Room for Five?
We’ve just been left this review by a guest who’d stayed in our new family room;
“First class guesthouse, beautiful surroundings, excellent decor, attention to detail. The best family room we have ever stayed in. Much forethought was put into the extras available with room. Highly recommended.”
Previously we’d often been asked by our Alton Towers guests if we had a family room for five guests, and the answer up until now has always been “Sorry, no.”
Well, that’s now changed, as we’ve knocked our existing Twin Room and one of our Triple Rooms into one large family room for up to 5 guests.
This may sound like a fairly simple exercise (well, it did when we were talking about it), but it entails ripping out the ensuite from the Twin Room in its entirety, including the walls, door frame, toilet, basin, shower and radiator, then making good.
Luckily there are several plus points to ripping the guts out of that room – Not least is seeing the back of the bloody awful 1980s bathroom tiles! Something we’ve been looking forward to since we moved in. Still, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and we’ve been steadily refurbishing the whole place since then.
Brand New Ensuite
As I set about removing the basin, I was wondering if plumbers have a different view of the world, given that they must spend half their day looking at everything upside-down. Still, with the blood rushing to my head, I fumbled around trying to undo the nut that holds the taps in place, which for some strange reason is always hidden in the most inaccessible part of the sink, especially designed so normal spanners and wrenches aren’t able to reach. Personally, I suspect it’s a ploy thought up between the sink manufacturers and the makers of those weird plumbers’ wrenches.
Of course, being a seasoned DIY practitioner, I have virtually every tool that’s ever been made, so that’s not a problem. It comes under the category of ‘the proper tool for the job’. These are the tools that are bought with the intention of making the job then times easier, so it doesn’t matter if you only use them once every year or so.
Well, it would have been ten times easier if I could only discover where I’d put the poxy thing among all the other tools I own!
So there I was, in the obligatory head upside down position, with a spanner in one hand whilst trying to twist the tap to loosen it simultaneously. To my surprise, the tap nut did actually come loose but, despite having isolated the water supply (I’m not that stupid. Mostly), the usual spurt of water emerged and started to run down my arm, then onto my trousers. One day I’ll complete a plumbing job without either getting wet or having bulging eyes from hanging upside-down like a bat for hours.
Demolition Man
The next task was to remove the walls and door frame from the ensuite.
Simple, really; you just arm yourself with a large hammer and an even larger crowbar and go to work in a very manly way.
The noise and dust are something else, but there’s something quite therapeutic about destroying a stud wall, especially when it was put together really quite well when it was first built. Having said that, the guy who did the plastering clearly didn’t understand the definition of the word ‘skim’ when he slopped on a coat about half an inch thick. Not that I could do any better. Personally, I think plastering is one of the dark arts, in the same vein as turning people into frogs, as practised only by magicians and wizards.
What comes down must go up (or something like that)
All of this left us with this mess to be cleaned up, which is why we had a nice big(ish) skip in the carpark.
The next steps include removing the ensuite contents from the Triple Room next door, adding new walls to make it bigger, and then bashing through part of the diving wall between the two rooms.
Like all our rooms, the occupancy rates are flexible, so you can still book this room even if it’s just the two of you unless, of course, you’re a fan of Booking.con etc., in which case they’ll make you pay for full occupancy irrespective of how many of you are staying? (#bookdirect instead)
After several weeks we’d built the new walls, sound-proofed the adjoining wall between this room and the double next door, installed a brand new dual head shower, mini bar, two TVs, an Alexa smart device and a whole bunch of stuff that seemed to take an absolute age!
So, without further ado, here are some photos;
If you fancy booking our new super, duper shiny room, just clicky on the button below, scroll towards the bottom and select ‘Family Room with Bunk Beds‘.
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