There's one or two things to tell you and also to ask you as you spend your time in the house.
1. Shelves under the TV
If you take a look at this photo, you'll see that things are neatly laid out across the shelves. Reading from left to right:
a. Basket of games and puzzles for older children and adults
b. Books
c. AV stuff: satellite receiver, DVD/CD player, amplifier, plus a selection of CDs
d. Holiday information
e. Books
f. Basket of games for younger children
If you play any games, read any books or use any of the holiday information, please put things back as you found them. Please leave things neatly for the next guests to make use of. This makes it much more pleasant for everyone.
2. Books and magazines
There's a selection of books and magazines on the shelves. There are books ranging from non-fiction such as the Bible and a history of Salthouse through to paperback fiction. Please do not remove any books from the house. If you wish to leave a book for others to read then you are welcome to do so if there's space on the shelves.
Similarly with magazines, if you have a recent magazine that you wish to leave then please place it in one of the shelves for books. Please do not leave piles of old magazines in the house as they are rarely of interest to others.
3. Lightswitch in the bathroom
Some of you had problems with this earlier in the year. Sorry about this. I had dismantled the old switch and cleaned it out, but it transpired that this was just a temporary fix. It has now been replaced and the new switch seems fine. Thank you for your patience.
4. Shower
One of your guestbook comments was about a lack of shower curtain in the bathroom. To be honest, the shower head in the bathroom was never intended for people to stand under, and is more for rinsing hair, etc, while having a bath. Our original intention was to convert the cupboard next to the bathroom into a shower cubicle (accessed from the bathroom), once the boiler in the utility room stopped working. Installing a new boiler in the garage would make space in the utility room for new cupboards that would free up the other cupboard to become the shower cubicle.
However, the boiler is showing no signs of dying! It just seems to go on and on. Rather than waste resources -- natural and financial -- replacing something that works, we prefer to keep it while it's ok. This means the cupboard is not going to become a shower cubicle any time soon.
Therefore, our plan is to remodel the bathroom so that we can install a shower screen for the bath. This will mean changes to the back of the bath and the mirrors, and will probably mean replacing a lot of the wood panelling with tiles. I hope to be able to do all that later this year so there will be a shower for the 2011 holiday season. That's the expectation, but I'm not committing to it yet, just in case I can't make the time. If you have any thoughts please let us know.
I think that's all for now! Do continue to give us your feedback about anything to do with Gannets. We're always trying to make it nicer for our guests. And if you can do the same by thinking about keeping things a bit tidier, it will be better for everyone. Thank you.
Peter
