Return to story

Running bed-and-breakfast keeps men happy but working harder than they ever have before

July 17, 2005 1:06 am

By KRISTIN DAVIS

ENDI MILLER spent last Saturday loung- ing on the porches of ColumnWood Bed & Breakfast with a book while bees danced in the flowers.

Inside, innkeepers Patrick DeCrane and Michael Thomas replaced towels and tidied rooms, answered calls and poured over record books.

In a kitchen closed to guests, DeCrane drafted the next day's breakfast menu, then began preparations for Sunday afternoon tea. In the dining room, Thomas replaced linens and reset the table with china and crystal.

When Wendi Miller's husband, Shawn, returned from a day of traipsing through Fredericksburg's battlefields, they settled into a comfortable room with fresh flowers and a glistening pitcher of ice. The couple came to the Bowling Green bed-and-breakfast from Pennsylvania for their 13th wedding anniversary.

DeCrane and Thomas, who rose before the sun came up, worked late into the evening.

Guests are often unaware of the long, sometimes hectic, schedules of innkeepers, they said. And that's the beauty of it.

"A good innkeeper makes it look easy," said Anne Bolin, who opened The Bell House Bed and Breakfast in Colonial Beach five years ago. "If things go smoothly and everyone's having a good time, it's because it looks work free."

More and more people are choosing to stay at B&Bs, according to the Professional Association of Innkeepers International. Twenty thousand inns serve more than 55 million guests a year.

Travelers chose them for the atmosphere, the intimacy and the personal attention.

Innkeeping seems like an attractive venture to a lot of people, Thomas said. And it can be. There's the decorating, the cooking and the entertaining.

Bolin, who runs the four-bedroom, four-bath B&B on the Potomac River without any outside help, says her guests are the best part of the job.

"I learn about all kinds of people from everywhere," she said.

DeCrane and Thomas also enjoy the company of others. They serve newlyweds and wedding parties, history hunters and snowbirds on the way to Florida. Sometimes, they host a house full of guests who've come to town for a funeral. All these people are interesting, the pair said.

But there's a less glamorous side to innkeeping. Like cleaning a very large house two or three times a week, checking e-mail and paying the utilities, and keeping the record books up-to-date. There are weeks when guests check in late and things break and the phone keeps ringing.

"It's more than any 40-hour-a-week job I've had," DeCrane said. "You're never really away from the office."

This is ColumnWood's busiest month. And this July will be especially busy, when the Boy Scout Jamboree comes to Fort A.P. Hill next week. The B&B will stay booked for two full weeks.

Innkeepers who don't pace themselves or take regular vacations can burn out. The average turnaround at bed-and-breakfasts is three to six years, DeCrane said.

"Innkeepers are really tied to their business," said Marti Mayne, spokesperson for bedand breakfast.com, an online database of B&Bs. "Sometimes it's tough to have a life outside of the inn."

And folks don't necessarily get rich off innkeeping, Mayne added. Many times, one person works outside the bed-and-breakfast.

These things came as no surprise to DeCrane and Thomas, who had always wanted to open an inn--and did their homework.

DeCrane is retired from the military, and Thomas continues to work full time in Washington. When the pair, in their 50s, discovered the 90-year-old home with wide halls and spacious rooms for sale in downtown Bowling Green five years ago, they knew it would make an ideal B&B. They decorated with dark walls and rugs and period antiques.

Sunday morning started early.

By 6:30, DeCrane stood at the kitchen sink in a blue-striped apron washing fruit. He made scones the day before, from scratch, and layered the egg-and-bacon casserole that he'll pop in the oven 30 minutes before breakfast.

While DeCrane shredded three baking potatoes into hash browns ready for frying, Thomas arranged fresh-cut flowers and air ferns on antique platters.

"They're fine touches people may or may not notice at first, but you know that they appreciate them," DeCrane said.

Upstairs, guests slept.

The pair thought about the hectic day ahead. Two guests left just after sunrise, and four more will check out after breakfast.

Twelve people are planned for afternoon tea, which the innkeepers occasionally host. Today's menu: chicken-cashew, pecan-cheddar, and goat-cheese-and- cucumber sandwiches. There's fruit, ham and Swiss salad, orange chiffon cake, pecan tarts and more.

DeCrane spent the better part of Saturday preparing these items from scratch.

Everything at ColumnWood is homemade--including the complimentary cookies in the guest kitchen.

Just before 9 a.m., Wendi and Shawn Miller made their way downstairs and into one of the parlors.

"Ya'll ready to eat?" DeCrane called.

"We're ready."

Thomas took a seat at one end of the table, DeCrane at the other--the innkeepers often eat breakfast with their guests.

Over the meal, they learned that Shawn Miller has a teaching degree but ran a gas station instead, then became a dry cleaner. Wendi Miller, also a teacher, will be a reading specialist when school starts again. Then the conversation turned to Hurricane Isabel and the tornadoes that tore through the area last summer.

Later, Thomas will change sheets and clean bathrooms, vacuum and iron linens. DeCrane will scurry to finish tea sandwiches as four more people call to make reservations.

But it's these breakfasts with interesting strangers, and newfound friends that return year after year, that make it all worthwhile.

To reach KRISTIN DAVIS: 540/368-5028kdavis@freelancestar.com