The Dream

Ok.  Blog entry number one.  Why an inn?  Andy and I love to travel and love to cook.  We thrive on creating our home and garden.  Entertaining family and friends comes naturally.  And, we know we can work together, actually literally be together 24-7.  We have worked together as architects for 14 years, married for 11 of those!  We have spent the last 10 years talking about owning a bed and breakfast, seriously searching for the last 5 of those.  We looked at hundreds of properties online, in person and through realtors.  It became clear that the cost of an up and running inn was way out of our financial reach.  So, being architects and having renovated several properties, we decided to look for a regular residence that we could convert to an inn. 

We had always loved the Willamette Valley and every time we visited, we would tell ourselves "we could really live here".  It felt like home to us.  In summer 2008, I took a sabbatical from work and started searching the real estate listings.  Finally, we found a house large enough to accommodate the number of rooms needed to make a real business.  The layout of the house was perfect for public to private areas and innkeeping and back of house space, with a ton of renovations (of course).  The property had beautiful views and 10 acres of meadows and included a large barn perfect for events.  So, we decided on our almost 4 hour drive back to Bremerton, Washington to make an offer on the house.  We really could not have anticipated the crazy journey that follows...