Things can only get better

They say that time speeds up when you are enjoying yourself but let me tell you that it goes pretty fast when you are not. A few weeks ago the public areas in the hotel looked quite presentable but now the place looks like a building site and I wonder whether I should start insisting that we all wear hard hats.

Frank assures me that the additional work will all be worthwhile in the long run but I am not sure we have enough of a long run if we are to open on time.

The work continues and, to date, we have:

• stripped the wallpaper and most of the walls
• stripped the wallpaper and replastered the hallway
• refurbished the bar area and installed new lighting
• gutted the kitchen and replaced the floor and walls
• gutted the back room and strengthened the rear wall
• rewired the whole of the ground floor ….thank you Trevor
• got the central heating working (but only in the basement)
• sorted out the hot water supply (but not to the top floor)
• installed four toilets to serve the public areas
• removed four toilets
• installed a state of the art fire alarm system
• cabled in the new CCTV system
• removed the old fire system and the unsightly trunking
• replastered the walls on each of the landings
• condemned two bathrooms (but not due to open in phase 1)
• nearly finished restoring the sash windows
• replaced the TV aerial and wired the rooms at the front of the hotel

The hotel continues to throw up lots of surprises such as the glass roof above the false ceiling in the back room which had to go as it was in danger of falling on top of our guests.

Then the newly installed toilets had to be removed when we discovered the condition of the floorboards underneath. Leaking water seems to be a regular occurrence and just as you sort one leak out then up pops another.

As if that isn’t enough for this update, one of our neighbours decided to report us to the Environmental Health department for putting our rubbish in the back garden and my solicitor wrote to remind me that I had not yet paid the stamp duty and could I forward £26000 at my earliest possible convenience.

Surely, things can only get better?