A Holiday of Romantic Lights!

[Published by Sally in our old blog 12/03/11]

Winter Wedding in the Chapel of our newly renovated 1873 Carriage House



As couples ask and answer "will you marry me?" during this magical season, we are ready for all of the lovely weddings that will follow.

The Great Room in our newly restored 1873 Carriage House is softly lit with crystal chandeliers that shimmer in many colors. Couples might want an indoor wedding site for cooler months or in case of a surprise rain. We lovingly call the Great Room our “wet weather insurance policy.” It joins the Waterfall Garden and the Woodland Garden to complete our choices for wedding sites.

When a couple books a wedding here, they may choose one of our ceremony sites right away, but the choice of location always remains open until the morning of the wedding. The bride may awake, walk the gardens and peek into the Great Room, then choose the place that her heart tells her is right.
We smile when couples request a day with snow, but Colorado weather may surprise you with sunshine in mid-winter. Whatever the weather may be, we are ready!!

Our 1873 Carriage House, Good for Another 150 Years!

[This is a post Sally made on our old blogsite 12/03/11]

For those of you who watched our 1873 Carriage House being restored over the last two years, we *finally* finished it. Yahoo!

What originally started as a $500 interior paint job quickly grew to a complete rebuild. After popping off the old den panelling that had been used in an "improvement" in the late 1970's, we were surprised to find hay in the wall cavities. Mucking out the barn was a funny way to start the construction project. ... and no, we didn't find any ponies. We didn't find the walls' bottom plates, either, so we lifted the structure on posts and car jacks, and built a new foundation for the ancient structure.

However, we found lots of messages that had been left in those old walls. Someone celebrating a holiday in years gone by had written, "HAPPY NEW YEAR 1900!" The main carriage house was built in 1873 at the same time as the original Briarhurst, the home of the founder of Manitou, Dr. William Bell. The date of the lean-to additon was always a mystery, but it was solved when we had to repair a wall. Workers had written the 1917 date of their work on a board as well as their names and daily rate of pay. Several other interior boards had been used to test ancient paint colors. We are quite relieved that pale pink, the color on an old board, was *not* used to paint the carriage house.  We found that the most satisfactory color for our new exterior paint job was a lovely reddish sandstone color that we call Garden of the Gods Camo.

Tomorrow, Dec. 4th, our inn will be on the Old Colorado City Historical Society's B & B Tour, a fund raiser for their History Center. We are proud to have the oldest structure on the tour. Come visit!