How every B & B can help: Recycling Soap. Saving Lives.

Early in the career of every Innkeeper, you ask yourself: "What am I going to do with all this leftover soap?" This week, after twenty years in this business, I found the answer. And found a wonderful way to help the less fortunate.

 

Nelson House B & B is now the first bed and breakfast in Canada to partner with Clean the World Foundation, a Florida not-for-profit corporation that is rapidly expanding north of the border.

Clean the World has a straightforward two-part mission:
1.Reduce the waste created by discarded soap and shampoo products.
2.Prevent the millions of deaths caused by hygiene-related illnesses every year.

Did you know that the two biggest killers of Children under the age of 5 can be greatly reduced by soap intervention? According to the World Health Organization, 34 per cent of these children die from diarrheal diseases and respiratory infections that are preventable with simple, basic hygiene. The problem is that a family earning a few dollars a day will put food and shelter needs over the purchase of a "luxury", like a bar of soap.

Since its beginnings in 2009, Clean the World  has hundreds of hotels and many B & Bs tossing their partly used soap and shampoo bottles into recycling bins for local pick-up. Here in Vancouver, CTW has just opened a recycling and processing centre employing women at risk, who reside in Vancouver's downtown eastside. A second Canadian centre will open soon in Toronto. At these Centres, the more heavily used soaps are cooked to remove impurities and rebatched into 2-ounce bars. The majority of only slightly used soaps are put through a patent-pending sanitization, steam and pressure process. PH levels are tested and the soap is repackaged to go out to those most in need.

In the last year, reputable NGOs like World Vision have helped to distribute over five million soap bars, and 250,000 pounds of shampoo and conditioner in countries such as Haiti, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Swaziland, Mali, Mongolia, Uganda, Honduras, Romania, the United States and soon, to the needy in Canada too.

I personally encourage every hotel and B & B innkeeper reading this to stop sending your guest soaps and shampoo to the landfill! Use your good business sense - go green, give back, help others!  If you stay in B & Bs, please ask your innkeeper if they have heard of this simple Win-Win solution. Here is the Clean the World link to get going.

A green B & B update.

As summer-like weather wanes, the Dalai Lama is in town teaching peace and compassion. Cynics can gripe but I doubt that this man is capable of a harmful thought or utterance. When it comes to religious leaders, I wish they were all so unbiased and openly loving. I say good on Vancouver for lending him an ear.

***

At home, a number of B & B projects are moving from the background to take centre stage. The greening of Nelson House is still underway. The attic crawlspaces will soon be much better insulated. I have been talking to electricians, furnace contractors and our local utility company concerning a major upgrade of our heating and cooling systems. With a 100 year-old house, I am not surprised that every step of this eco-project has produced differences of opinion, new choices to be made and of course, taken longer than might be wished. Fortunately, in beautiful Vancouver, I have no need to worry about a looming deep-freeze from Old Man Winter.

Spring Extravaganza!

As April turns to May in Vancouver, the Nelson House B & B garden is a spring extravaganza. The picture above, taken yesterday, is just a glimpse of blooming peiris japonica(sooo...sweet at night), clematis armandii climbing up to Vienna's window and over the porch roof and the magnolia soulangeana, reaching for the sky.

Shangri-La

The pictures above show the new look of the Shangri-La's cozy wetbar. The last few weeks have involved both an energy retro-fit and a stylish makeover for portions of our top-floor suite. Attic spaces have been opened, insulated and resealed airtight. Not only do guests have the makings for coffee, tea and cocktails(note the built-in refigerator under the counter) but the chimney brick has been exposed for the first time to add more of that heritage warmth that B & Bs are all about. Sexy lighting adds just the right touch for an evening's romantic nightcap.

New flooring and natural wooden baseboard trim has also warmed the ambience of Shangri-La's comfortable bath. Yes, that is a corner jacuzzi tub for two. By day, it is tropically sunny under a skylight.

By night, the tropical artwork on the oval wall mirror is backlit. I sketched the artwork and the mirror was custom built for us in Hong Kong. You just gotta see the cool green and golden glow from the perspective of the tub.

Hope you like! We are not your grandma's bed and breakfast - nor your local Best Western. Please checkout the guest-house website for more pictures of the suite - very nice for a romantic getaway.

The greening of Nelson House B & B

Tomorrow, I should be able to show the results of our recent renovations. Shangri-La revealed....

Vancouver Springtime...

Just a couple of pics taken yesterday of cherries and daffodils in bloom.

Fresh !

Vancouver Convention Centre 2 Opens

People come to conventions to be educated and inspired. At Expo'86 in Vancouver, the World Fair's Canadian Pavilion was designed for future use as Vancouver's iconic "Canada Place". The effect is of a huge sailing ship jutting out into the waters of Burrard Inlet. It is imaginative as it's design includes a convention centre, a hotel, a cruiseship terminal and even an IMAX theatre. At the time, the translucent, white glass-fibre fabric hung from five masts was technically advanced and served to create huge unobstructed interior spaces, flooded by natural light.

This week, Vancouver's NEW Convention Centre expansion opened to the public and for it's first conventioneers. I took in the show. Situated just west of Canada Place, along the new Coal Harbour Seawall, this building also juts out over the harbour. Seaplanes land and take off from the waters at it's side. Wraparound public walkways have added fresh new views of Vancouver's picture post card beauty. The world will soon receive plenty of televised views as the Convention Centre will be used as the Media Centre for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

The new Convention Centre's effect is of an angular, sharp-edged mountain with natural green, grassy slopes. The building is "green" in many more ways than one. The six acre(2.4 hectare) grass and wildflower roof is the largest living green roof in Canada. It is already home to thirty thousand bees and attracting nesting birds. Deep below, forty per cent of the foundation is resting on concrete piles driven into the seabed. Design features have been included to form a marine habitat for sea urchins, starfish, sea lettuce and Vancouver's friendly harbour seals.

The aesthetics are dominated by enormous glass walls that frame views of the harbour and the North Shore mountains. Inside, the awesome spaces are warmed by the generous use of BC. fir beams overhead and stacked BC hemlock walls(assembled by a robot, named Victoria). The unique seawater heating and cooling system makes highly efficient use of energy.

Are you coming to Vancouver?


Leave us a comment or question anytime. Always glad to hear from you!

Shangri-La - rooftop renovations.

A photo collage of the Shangri-La Suite

This week, we started to renovate our top-floor Shangri-La Suite. This is not the first time. Shangri-La occupies the entire third-floor of the house. The centre of the suite is under the peak of the roof. Originally(c. 1907), this was likely to have been the children's bed &/or playroom. The central area is now used as a sitting area gathered around a TV and gas fireplace. From it, three flat-roofed dormers jut east, west and north out of the sloping roofline. Charming, multipaned casement windows front each dormer.

***

There is no south dormer - probably because of the neighbouring house. In the early 1990's, we added an ensuite bath with jacuzzi tub and skylight on the southside. When building the bath, of course we insulated the bath's walls and constructed a hatch inside the closet for future access to the southside attic crawlspace.

***

To complete the picture - under the east dormer, overlooking the front door and garden is a desk, armchair & single bed. Under the west dormer is the main sleeping nook with queen-sized bed and glass doors leading to a balcony. Under the north dormer is the focus of our current project.

***

When we bought the house in 1989, this small space, just beside and behind the fireplace, was a tenant's kitchenette and somehow managed to contain a gas stove, a full-sized clunker of a fridge, sink and simple custom-built cabinetry. For B & B purposes, our first renovations reduced this to a "galley kitchen" with only a bar fridge, microwave, coffeemaker, kettle and a general freshening up with paint and vinyl. Now, our goals are to turn this area into a sexier "wetbar", obtain access to the remaining attic spaces to prepare for blown-in insulation, make necessary electrical improvements and, once again(fun!), update the decorating scheme.

***

Please don't forget to vote! See our poll questions just back a few days. We really want to hear from you.

Heritage Restoration and B & B Renovation

When I purchased 977 Broughton St., it had already been five decades since the old house had been used as a single-family home. The history of Vancouver's West End is that many of the prominent upper and comfortably middle-class families began to move out of the downtown neighbourhood between the two great wars. Gradually, large homes, such as this one, were converted to revenue properties. In our case, I figure this conversion to rentals may have occurred in the early forties.

Fifty years of rentals meant that many hundreds of individuals have lived in the house. Fortunately, the series of owner/landlords never subdivided the original rooms nor seriously damaged the character of the home. Bedrooms were simply converted to monthly rental spaces, locally called "housekeeping suites". Most rooms had a fridge, a gas stove or hotplate and a sink. A number of these suites shared a bathroom down the hall.

When I came along, thinking bed and breakfast, my first choice was whether or not to restore the house to it's early 1900s, Edwardian layout or gut and renovate to entirely modern standards. In the end, I opted for restoration of the public areas and renovation of the guest areas. I had the great advantage of purchasing a house that really needed no major reconfiguration or structural repairs. Because the bedrooms already had plumbing in them from the old rental days, I set out to quickly add ensuite baths for the use of B & B guests. Of course, the old kitchenettes were quickly removed. The entire house, inside and out, was scrubbed and painted. Where possible, original hardwood floors, banister rails and some built-in chests of drawers were sanded and refinished. Carpeting was added. The roof was re-shingled, stopping leaks and adding some small insulation improvement. The existing gas furnace was at least cheaper than oil, so I left it alone.

But the focus was on baths. A pair of shared hallway baths were gutted and rebuilt. One remained a shared bath for more budget-minded B & B guests. The other became an ensuite. In fact, over the course of some years, a total of four new ensuite baths were created for guest use. Two more were rebuilt and enhanced for my own and staff's use. In building six baths, I took the opportunities presented to insulate inside and outside walls for each project. However, I made the mistake of neglecting to insulate the remaining exterior walls. I worried more about delaying and disrupting B & B operations than long-term energy conservation. I rushed to redecorate with interior panelling, wallpapers and paints. That was way fun! I wanted to get and keep the bed and breakfast up and running for both the guests' enjoyment and to recoup some of my investment. In the process, I put off the big, messy task of drilling holes in the walls and blowing in insulation.

If I have learned one thing in the physical creation of Nelson House B & B, I would tell all aspiring innkeepers that "going green" is no longer an option, as it seemed to me back in 1989-90. Energy conservation is now a fundamental necessity to build your business bottomline. I know. You should see my gas bills!