February has been an exhausting month, but our guesthouse sure is looking cute as a button. The long wait for ‘phase 3’ renovation, and all the hard work, has proven to be worth the effort. After five weeks of extensive additional improvement work, I’m happy to report that Benton Guesthouse is once again welcoming guests! We’re ready for busy tourist season to begin.
Before we get into all the new photos, I’d like to briefly mention our current rating status:
On AirBnB, we’ve held our Superhost status from the very beginning. We were recently also awarded the ‘Gold Level’ Guest Favorite status as well, which means we are in the top 10% of homes! Currently, our AirBnB rating sits at 4.92 stars, which is pretty great for nearly 150 reviews.
We recently received our first Booking.com review award also. We received the annual Traveller Review Award, for consistently high guest ratings. Currently, our Booking.com rating sits at 9.7 stars, with 48 reviews.
Of course, our rating on Google Maps remains a full 5 stars! This is only possible with consistently happy guests leaving all 5-star reviews. We love to see all the photos guests share in their Google reviews!
Ok, now, on to the new and improved Benton Guesthouse:
⌄ The first room you see when you enter Benton Guesthouse is the spacious ‘doma’. I removed the small assortment of vintage items for sale, because we will soon have a full-size Retro Shop. We transformed this room into a helpful planning station for guests, complete with various Shimanami Kaido maps and resources. I’ve collected menus from neighborhood restaurants, flyers for local activities, to create my physical ‘guidebook’ that guests can flip through. Also, I made 10 onsen ‘grab and go’ bags for guests, to make their hot spring visit a little easier.
⌄ The kitchen received the most updates. As you can see in the photos, we now have a much bigger (and pink!) refrigerator, and a small secondhand microwave. The fridge is stocked with items guests can purchase, like local juice and iced coffee. Now the complimentary cooking essentials are easier to find in the cupboard, and the freezer is stocked with even more chilled beer mugs. The new big ticket item is the air conditioner and heater! Evan built some nice wooden countertops to extend the stainless steel counters on either side.
⌄ A few more new kitchen photos, because it’s just so pretty!
⌄ The bathroom and laundry room got a few upgrades as well. The bathtub needed some minor repair, once year since our major bathtub restoration project, so we gave it a fresh coat of enamel paint. I also added some more vintage items that guests can enjoy.
⌄ The rest of the guesthouse rooms didn’t have enough change to necessitate new photos. But, every nook and cranny, every corner, every single item in the house got moved, dusted, cleaned behind, or polished. I vacuumed the ceiling, y’all. We’ve always gotten high ratings for cleanliness, but this house is clean clean. We’re ready for a very busy tourist season!
⌄ Even the exterior of the house got a deep clean! Since we had so much construction goin on outside (more on that next), the house had collected a lot of construction dust. Now the windows, the eaves, and all the wood details, are sparkling clean. Evan built this nice new bike rack. Boy, those first rays of light at sunrise really hit the guesthouse just right! Golden glow.
⌄ Here’s a wide shot of the exterior. Notice the brand new roof on the garage! You may also notice the brand new and expanded driveway! Such a massive improvement that we’ve been anticipating for three years. That will be the main topic of our next blog and videos, as it was part of the small business subsidy projects, which were going on simultaneously to our own ‘phase 3’ renovation.
⌄ This first of two ‘phase 3’ renovation videos, covering all our DIY improvements:
⌄ This second of two ‘phase 3’ renovation videos, showing more of the finishing touches and little details:
Thanks for reading,
Dani & Evan Benton
