Renovations at the Riviera Guesthouse
You might have seen from our social media posts that we’ve been renovating the Riviera Guesthouse!
We took over the guesthouse in 2011 and we’ve kept our venue spick and span.
Yet like anything that’s used each and every day, our property is in need of some TLC.
Our family-run business is very important to us and like anything that’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.
While at the time of writing we’re not finished, we wanted to write a ‘during’ blog to keep everyone updated.
We will be showcasing our ‘after’ photos hopefully before our opening date, which is the first weekend in April 2025 – from Friday 4th April.
And if you want to be one of the first to enjoy our new look guesthouse, book here.
At the time of writing, we still have scaffolding at the front and the back of the building and there’s still a whopping great skip outside.
We’re about half way through the project so it’s been quite therapeutic to write this blog!
Our renovation work has two main aims.
The first is to modernise and revamp the Guest Dining Room, Reception, Guest Toilet and Catering Kitchen.
All these areas, while we keep them in a state of tiptop cleanliness, get a lot of ‘traffic’ and so these are a priority.
The second is to create more space for us as a family now our children are getting older.
It’s hard to believe they are now aged eight and eleven years of age.
We know we have a lot of treasured guests who have watched our family grow from Zed & I, to a family of three and then to a family of four…and a dog!
At one point, we looked at moving to a different residential address so that we could get the family space we needed.
Of course, we would still run the Guesthouse, so that was never in doubt.
Zed would be ‘in harness’ each morning for breakfast which of course the Riviera is famous for!
When we weighed up the pros and cons.
We knew if we lived at another address, we wouldn’t have been available as much.
This is one of the best bits about running the guesthouse, namely meeting and greeting people.
We also know our guests like this, and would prefer the face-to-face check in rather than these all too commonly creeping-in, soulless self-service check-ins.
Also, we quickly realised that we also wouldn’t have been able to run the Guesthouse as successfully.
I knew I wouldn’t be around as much and ‘the woman’s touch’ would go well and truly out of the window.
This includes noticing just the little things that need acting upon like a lightbulb or a dusty picture frame or leaflets that need reorganising or replacing.
We recognised we would miss seeing the wonderful North Sea out the window every day.
We even got to the stage of viewing potential houses for our family.
We quickly noticed how much we took the 180-degree sea views of our world for granted.
I’d go so far as to say we felt cooped up on a street – how crazy is that!
We also felt we’d miss being in the centre of all the action as we’re located in the bustling West Cliff area of Whitby.
Therefore, after much cogitation, we needed to make our growing family needs marry up with the guesthouse needs so we can still live on the premises.
We looked at using the breakfast rooms for ourselves and doing ‘no breakfast’ – shock horror!
Yet we know that so many of our guests love our breakfasts and it is one of the reasons they return to us for repeat stays, for which we are very grateful.
We are also realising that more and more guesthouses are not doing breakfast so we want to still be able to offer that ‘in spades’ so to speak.
So, our plans include one breakfast dining room for our family space and keeping the other breakfast dining room for our guests.
Our Positive Plans
This plan has two positives.
We get some more family space and our guests can then have a choice of two sittings, an earlier and a later, which has been a popular request on our feedback forms.
We love constructive feedback, and we always try to action feedback whenever we can.
This means we will be losing one guest room on the 1st floor as we are moving the catering kitchen upstairs to 1st floor in this room.
The ensuite is becoming our laundry room where we wash everything and Zed irons all the bedding.
We initially planned to have a dumbwaiter to transport the freshly cooked food.
However this has been decided against due to a safety aspect; we weren’t hugely happy with it, so we are using our legs like many restaurants do.
We only have 14 room breakfasts to serve breakfast too, so we decided it would be more than doable.
We’ll all get our steps in before lunch, a healthy workout in the morning!
A really exciting aspect is we are looking to reopen the old existing fireplace for our family to use.
The fireplace has been covered up since we have been there, so this will be a really welcome addition to our family living space.
Guest Dining Room
We have made good progress on the Guest Dining Room: we’ve knocked into the chimney stack to make a little coffee station which we’re very excited about.
I’m just sourcing a coffee machine so guests can have an array of coffee and tea choices.
We have panelled around the room as we want to keep a traditional theme.
We are doing navy and brass as the colour scheme.
It has now been painted with navy panelling and off-white walls so it looks very chic yet timeless.
I’m also sourcing a very large photo of Whitby which we want to put on the wall opposite the bay window to reflect the sea views we are so blessed to have.
We have got our dining room furniture from Wren.
We’ll have a tiered island in the centre of the room with a gorgeous granite worktop which I am going to match the dining tables with.
I am currently sourcing traditional black table bases to go with the granite tops.
Lighting the Way
I’m very excited about the lighting, which is one of the best ‘bits’ of renovating and decorating.
Since we are a north facing Guesthouse (with the North Sea out in front of us, and the harbour piers facing north), we don’t get much light in the front.
So I’ve always felt it’s a little dark; so, we’ve gone for bright lighting on a dimmer switch so we can get the lighting mood we want, whenever we want.
I’m just on the exciting job of working out how we display our delicious cereals, bread, jams, juices, milk, and fruit, ready for guests when we’re open once more.
The Next Step
As anyone will testify, renovations are always hard work, particularly when you live amongst it.
We’ve worked as a team and so far, we haven’t filed for divorce!
We have included photos of the works that we’ve done so far.
Once we are ready to do so, we’ll write another blog and include some tantalising ‘after’ photos.
We will reopen Friday 4th April 2025, so make sure you book soon.
This date is also before the main Easter break so it’s a good time to enjoy all that Whitby has to offer.
