This blog post is a series of posts written about the rainforest inn and intended for readers out there who are interested in a behind the scenes look at our bed and breakfast. Also I'd like to put a perspective on this post so you know how much work it is running a bed and breakfast. I started writing this post before Christmas -- so you can see how much free time we have during tourist season. Here is a picture I took of the main building back then. It shows our Christmas decorations.
Many of the email and comments I've received about this blog have mentioned my wife Laurie's dishwasher and berate me for not having installed it properly. And these are comments from people who haven't even used it and had the interesting surprise of the whole thing toppling over in their laps if you opened the loaded bottom drawer too far. So I finally built a beautiful mahogany cabinet which Laurie painstakingly sanded and varnished. It is a little higher than counter top height and it houses my prized Povoni coffee maker. Since I installed it next to the dishwasher I decided maybe I should put a little slab of plywood across so that the dishwasher would stop falling over. So Laurie finally got her dishwasher mounted.
I felt a little guilty after putting all that effort into a cabinet for my coffee maker so it was the least I could do to have it do double duty and also hold in the dishwasher.
Laurie also makes all her gourmet breakfasts in this kitchen. When we used to serve breakfasts on the long mahogany slab table in the kitchen our guests described it as a "farm house" kitchen and raved about how quant and romantic it was (now we serve the breakfasts on the front porch of each suite so that it is a private and more romantic experience). Actually the kitchen was just a garage where the horse feed was kept when we moved in, and I quickly converted it into a kitchen so we could eat. We have plans to do it over to a design that Laurie has been working on. She likes the central work table but wants it bigger. She also wants me to put the sink in the central work table and put a bigger sink by the dishwasher. She hasn't decided whether to put the stove top in the central work table or not. One of the designs she is considering is a U-shaped kitchen which is excellent for efficient work space but it would be difficult to get in (no way to walk through) and also would make it hard for more than two people to work in the kitchen. It's ironic that Laurie and I are spending so much thought on the kitchen design as Uncle David Humphrey who originally developed all this property was a kitchen designer and builder. He founded Orbit Kitchens and built tens of thousands of kitchens all over Puerto Rico.
It is also ironic that after I finally installed the dishwasher properly in a permanent cabinet it broke. We're waiting for the Sears repairman now...
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