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First year review

We did it! We survived our first year in the home rental business!

We learned a lot of small lessons in our first year and by "small lessons" we mean that there were no major surprises. Apparently we were well prepared for the challenges that the business is known for and had our expectations properly set. The rental business as a whole seems to be holding steady through the summer, but it's kind of hard for us to judge right now since this is only our second summer. We expect to know more after another winter since winter provides a more consistent flow of tenants.

One major change we have made to the house, or more specifically our policies regarding the house, is that we've reduced the maximum number of people that can occupy the house from 12 to 10. It was never the case that house couldn't accommodate 12 people, but rather that groups of 12 people tended to take a larger toll on the house than we were comfortable with and ultimately we had less than a handful of 12-person parties so we didn't feel as though we were alienating a large portion of our customer-base.

We continue to look for new, effective, and value-oriented advertising avenues. Craig's List has so far born the most fruit and we've adopted a regular schedule of posting to Craig's List. One market we're still trying to attract is tenants from abroad, but we've not quite figured out how to effectively reach that market. Ultimately, however, the business has remained steady despite the economic conditions we're all facing. We attribute that to our highly competitive pricing and obvious attention to detail. We're definitely looking forward to another phenomenal winter!

Redesigned Website

Well the new year has come and with the new year we're happy to finally release our new website.

The old website wasn't necessarily "broken", but it lacked a professional feel and, admittedly, was thrown together in a hurry using Microsoft FrontPage.  With Microsoft discontinuing support for FrontPage, and our host slowly phasing out support for FrontPage Server Extensions, it seemed as good a time as any to rebuild the website from scratch.  

We've eliminated the broad navigation menu on the left in favor of a simple navigation bar towards the top.  Visitors can more easily find the common points of interest such as pictures, availability, rates, and the 'contact us' page.

With our website turning 1 year old recently, it seemed like the SPAM-BOTS found us and a lot of the e-mails we were receiving from the website were actually SPAM.  Because of the increase in SPAM volumes, we've added a CAPTCHA field, courtesy of  Carnegie Mellon University, to our 'contact us' page.  These days, most of us have come across a CAPTCHA field at some point so we are pretty confident it won't scare our visitors away.  For those of you that don't know, CAPTCHA stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart".  Of course not everyone that visits our website will know what this is, so we have continued to post our direct e-mail and phone number just in case.  For anyone wondering why they can't copy and paste or click on the e-mail or phone number, it's because they are images and not actual typed text.  This is another common technique utilized to hide from SPAM-BOTS.

Aside from the CAPTCHA field we also converted our 'contact us' page to use PHP instead of the FPSE.  PHP provides infintely more flexibility, capability, and security over FPSE , but it also required that we learn a new language however cursory our use of that language may be.  Ultimately I see us using more PHP on the website as it grows and evolves as the language is fairly easy to learn and provides a great deal of control over the content.

We hope you enjoy the new website and we look forward to a great 2009.

Hot Tub Installation Completed

It's finally done!  The new 8-person Jacuzzi J-365 hot tub has been installed on our new deck.  The new hot tub has great views of the mountains and will no doubt prove to be a favorite feature for all of our guests.  In addition to the hot tub, we've also decided to provide guests with extra large hot tub towels.  Our experience in houses we've rented in the past is that your bath towel and hot tub towel usually end up being the same towel which means at some point in the day you end drying yourself with a wet towel.

The task of having the hot tub installed was more monumental than we'd anticipated and ended up taking about 45 days longer than we had originally planned for.  In the end, however, we were able to get it up and running before any guests arrived, which was our primary concern from the outset.  We've updated all of our websites to reflect the new change and just as soon we actually get up there to use it, we'll be putting some pictures up!

Hot tub spa

The spa has been ordered! We opted to get the Jacuzzi J-365 for a bunch of reasons, not the least of which is the Jacuzzi reputation, but we were also impressed by professionalism of the local dealer. The tub officially sits 6-7 adults, but in reality we counted 8 individual seats. We opted to get the "Desert Sand" shell with "Roasted Chestnut" cabinet. It seems like every spa we've ever been in is grey, white, blue, or green so we thought it would be fun to pick a color outside of the norm and add a touch of class to the experience... which is kind of what we're trying to accomplish with house in general.

The most painful part of the entire process, as we expected, is deciphering local and state regulations. Water rights, in particular, simply boggle the mind (both in complexity and price), but the local water-people (for lack of a better term) have been pretty helpful in letting us know how much tribute each beuracracy gets so that we can use the water from our own well to fill a hot tub.

As the final month of summer fast approaches we only have a few more weekends of being able to sit out on the deck and enjoy the dry 75 degree air, the smell of the pines, and the sounds of the humming birds zipping around the yard... but now we'll look forward to sitting in the spa and letting the jets do their work while snowflakes fall on our heads.

New Deck

The new deck is completed!

The old deck, while it had a great view, was impractical because we could not access the deck without going through the house and this made it impossible to contract with a snow removal company to clear the deck during the winter. The old deck planking was also composed of an inexpensive pine that splintered easily and required annual sealing and painting. And last, but not least, was the fact that the old deck rails were 6 inches apart, which is 2 inches more than code.

The new deck now wraps around the south side of the house and meets up with the driveway so it can be accessed without having to go through the house. We chose Trex as our deck planking due to it's durability and the fact that it's practically maintenance free... a big bonus for a rental property. We also picked out some really nice metal rails (up to code of course) that allow you to choose a custom center-piece. We were split between the elk and the mountains so we chose both. Lastly, and almost as important as the direct access feature, is that we had the contractor build in a space for a hot tub! The previous deck just didn't have room for anything bigger than a 3 or 4 person hot tub, nor was it designed to support the weight of one, and when you're renting a home to between 12 and 17 people... well that just wouldn't work. The new deck has been designed to support as large a hot tub as they sell and provides us the space to have one installed.

Now we just need to figure out which hot tub to buy.

Almost done

Well we spent another day wrapping up loose ends and getting all the small, but important details done such as installing the cove base, some new lights, a latch on the pocket door and re-installing a few other items such as folding closet doors and the trim-work for the staircase. We also received delivery of our new 46" Samsung LCD TV, which will be featured in the living room and ordered up a few more televisions set to arrive before our opening day. The total TV count when all is said and done will be (1) 46", (1) 37", and (2) 22"... all hi-def flat screens. Another exciting arrival was the new bar-stools, which can be seen in the photo gallery. Just a few more touch-ups and we will basically be done. I'm looking forward to a weekend when we can drive up to the house and just enjoy it without having to do any work.