We spent all yesterday choosing a colour to paint the hotel. Actually, we started looking at paint catalogues a few weeks ago and had sort of decided on one colour, but I was having second thoughts. It is very hard to look at a small splodge of colour on a paint catalogue and imagine what that will look like transferred to an enormous building. I know, because twice I have chosen a colour I thought would look good – and been disappointed.
Turkey hasn’t yet expanded to tester pots for the indecisive (I have two pots of paint bought and then rejected when we were painting our bedroom recently!) Still, we drove the builder so mad pouring over endless catalogues that he bought the smallest available tins of several colours for us to try. In the end, the one we had sort of decided on a few weeks ago seems to be what we are going for and Cem and I both like it at the moment; but then again we have only tried it on a two metre square section of wall and there is quite a lot to go..!
The plumber has finished work in the rooms and the bathrooms have all been re-grouted. He is now crawling around in loft spaces to change the direction of flow or drain pipes so we can get rid of the unsightly down pipes on the front of the building. Yesterday I thought we should all be wearing hard hats as when he dismantled bits of it, they would come crashing down from above with no warning. But of course this is Turkey and there are no health and safety bullies around!
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| what a mess! |
There are plasterers working away all over the hotel and even the garden has had a shake up – literally as it has been ploughed up prior to reseeding with something called mouse ear (don’t somehow think that is the botanical name) which doesn’t need mowing. Cem, Yılmaz, Murat and various friends are doing their bit to add to the noise, mess and general chaos by sanding the furniture that missed their attentions last year. Some of you know what a huge job that turned into last year. Luckily there are only three rooms left to do.
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| the dream team (Cem and Kaan) |
So…any of you coming back for a repeat stay this year will see the new improved Poppy Apartments!
The other thing that we are working on at the moment – all be it more quietly - is finding staff. This is no easy task. Yılmaz and Elif will be here for their third year, cooking and cleaning respectively, but we have to find another cleaner (last year I had a frantic call from Cem while I was in London saying HE was cleaning rooms) and a new barman as Cengiz is going to do his national service. By the way, for those of you who know him, he has cut his hair in preparation and I didn’t recognize him!
Finding staff here is no easy matter. In the past, we have made some mistakes – partly due to desperation – hiring both Turkish people AND a couple of English people that have not worked out well (that’s the nice way of putting it), so we are a bit more choosy now. We have had two ladies come to see us about the cleaning job; one lives an hour and a half away by bus and the other has never worked before and hadn’t even told her husband she was applying for a job. Needless to say, we are still looking….
