To date

Work to date (apart from learning how to operate a bar, wrestle with payroll, incompetent utility companies and people trying to sell cheap telephone services) has
consisted of...

Fruiting bodies R us! Yes, one of the first things we discovered was a crop of dry rot fungi in the old tack room under the dining room. This led to the discovery of a small but perfectly formed fruiting body peeping out from the dining room wall. The slight saving grace was that it was an outside wall, so the outbreak was pretty much confined to that room. The outbreak has been treated and reinstatement continues

Money down the drain - The next work to be tackled was the replacement of the main drain along the passage at the back of the building. That's just been finished and a new drain is to be laid along the kitchen corridor next week to allow us to relocate the sinks

...and up the chimney
We had four chimneys lined to allow us to use living flame gas fires in the lounge bar, the residents' lounge, the function room and the dining room. The lounge bar and function rooms have fireplaces, but the dining room and residents' lounge don't

Dumb and dumber - We opened up the old mechanical dumbwaiter which was last used about 10 years ago. The braking mechanism had stuck, but after emptying half a can of WD40 into it it came to life and is now in use transporting stuff between the kitchen and the old still room above. Built by John Brydon of Edinburgh according to the maker's plate, but no date.

A bit of background

Licencing was introduced in Scotland in 1603 as a reaction to overcharging by inns and hotels. Among the first applicants were the Kings House Hotel in Glencoe and The Spread Eagle Hotel in Jedburgh. The Spread Eagle has held a licence ever since.

Fast forward four hundred and one years and you find us as the new owners of "the Spread" as the locals call it. The hotel has been severely underinvested for many years and there's a lot of work needing done.

So this blog will describe what's going on. We've been here four months, so some of the work has already been started. I'll try to post fairly regularly, but apologies in advance for any gaps.
John & Lorna