28-11-2020
For a while now, we have been thinking about how to communicate that we are working really hard to complete our hotel and what an unbelievable effort it is demanding from us all, but also how wonderful it will be, not only to come and look at design, art, antiques, the workshop, to eat and drink but also to sleep.
I started writing around ten years ago. It began with the purchase and renovation of our premises in Eindhoven, a process that was almost the end of us. I wrote an almost thriller-like column for Eigen Huis en Interieur every month and, to avoid having to explain things over and over again, we made a little newspaper about what it would become.
You could say that people learn from the past. Surely you wouldn’t get caught up in such a complicated construction process a second time? Well, this is exactly what happened to us. Or rather, to me, as I was the one making all the plans. When we purchased the premises ten years ago, everything turned out fine and the fact that we were taking such a big step was what made it so exciting. Everything was now bigger and more.
In the years preceding the hotel build, we struggled with organising the manufacturing process properly and keeping everyone working. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, so this is a very different situation than before. It is like we are playing on different chess boards simultaneously; on the one hand we want to keep the guys in the workshop working properly, and on the other hand we want to complete the hotel as quickly as possible. The lift has thrown a spanner in the works, as corona issues mean that it can only be installed from 14 December so the hotel will only be able to open sometime in January. For the first time in a long while, there is now a positive feeling in the workshop, and it seems as if work is being carried out efficiently.
The feeling that we are making something really beautiful and impossible, and the fact that there are very few people who know about it is reason enough to write about it. The aim is to get the hotel off to a flying start once it opens, because the amount of enthusiasm is far greater than the number of rooms we have available.
On the floor above the lobby and reception, the hotel will have a classic floor with a long corridor and thirteen rooms on either side. And coincidence or not? Number thirteen, in the far righthand corner is the first room to be just about completed. It will be the Marc Mulders room; each room will have its own artist. The hotel rooms will have a bathroom with bath and the fronts of the pantries will be clad with scrap wood tiles. Super luxurious, but above all really beautiful!
Room 13 is the first room, so of course all kinds of things went wrong. But that would have also been the case if it had had any other random number. So, it really is just a coincidence that room 13 was the first!
This post is also available in: NL
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