stopped. My wife hates to drive, and will only drive my element when forced, so all of the driving on our trips has fallen to me. I've learned to find a special enjoyment from these trips too, daydreaming about the landscape and watching the fellow vehicles, but I still miss reading in the back seat of a car as it rumbles along the road. That was why this recent trip to Bozeman was kind of exciting for me. My father in law, realizing that I owned the only safe and reliable four wheel drive vehicle for the still snowy stretches of Montana between the two of us, asked if he could drive it to the wedding, allowing me to ride in the back. I agreed, naturally. Not only would this let me relax and read, but it would give us my car while we were in Bozeman (Which turned out to be a real boon) and it would also be the first time I'd actually ridden in the back seat of my car! Honda Elements are kind of unusual beasts to that end, I discovered. Their back seats, which I usually have removed to accommodate my dogs, are kind of stadium style seats. Which was pretty cool for watching the road, as we could look right over the tops of the front seats (when my mother in law didn't have the visor down, one of my inexplicable pet peeves...) and while immobile, offered a pretty ample amount of leg and head room. I did notice pretty quickly though, that the space between the seat and the floor was smaller than usual, causing my knees to get kind of sore after a while...


Anyway, this gave me a great chance to read a few books on the 5 hour drive there and back.

The first book I chose was one I picked up at the used book store here in town, Circle C Books, while I was waiting for my wife to get her hair cut across the street the day before. I decided to buy it for a couple of reasons; there was a frog and witty title on the cover, implying magic, something I love reading about, it was labeled "A bed-and-breakfast mystery" and being interested in the career that I am, made it appealing, and I couldn't really find much of anything else, and I always feel bad wandering around in a used book store for a while without doing anything but petting the dog that lives there.

The idea of a bed and breakfast mystery series of books sounded like a GREAT hook, and I was excited to see what it was like. Unfortunately, I happened to pick one from the series that took place while the B&B was closed, and the main characters were on vacation in an Indian Reservation casino. The main character, the ridiculously named JUDITH MCMONIGLE FLYNN, is the sixty year old owner of a B&B and apparently has a knack for finding dead bodies. Essentially Jessica Fletcher of the hospitality industry. Along with her are her husband, a former detective, his annoying cousin and her OCD hubby, and their even more obnoxious mothers. Soon enough, a member of the magic act dies, and they're all trying to solve the mystery, prevent further deaths, deal with B&B repairs, and winning unrealistically often at the casino games. Honestly, I had a hard time finishing this book. I read 2 others, skimmed a non fiction book and a couple of magazines after this one in less time. While I think I'll check out some other books in the series, I found the characters really hard to enjoy, and some of the twists so contrived that at one point I found myself groaning and saying "Oh brother" loud enough to make my wife think something was wrong. Maybe it was the age of the characters, or the completely unnecessary addition of the mothers, but every time I started getting into the story, something silly would happen, and I'd get distracted and watch the scenery outside of the car instead of reading.

In my defense, the view outside the window really was quite stunning.....

At any rate, it was an okay read, but probably something I'll resell nonetheless.

3/10

Next: The Wood Nymph & The Cranky Saint by C. Dale Brittain

September 14th, 2008 - Pendleton, OR - Part II

Arriving in the neighborhood a bit early, we drove around the Riverwalk area, admiring all of the old homes. Nearly every building in the neighborhood had a lot of character, we wanted to barge in and tour all of them. Luckily, a few minutes later, at Mike's, we got to do just that.
Mike's house was amazing. Situated on the corner, the B&B has a great view of the downtown, and a spacious wrap around porch. We did run into a bit of consternation at his door however, unsure of the typical procedure when visiting a bed and breakfast. It's someones house, but also a business. Do you waltz on in, or ring the doorbell? After a bit of discussion, we decided to ring. We also made a note that if we ever have a B&B, to have some sort of sign or plaque on the door informing guests of our preferences, maybe a nice plaque with "Come on in!" on one side and "Please Ring" on the other, or something. At any rate, Mike met us at the door, and introduced us to his wife, their adorable dog Charlie, and himself.

It's interesting how many people we've met online or over the phone since we started this quest, and how most of them differ in person from their online and phone personas. As I'm sure it's a shock to people meeting us for the first time in person. I'm 30, but look closer to 25 or 26, and my wife looks significantly younger than that. I'm also very wordy when I "talk" online, but after years of running phone surveys during high school, I despise the phone, and I'm typically quite reserved on the phone unless I know the person well. However, Mike was pretty much exactly how we'd pictured him, very friendly and smart. He looked like a Math Teacher/Realtor/B&B Owner would look, if you can believe it.

After introductions and some dog cuddles, he gave us a tour of his excellent home. Built in 1912 by Gustav Stickley, Mike has spent a lot of time slowly renovating and renewing the place. He tore literally tons of old shingles off of the roof, exposing cool old tin signs and shingles from the original construction, and is slowly working to restore all of the old woodwork and decor from the era. He essentially runs the B&B "As an excuse for living in an amazing home" and when he's done working on it, he'll certainly have it! The upper floor boasts 4 bedrooms, 2 baths and a couple of older nooks and crannies, like a linen closet. Each of his rooms are named after Oregon rivers, and following suit, he cheekily named the bathrooms after rivers too, calling them the "Powder River" and the "John Day River" I think this is hilarious. His wife and he sleep in the master bed on the main floor, and he proudly showed off the perfect hardwoods in the floor and the great decor, followed by his misadventures installing the bath next to the bedroom. He gave us a tour of the dining room and kitchen, their next major project, outlining his plans to gut it of the flowery 60's details and adding some sleek new appliances. He seemed pretty excited about the B&B, having just experienced his first Round-Up as proprietors, and he told us some great stories about his guests. We really enjoyed his tour, and loved his attitude about his business, and his dedication to restoring the great old house he lives in.

After jabbering for a while and admiring the leaded windows that looked out over the porch (which I was quite jealous of) we realized the time and left for the motel, along with a couple of other places he wanted to show us.