How Not To Run A B&B: A Woman's True Memoir

by Bobby Hutchinson

  But the price was right. The house was listed at $134,000, ridiculously cheap by Vancouver standards. And the house numbers—124—added up to seven. My Vancouver address, 88, also was a seven. (Eight and eight, sixteen, 6 plus one, seven.) And seven was a most beneficent number in Chinese numerology.

  Obviously, it was pre-ordained that I have this place.

  I had barely enough left on my line of credit to write the check for the down payment. I’d already used a hefty chunk on such mad extravagances as a new bathroom in the Vancouver downstairs suite, my city taxes, and an overrun on my income tax. But write the check I did, although I had a stomach sinking feeling that before I was done, finances were going to become a pain in the butt. I’d have to either sell my Vancouver house in a hurry or somehow bridge financing. Oh well, it would all work out, I told myself, doing my best to trust.

  Back in Vancouver, I talked to Paul, a real estate agent friend of Dan’s

  “If you want full value and a quick sale, the best thing to do is hire a stager,” he advised.

  A stager? What the hell was a stager?

  “They come in and tell you what needs done to get the most money out of your property. It’ll cost about two hundred, but you’ll get ten times that back.” He gave me Elizabeth’s card.

  She was tall, glamorous and aggressively gay. “First of all, we’ll need to store at least fifty percent of your furniture and books,” she said in a matter of fact tone. “Houses look bigger without so much stuff. Take the bed and dressers and shelves out of the downstairs bedroom”—my beloved bedroom—“and turn it into an entertainment centre. We’ll need to change all the light fixtures, put new covers on the wall plugs, take the pegboard down in the kitchen, redo that wall, paint the stairwell and touch up anywhere that looks grungy. The dining room could use a fresh coat of paint, ditto the upstairs hall.”

  I’d never before met anyone who actually said ditto.

  “At least half of those books have to go.” Quick breath, onwards and upwards. “Tear out the wall to wall carpeting in the living room and re-do the old oak floors, here’s a card for a guy who’s reasonable and good. You’ll have to move out for a couple days, the smell of the varnish is toxic. The garden and studio are perfect just as they are, except—is that old man with the cat related to you?”

  I assured her Louis and Sammy were not blood, they just lived next door.

  “When you have the open, make certain they aren’t anywhere around. No offense, but knowing someone like that lives next door could seriously affect your sale.”

  I wanted to slap her, no offense, but I knew what she meant.

  I took the carefully written list she gave me, began at the top and worked my way down, putting the items in order of difficulty. Then I rearranged them, in order of whether or not I could accomplish them while still having guests at the Blue Collar. I needed every cent of income to afford the changes that Elizabeth suggested.

  True to my vow to pack only one box at a time, I decided that painting the exterior of the house could take place while the B&B operated. I got quotes from several painters, and then a call from Peter Pan, aka Steve.

  “Eric says you want to paint the house. I’ll do it for you, I’ve got the ladders and scaffolding. What’s the lowest quote you got on the job?”

  I told him, knowing that Eric probably already had.

  He gave me a figure considerably lower.

  “You buy the paint and brushes, I’ll start early Monday morning.”

  “Have you ever painted a house before?” I didn’t know much about it, but the professionals I’d talked to had mentioned a lot of prep work, repairing or replacing worn boards, cleaning the surface first, undercoating, protecting the landscaping.

  “I painted my mother’s house last summer.”

  I had reservations. I knew Steve was anal to a whacky degree, which meant the job would undoubtedly be done well, but I wondered about the prep.

  “Of course I’ll do all the undercoating and everything. I’ll, I’ll, do a—a—perfect job. What color are you using?”

  “York Harbor. It’s a deep, rich, golden yellow, with cream trim. It’s going to be my yellow submarine.”

  His face brightened. “So, so--you’re not going to sell the house after--after all?”

  “I am going to sell. But I get to enjoy it for however long that takes.”

  “Why do you want to leave?” There was a plaintive note to his voice.

  “I’m not so much leaving as going towards. I want to go back to where I was born. I want to be close to my family. I want to start a fishing camp.”

  “That’s what Eric said. That’s kinda nuts, even for you. By the way, Eric’s smitten with you. He’s going to really miss you, we all are. Why don’t you take us with you?”

  I felt a pang of preliminary loneliness. What would I do for eccentricity without the Lost Boys?

  “I would if I could. But I can’t.”

  “Maybe we’ll come to visit you.”

  “I’d love that.” And I’d love to see the reaction in redneck Sparwood when my strange friends piled out of Steve’s old Cadillac, Eric in his bike helmet, Steve in his ancient shorts, Roger, who’d become the gayest of gays.

  Monday morning, I was awakened at six by the sound of ladders and Steve’s loud, bossy voice. He’d brought a boy of about fourteen and an exotically beautiful, slender young woman, maybe in her twenties. They were both dark skinned, and neither was proficient in English. They smiled and murmured shy greetings as Steve introduced them.

  “This is Prya, and her brother Outar.”

  “I’m Bobby. Where are you from?” I smiled at them and offered coffee and fresh scones.

  Steve took over as spokesman. “They’re visitors from Guyana. My church sponsored them, and I offered to give them a job and help them learn English.”

  I hoped that was all lovely Pyra was learning from Steve.

  “Do they know how to paint?”

  “I’ll teach them. Painting isn’t rocket science.”

  Maybe not, but it was my house they’d be experimenting on. I was feeling less and less confident about Steve and this house painting thing, but true to form, his obsessive compulsive nature saved the day.

  I forgot there was only one way to do things—Steve’s way. From my studio, I heard him ordering his minions around, making them do the job exactly as he wanted it done, making them re-do whatever wasn’t up to his exacting standards.

  Soon, inevitably, Louie appeared with Sammy in his arms. One of the things I found endearing about Steve was his endless patience with Louie. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Louie was following Steve as he worked, and I knew all too well that he’d be asking the same question over and over, then expounding on Sammy’s bowels and diet. At least it was giving me a respite.

  But I was wrong. A few moments later, Louie knocked insistently on the door of the studio. I’d tried to impress on him that when the door was closed, I was working and not to be disturbed, but of course he forgot the rule every new day.

  The moment I opened the door, he said, “Steve says you’re moving. Are you moving? Why are you moving? You promised to take Sammy when I go, how can you do that if you’re moving?”

  I hadn’t warned Steve that I was keeping my plans secret from Louie, at least until the For Sale went up. He’d obsess over it as he did over everything, asking me the same question a million times, and then a million and one.

  As he was doing right now.

  I could see he was really upset, his unshaven face screwed into an anxious knot. “If you aren’t here, who’ll take care of Sammy when I go? You promised you’d take care of my boy, who’ll take care of Sammy if you move? You know Sammy really owns this place, what’ll happen if he doesn’t like the new people?”

  What could I say? From Louie’s point of view, I was a traitor or worse, reneging on a sacred vow.

  “I’m not moving for a while, Louie.”

  “How long?�
�

  It was July. “I’m not sure. Probably not until maybe October.”

  Hopefully. October first was the closing date on the Sparwood house. I’d spoken to my bank manager, and she’d reluctantly agreed to bridge financing, but only for a month. And the interest was astronomical. I felt dizzy every time I thought about my precarious financial situation.

  “Maybe Sammy can go with you. Will Sammy like it where you’re going?”

  I drew in a calming breath. “Sammy would be miserable away from you, Louie. He needs to stay with you.”

  “Yes, but after I go? You’ll take him after I go?”

  Lord love a duck. There were times when he tried my patience beyond reason. “You’re perfectly healthy, Louie, you’re not going anywhere. It’ll be a long time before you have to think about it.”

  He nodded. “Mother lived to a hundred and two.”

  “Yes, and longevity is inherited, so like I say, you’ll be around a long time.”

  “Steve says he’ll paint my steps, my steps need painting.”

  “That’s really kind of Steve.”

  “I like Steve. Steve’s not married. I’ve decided not to get married.”

  “Wise decision. Now I have to work.”

  I closed the door on him as he let Sammy down. The cat watched me watching him, gave me a snide look, and then went into three point stance and took a poop right in the middle of my path.

  TIPS FROM A HOME STAGER

  Pack away all personal memento and photos. Buyers are not interested in your grandchildren or ex-husbands. The house should resemble a show home—tour a few to get the idea.

  Clean out the cupboards and closets, removing at least half of the kitchen stuff and ¾ of the clothing. Less makes the space look like more. Take everything off the counter tops except the microwave.

  Paint the entire interior a neutral off white—or my favorite, lambskin duvet, a shade between white and cream. Uniformity produces a palette against which you’re few remaining pieces of furniture look elegant.

  Buy the most luxurious looking new white bed coverings you can afford, ditto new towels for the bathrooms. (The stager will suggest color schemes, but white is always good.)

  Change all the light fixtures if they’re old but not classy. Same with the shower heads, rain shower heads are the way to go.

  Examine the house from the front sidewalk and be ruthless as to curb appeal. If necessary, hire a gardener to shove in some greenery or flowers. The posts holding up my tiny front porch roof looked too small, for example. We used boards to fake in new, more substantial beams. A coat of paint and they looked as if they’d always been there.

  If you have an attic, clean it thoroughly and get rid of any vermin traps you might have hanging around. Prospective buyers are weird about crawling into crawl spaces and squeezing into attics.

  Don’t take the stager’s comments personally. She’s interested in a sale for a whopping amount, just as you are. This house is no longer an extension of your unique personality. It’s a product for which sentiment has no place, and appearance is everything.

  How crass, how shallow. How financially beneficial.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I broke the lid of my chest open

  And was startled into finding my own wealth.

  (Rabindranath Tagore)

  The house painting progressed with fewer calamities than I’d anticipated. There was the morning when one of Steve’s ladders poked through the upstairs window screen at 6 AM and frightened a timid visiting school teacher into a screaming fit, but that was all the indignity any of my guests suffered.

  Steve drove the poor Guyana visitors mercilessly, even though Eric confided that lovely Pyra was Steve’s latest conquest, just as I’d feared. I watched her trying desperately to please him, giving him longing looks, bringing him fancy lunches, and I amused myself by speculating on what the universe might have in store for Steve next time around.

  A hopelessly unattractive female body, one could only hope? Or just a series of unrequited love affairs, with a heart broken over and over again? Or maybe, in this very lifetime, he’d fall hopelessly in love with a woman immune to his particular charms. It’s always comforting to know that Karma is impartial and inevitable—except when one applies it personally.

  With the first coat of rich yellow, the house took on a festive, cheerful air that it hadn’t had when it was blue. With the addition of cream trim on fascia boards and down pipes, my old house began to look positively elegant, rather like an impeccable lady of a certain age with a sense of humor.

  Inside, I patched scratches and small holes on my walls, becoming an expert with spackle. I painted and began to pack up boxes of books and knick knacks.

  The day arrived in late August when I booked my very last guests, Patrick and Christine, from Eugene, Oregon. I asked, as I always do, what work they did, what they wanted from life, what they needed from me to make their stay comfortable.

  “I worked in the film industry,” Patrick said. He named a string of well known films he’d co-directed. “But now I’m retired, I spend most of my time fishing.”

  I’m always amazed at the serendipity of life. I explained that I was leaving Vancouver to start a fishing lodge in Sparwood, and he immediately offered to publicize my lodge in the best of the fishing magazines in exchange for a weekend’s lodging.

  “The Elk River is well known among fly fishermen, you’ll do really well,” he promised, and my heart soared. It was the first practical indication I’d had that the move would be successful, and I was grateful. It was heartening to have the fishing seal of approval on my intention to become the Queen of the Elk.

  When Patrick and Christine left, I began ticking off the chores Elizabeth had detailed.

  Gordon, the huge bear of a man who redid cedar floors, came with two young helpers and ripped out my carpeting after Eric and I and Steve somehow, with superhuman determination, managed to move all the living room furniture into the other rooms. Now it wasn’t possible to even walk through the dining room. There were sofas, tables and armoires stacked to the ceiling.

  There was also a nasty surprise under that old living room carpeting. There must have once been a wall across the middle of the room. Someone had taken it out and replaced the gaping hole in the floor with fir, which didn’t at all match the rest of the wood.

  “I’ll have to find some old cedar flooring and replace that,” Gordon told me. “So the job’s going to take longer and cost a lot more.”

  “Okay,” I croaked. I’d have to start getting advances on my credit cards. I was praying hard and frantically that the house would sell fast. Knowing that like attracts like, I did what I could to convince myself that I was wealthy.

  On a book of old checks, at two every morning, I wrote myself ever increasing amounts, going up by tens of thousands every night. Then I wrote down exactly how I’d spend it, taking my entire family to Mexico, paying off every debt any of us had, putting money into trust funds for college educations should my grandkids want that. Buying good jewelry, setting up a shelter for battered women, adopting every one of the sad orphaned kids they show on TV. By the time I was up to a couple million, I’d run out of things to buy and do. But I’d fall asleep feeling wealthy, and the ache in my stomach would have disappeared.

  Gordon the wooden floor man was a quick worker. In three days, he’d replaced the fir with cedar, stripped the floor, sanded it down, gradually putting on three coats of something so noxious I gagged and got dizzy each time I walked in.

  I ate at the White Spot and slept in the studio. For the first time in years, I had nothing to do but take care of myself, write, and increase my imaginary income whenever a fit of the awful awfuls struck.

  Gordon took to coming out and having tea with me and, inevitably, telling me the story of his life.

  He’d worked at refinishing floors all his life, and he loved what he did, reclaiming original damaged wood and making it beautiful. He’d gone from d
oing the work all himself to having two employees, then four, then ten, then twenty seven.

  He formed a company, and found himself spending all his time supervising crews and keeping track of the books, and for the first time, he began having complaints about his work. His blood pressure went up. His sex drive went down. His temper escalated.

  “Employees are never gonna do the same job you’d do yourself, right?” he said, punctuating his words with expressive hand gestures. “I mean, they’re workin’ by the hour, right? Ya can’t blame them for takin’ shortcuts. But I started to hate goin’ to work every morning.”

  And then the unimaginable happened. Gordon and his wife won the lottery, big time.

  “I closed the company down. We went to Hawaii for a coupla months. Then we went to Europe. And I got fed up with doin’ nothin’, I tell ya. So we came home and I bought an old house just for fun, to redo the floors, and would ya believe, the little man started ta make his presence known. Goddamn, it felt so good. Sold that house, and then started right where I’d been years ago, workin’ with a couple helpers doin’ contract work on a small scale. Been doin’ that ever since, and I tell ya, I’m one happy man. Don’t take no jobs for people I don’t like, don’t have to. The missus is all for it, I wasn’t so nice to live with when I wasn’t workin’. Or when I was a big time entra-pen-oor, neither.”

  I remembered the advice the Junkman had given me, about buying the house next door, expanding. I thought of the eight rooms I’d be renting out at Tommy’s. That could mean sixteen people for breakfast.

  I’d also been flirting with the idea of putting up yurts along the riverbank and renting them out, starting a fishing supply store in the barn, buying a couple of float boats, maybe offering to do lunches for groups. I’d need more than a few employees. I needed to think carefully about all my dreams.

  For me, Gordon’s story was a cautionary tale. Just as my women friends and I had concluded years ago, maybe bigger wasn’t necessarily better.

  It’s something the aspiring bed and breakfast host needs to take under careful consideration.