Waypoint House

Address: 211 S Church St. Berryville, Va    Reservation Line: 540-955-8218

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Blue Ridge Bouquet

Spring Renewal

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Spring Renewal

Understandably, many people get energized and excited at the top of the New Year to make changes and updates in their lives. For me, I always get a renewed sense of energy as I feel spring approaching. Perhaps it’s seeing the gardens awake, and feeling the warmth of the sun grow stronger as we inch closer to the spring equinox that sets me stirring, but I start to look for new ideas and new projects to take on. Now that I am watching the vestiges of what will (hopefully!) be the last snow disappear, the spring renewal has me itching to get to work!

As such, we are very excited to announce the launch of our updated online booking platform. I know a lot of you prefer just giving me a call to make your reservations, and we love that! For dedicated online bookers and for first time guests finding us, however, I really feel like this new system will be much easier and more intuitive to use. It’s also an opportunity to highlight some of the “extras” that we offer to enhance stays. For these additions, we work hard to collaborate with local vendors. That way, our guests get the best of everything that Berryville and the surrounding area has to offer.

Highlighting Local Vendors

As a prime example, we are now very proudly serving locally roasted Cordial Coffee at breakfast. Additionally, we offer a new Wake Up Package featuring a bag of their freshly roasted beans. It’s a great way to bring a taste of Berryville home with you after your stay. Just how local is this locally roasted coffee, you ask? Just two blocks away! That pretty much guarantees a fresh, tasty cup of coffee in the morning!

Cordial Coffee Wake Up Package at Waypoint House B+B

Cordial Coffee Wake Up Package at Waypoint House B+B

Veramar Vineyards has been our purveyor of choice for the wines we serve with our in-room packages for years. Now it’s even easier to add a wine package to your reservation with the new booking system.

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Celebrating a birthday or anniversary during your stay with us? We can offer a unique floral arrangement designed exclusively for Waypoint House from our local florist. Just ask for the Blue Ridge Bouquet when booking your reservation over the phone. It can also be added to a reservation from the extras section while booking online. We’ve even created a package to bring you house made birthday cupcakes!

Birthday Celebration Package at Waypoint House B+B

Birthday Celebration Package at Waypoint House B+B

And if you need something really special for a celebration, we are excited to be able to bring you a premium, local, Virginia sparkling wine. Greenhill Winery and Vineyards’ Blanc de Blancs is available as a package add on.

Greenhill Winery Blanc de Blancs

Greenhill Winery Blanc de Blancs

We invite you to take a look at our newly updated Promotions, Specials and Extras page to see all the details.

Welcome to Spring!

New Roof at Waypoint House

Celebrating Our Five-Year Anniversary and Our June Improvements

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It’s been a very exciting first two weeks of June, and today is a very special day for us. Today we are celebrating our five-year anniversary and our June improvements are underway!

Yes, that’s right, it’s already been five years here at Waypoint House and we still love every minute of it.  By itself, that’s a pretty big deal this week, but also we’re right in the middle of our planned June improvement projects.

Aside from the little hint I gave you in the last blog, we are also undertaking having the roof replaced – a new hat for our old girl, as we like to say.  Ironclad Contracting has been on the scene taking the old roof off section by section and re-installing our beautiful new standing seam metal roof.  We are already so pleased with the progress.  The cherry on top will be when our side bay window receives a new copper roof that we think is going to be a really spectacular accent.  I can’t wait until I have photos of that to show you!  It will be the last thing the contractor does, so we must be patient for a few more weeks.

The interior work is underway as well. The front hallway, stairwell and second floor hallway will have all the wallpaper replaced.  We will install chair rail molding and paint the bottom portion of the walls.  Jonathan has already primed and painted the molding for installation and today the wallpaper removal process started.  I’m also doing some touch up painting on the second floor hallway doors and trim so that everything has a nice, clean, polished look.  We’re calling the wallpaper project the new “dress” for our dear girl!  So, a new hat and a new dress for our lovely lady as we celebrate our five year anniversary – not too shabby!  Stay tuned for more updates as progress continues!

Greens, Eggs and Ham

New Year, New Recipes

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I love trying new recipes all year long, but especially at the start of a new year I get itchy to try new recipes and freshen up the menu.

Jonathan, of course gets to be the official tester before I serve any dish to guests.  Often I’ll do “breakfast for dinner” so we can try it together since, ironically, we very rarely eat breakfast together!  He’ll make a critique or two, or suggest a way to garnish, etc.  After trying my latest breakfast creation he just said, “Can we have that for dinner again tomorrow?”  So, I guess that means I did good!

As with most things in this day and age, I got my initial inspiration from Pinterest, then found a similar recipe in a cookbook not too long afterward so, I took that as a sign that I was on to something.  Then, a title for the dish came into my head, and after a few “Rachael” modifications, viola.

Greens, Eggs and Ham.  It’s my homage to Dr. Seuss.  Sauteed leeks, kale and baby spinach with feta cheese on top of Canadian bacon and my homemade English muffin bread served with fried eggs.  So, would you eat greens, eggs and ham?

Greens, Eggs and Ham - one of our new recipes for 2016

Greens, Eggs and Ham

Summer Brings Tomatoes from the Waypoint House garden

Our Summer Re-Cap

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Whether you are a kid or an adult, I think we can all agree that summer never seems to last as long as you want it to. Here we are now with Labor Day already behind us, and soon the days will begin to take on a cool crisp feeling and the daylight hours will grow shorter bit by bit, whisking us right along into autumn.

But before we are consumed by all things pumpkin and pull out the sweaters from their summer storage, I wanted to take a moment to recap the summer here.

I know this kind of breaks the rules of blogging, but I ask for your indulgence.  Blogs should be frequent, quick snippets of daily events.  Yes, I try and often fail.

A lot of great guests came through our door this summer, and we’ve had fun seeing you all.  We even got to take a few fun days away this summer ourselves, and we made a trip to Boston to see U2 in concert!  Another front row experience!  That was a blast.  Ask us about that trip the next time you come stay with us.

There were a few projects, as well.  We painted the metal roof of the garage, and we’ve been working on painting the west exterior side of the house.  We’re still working on it, section by section!  The garden produced, and is still producing, copious amounts of beautiful tomatoes.

We saw lots of family too.  My sister lives in Boston so our concert trip was also a chance to spend time with her.  In August my brother, sister-in-law, nephew and niece came here to visit us.  If you want to talk about fun, take a four year old to Dinosaur Land!  That was great.

So there was fun family time, and also serious family time.  Both Jonathan and I are at the age where for the past several years we have been seeing our parents growing older and needing us more – a difficult prospect for us since we both have the challenge of being the children farthest away – geographically speaking – and because of the time commitment that the inn requires.

I thought it only fair I shared a bit of our personal journey this summer as we really do consider many of our guests friends.  I think you all get to know us just as much as we try to get to know you during your stay.

I do have lots of other things I’ve wanted to share with you all over the summer, I just never got around to writing about them.  I hope to revisit all of those ideas over the autumn and be back more frequently.  No guarantees, guys.  I’d rather spend face to face time with you, or actually be in the thick of a project than be behind the computer, but I’ll give it my best shot.

-R

 

Nearing the End of Renovations!

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Oh, it has been a busy couple of weeks since I last wrote!  Santa’s little elves have been working through Christmas to get ready for New Year’s Eve!

Painting, painting, painting. Details, details, details.  Lots of details.  But as we all know, it’s the little things that can make or break an experience, so we wanted to take the extra time to get through all the little specifics.  Our guests deserve that.  It meant we took on a project or two more and that we got a little behind, but in the end, I think it has been worth it.  So, where does that leave us?  Well, both the Shore Room and the Traveler’s Retreat were repainted top to bottom.  Ceiling, walls, trim – the works.  The Traveler’s Retreat bathroom also got a very nice new coat of paint to replace the old wallpaper.  While we were working in the Traveler’s Retreat bath, we also put a fresh coat of polyurethane on both the wood surround on the jetted tub and the wood vanity.  All of that woodwork really pops now.  We also took care of a spot in front of the shower where the floor needed some work.  We added a tile step-out, and it’s going to look great.  We updated the above shower and tub lighting too and they are now LED.  Hooray for being energy efficient!  As I mentioned in a previous post, we are also going to be updating the lighting at the vanity, but our chosen fixture won’t be in until January, so I’ll owe you an updated photo after that goes in!  The current fixtures are back up in the meantime.

Yesterday Jonathan finally got to build the custom headboard for the Shore Room.  I think he purposely saved it until last so he could have something fun and creative to work on!    We made it all from reclaimed pallet wood and it is very cool.  I’m really happy with how it turned out.  It looks fantastic and I can’t wait to get all the furniture back in to see how it all pulls together!  Jonathan also worked on some really nifty wall decor to add to that room too, made from more reclaimed wood.  Of course, all the great beach photos will go back in, but having a few new pieces is a real bonus!  The floor was also refinished, and we couldn’t be happier with that.  The floor really sparkles now.  Finally, we worked on some custom closet pieces to replace the rather flimsy shelves that were originally there.

We repaired a few plaster cracks in the second floor hallway ceiling and it is now ready for a fresh coat of paint too.  The new toe kick went in along the second floor hallway, and that little detail really makes a big difference in my opinion.  One thing we did not get to on this go around, but is still on our hit list, is to refinish all of the spindles going up the stairs to the second floor.  Again, they’ve had one too many coats of paint over the years, so it’s time to go back to the start.  Maybe that will have to be our project next Christmas!

The new plumbing went in for the laundry room and the machines have been relocated.  We are still deciding on the final flooring option for that room, so again, I will owe you another update!  Also, we’ve claimed the old laundry space for the pantry, but we plan to get some nice shelving to go in there to make it very organized and efficient.  Another update to come!

For now, here are some photos of the work to date.  I’ll have the photos of the finished Shore Room and Traveler’s Retreat Room up in the next couple of days.  All of the major construction is done now, so I am planning a massive clean up and furniture load in tomorrow.  See you back here soon!

-R