As homeowners in Sapphire, North Carolina, we face a unique set of issues that we need to overcome while having a home in the mountains. This is not unique to Western North Carolina, but in any destination that is farther from a major metropolitan. While we made the conscious choice to purchase property “off the beaten path,” getting things done here in the Sapphire, North Carolina has it’s own set of unique challenges.

A growing amount of people now live, work and play here. Our kids go to school here. We shop local and eat local. As transplanted “locals,” we have conversations over dinner, at Bucks Coffee, while our kids are playing, when we are at the Community Center working out… and many of them revolve around a the same topics.

Ask yourself: What if the labor pool couldn’t afford to live in our communities any longer.

Maybe if we (you and I) looked at the community as a place we want to “invest in” we would be more selective on who we hire, where they are from and what impact it would have on the community at large. We would not simply choose the painter that drives his old beat up truck from Franklin because he gave us the lowest price. We would think twice before hiring the kid from Florida that comes up with his girlfriend when she takes care of the neighbors horses because he is cheep.

Actually this question on labor shortages and the value of establishing quality relationships with vendors is something we should have been asking ourselves already. It’s nice that workers and service providers are willing to drive from Brevard, NC., Sylva, NC., Ashville, NC., Clayton, GA., or Franklin, NC., but there are “Hidden Costs” that we should all consider.

Here is our two cents.

As we continue to do quality work, we are going to get introduced to more and more friends of our current trusted clients here in the Sapphire Valley community. Word of mouth advertising is important to any company, especially a service provider like CabinCare. While we have chosen to stay “local,” will have made the commitment to offer referral based services in our neighboring communities of Cashiers, Glenville, Lake Toxaway, and Highlands. We have chosen to take this path to help you as a current customer (or soon to be current customer) and us as a local provider of service. The goal with limiting our services is to focus on one of our core business goals; to work with people we like and trust locally. We don’t feel that entertaining jobs that we can not personally manage, drive by to “check in on” or be able to service immediately give us the “value added” service goal we desire. In our opinion, our time should be used effectively, and that just can not be done driving through the mountains unpaid to get to the next property.

The way we see it, to travel outside our immediate surrounding communities is a waste of our time and yours. We don’t feel it is advantageous to service an area that is not a “reasonable” drive from door to door, without charging for travel time or increasing our hourly rate, hiding the travel costs. To keep our services reasonably priced and lightning fast, we want to focus on our community.

We hope you see the value in our position and working with us here locally. To get started, send us a message by clicking this link.

Like you, I would like the home remodeling projects in my home or the work done on my property – done by qualified members of our community. It goes without saying, it has to be done right. These type of home remodeling projects are not (traditionally) something that can be done by a Property Manager or Handyman. Not only do I want quality craftsmanship, I really appreciate the attention to detail and skill when I see it. There is nothing more internally satisfying than seeing an skilled craftsman’s work…maybe with the exception of personally knowing that craftsman.

A fireplace mantle that makes a house a home, beautifully done stonework on a hearth, wood floors so artistically laid that you can’t seem to move your eyes up to the art adorning the walls, or how a landscape artist’s can take diverse plantings in little plastic buckets and make an area come alive with color and texture…turning it into a real Mountain Eden.

VISITING THE NEIGHBORS

Have you even been invited over to the home of a neighbors and notice they got some work done since the last time you were over? As soon as you mention it they come alive with excitement and offer to give you “the tour” to show you what they just had done? There is no doubt that you can not only see their excitement as they point at this and comment at that, but you can hear the pride they have, not only in the work that was completed, but the decisions they made during the process.

Did you feel that way after your last home remodeling projects?

If you did, you know first hand the amount of time it took – to not only work out all the details before calling around to find the right craftsman to complete your vision – but once you did, the amount of details that it required to make the project into a reality.

As you came to realize working on this larger project, a craftsman is a worker skilled in a craft. It took this craftsman many years to gain the experience to hone the skill of his or her craft.  If you are anything like me, you dug a little deeper into the skills required to do what this person does. For those of you who have not taken the time do a deeper dive, allow me to provide a snippet of info..

When a craftsman is new to his or her field, he or she often works under the supervision of a Master Craftsman. Such a person is known as an Apprentice.

As you know from being on the planet for more than 18 year, Craftsman and quality Tradesmen are a dying breed. With new technological technological developments, most crafts are dying in many (if not most  industries), replacing Craftsmen with machinery. These machines are able to produce items, even intricate items, in volume never before seen in history. That’s great isn’t it? We can just sign on and order what we need from a picture… a few days later the truck pulls up and delivers it to our door.

PUTTING TOGETHER THE PIECES

What we have now requires us to consider more variables. We have to be able to put the pieces of the puzzle together in a way that a few decades ago was handled with one call or within a single contractual agreement. Managing your second home is not easy, I know from personal experience. Getting small home remodeling projects done is difficult, especially if we don’t have the time or can only be “on-site” a few times a year.

What I have found, is many of my neighbors don’t live here full-time. Not because they don’t want to, but because they either bought the property as a weekend retreat or an investment property. Because of this they have limited time to manage a project, wait for a vendor or do things here at their mountain cabin… especially if they are only up for an extended weekend and they want to take advantage of the area and relax. What happens traditionally is the little projects build up, get backed up or like the larger projects… just don’t get done at all.

If you are thinking about working on a project, large or small, and would like someone to assist you, let us know. We can work with a Craftsman you have already selected or we can help you find local Craftsmen and do the pre-qualification work for you. More importantly, we can be your eyes and ears as the project moves forward.

Not only are we local full time residence, but we understand the complexities you are facing first hand and would be a good steward of your time, property and financial investment. If you would like to discuss your needs, click here.

Let CabinCare, Even When You’re Not There!

It’s that time of year again friends and neighbors… for Groovin’ On the Green! The sounds of live music will be echoing off the mountain sides, while we watch the sky, clouds and mountains change and morph providing the most majestic art available.  We will be meeting at The Village Green in Cashiers, NC. to watch this years musical line up so please join our growing concert group.

As customary, the entertainment will be starting at 6:30pm.

Concert goers will get to watch live performances from the beautiful “green” part of the venue, copping a squat with lawn seating on a first come, first served basis. As we tell our family and friends who join us, bring you most comfortable lawn chairs, pack up the picnic basket, fill portable coolers with whatever you heart desires, throw in the wine glass holders (the ones that stick into the ground so you don’t spill your Sauvignon blanc), pre-order you pizza’s, pick up you Ingles Deli sandwiches and join us for another season of Groovin’ On the Green.

This year kicks off on Saturday, may 25th 2019 with the infamous Hurricane Creek! If you can’t make it, please take a look at the Groovin’ On the Green and The Village Green concert events line up here.

DIRECTIONS:

If you are new to the CabinCareWNC family, click here to get to know a little something about us! We look forward to meeting you and getting to know more about why you love it here on the Cashiers-Highlands Plateau!

Your Complete Guide to Pricing Vacation Rental Cleaning Services

Owners often struggle with setting a price on vacation rental cleaning. It’s not hard to see why – if you take a look at to top two Vacation Rental sites (AirBnB, HomeAway, FlipKey, Tripping, HomeToGo, VRBO, HouseTrip, VayStays, VacayHero and WimDo ) and you’ll see the fees for cleaning a vacation rental can vary from as little as $25 per booking to $200 per booking.

This price can also vary widely depending on location. The price depends on demand, the quality of clean required by the property’s owners (and expectations of the guests), and the cost of living in a given geographical area.
Another problem with focusing in a cost for the service: vacation rental cleaning takes more time than cleaning a residential home. Cleaning services for Vacation Rentals are often asked to take on additional tasks not traditionally found in a general Residential cleaning request: launder linens, create beautiful staging, and restock amenities for example. This additional focus for your Vacation Rental business increases the time required for the services to be done to your exacting specifications.

All these factors can make it nearly impossible for a cleaning service to assess the time and effort it will take for that reason, we put together this helpful guide to assist you in figuring out the going rate in your area – no matter where you are.

First things first.

It’s time to roll up your sleeves and do some sleuthing. The most commonly cited place to check fees for vacation rental cleaning is on listing sites like VRBO and Airbnb. This makes it difficult to determine how to price YOUR property.

The numbers being shown consistently show a range too wide to be useful. Here’s a spread of fees on the Highlands-Cashiers Plateau, for similarly-sized properties: Cleaning fee priced between $75-$175 per stay.
With rates ranging from $75-$175, it’s quite difficult task to determine a reasonable hourly rate from those numbers.
Something to consider here is that the cost that you are asking your guest to pay are the numbers that owners or property managers, and they often have a little or no padding built in to cover the cost of replacement amenities or small repairs. This is one of the reasons we suggest running your Vacation Rental property like a business.

For example, if a cleaning service charges $30/hour, and cleaning a 3-bedroom property takes about 4 hours, the cleaning service will charge the property manager $120.

The property manager, in turn, might charge the owner $150 to cover the cost of keeping the cleaning calendar and finding an available cleaning service for each job.

And the owner might then ALSO decide to set the vacation rental-cleaning fee on Airbnb or VRBO at $150. This builds in a little extra money that can go toward the cost of bathroom amenities and kitchen staples – or replacing the odd broken glass or missing fork.

How should newcomers to the Vacation Rentals set pricing?

Ask Property Managers.

Most property managers are happy to share this information. Explain that you’re new to offering your property for Vacation Rental and one of the cleaning services you spoke to quoted you a $150 flat rate to clean a 3-bed, 2 bath property.

Whatever their reaction, you now know if your initial assessment or the bids you have been receiving is accurate, too high, or too low. Remember, this is just an assessment. Each service will, or should, have an itemized checklist of what is included in the service. Depending on your specific needs, this could change this pricing from one provider to the next.

You can also call and ask cleaning services for quotes.

Be sure to get a range of prices for your specific property type. In full disclosure, most professional services will want to see the property before giving a specific quote. If you have the time, that is advisable. At CabinCare, we offer a complementary estimate, but we also give ballpark estimates based on the property size. With that said, there are details that you might want while we are on-site that will assist you in staging the property. Everything will depend on the level of service you desire.

Be sure to specify you are inquiring about the cost of a vacation rental cleaning, rather than the price to clean a residential home. You should also ask if this business has serviced short-term rentals in the past. If that business has no experience with vacation rental cleaning, their quote may not be accurate, as they may not be aware of the extra time and services needed for this type of clean.

Hourly or flat rate?

While CabinCare works on a flat rate for services of this nature, usually a Vacation Rental Cleaning partner will offer (or should offer) their price structure based on a flat rate charge per booking. A flat rate is a more advantageous agreement, as the owner of the property will have a better approximation of what the service will cost and will be able to charge a slightly higher rate for the service to the guest. This will allow a buffer that can be kept in a property “slush fund” for when something unanticipated comes up… as it always does.

Remember that some booking will leave the property in such a messy condition that extra time from the Cleaning service might be required. This extra cleaning isn’t a cost you as the owner should bear. Guests who leave an uncommon mess at a property should be charged for the additional hours of labor required to clean it. With that said, it is difficult, if not impossible, to recoup these costs from the guest. The occasional extra costs of cleaning are a part of running a short-term rental business.

In either case, the cleaning service should always be paid for the additional hours worked.

If a property has been thoroughly trashed, a good cleaning service should be provided you with digital photos as evidence of the property’s state upon a guest departure. With these photos the Cleaning Service can provide an estimate of the additional time that may be required to bring the property back to a guest-ready state.

When we travel, we use AirBnB & found it a wonderful experience and a great way to submerge into the local culture in a way a traditional hotel can’t offer.  Over the past few years Vacation Rental Booking sites like AirBnB, HomeAway, FlipKey, Tripping, HomeToGo, VRBO, HouseTrip, VayStays, VacayHero and WimDo have grown in popularity and are fighting for top dog positioning. As a Property owner there are are few things that you need to consider, especially if you are going to be using a 3rd party service like CabinCareWNC.com to help you managing the process.

With that said, each property / location has it’s own difficulties. Allow me to give a little of what I know as it pertains to these services & residing here locally.

RESIDENTIAL CLEANING

We hope that a guest in our homes will take the same type of care we would. Wipe water when it gets on the floor, don’t steal the Buck’s coffee mug or the Ugly Dog Pub Glass (it’s called the Ugly Puppy here in Cashiers), don’t leave trash exposed to attract bears, if something breaks tell us, etc. The reality is, we need to be vigilant & treat this as a business transaction.

Residential Cleaning for Vacation Rental Bookings is only one of the items you will need if you are renting our your property on a Vacation Rental Booking site. The good part is one of the line item charges passed on to the renter covers cleaning per visit.  Now, let’s be honest, there are many homeowners that try to “make money” or save money not using this as a pass though expense, but they find (as I did) that the turn over is high, reliability is low, quality is poor and in the long run I was spending more in money and time.

Besides getting a cleaning service that will do on-call work when you have a booking departing and another schedule to arrive, a high importance needs to be places on the quality of the work being provided. A case in point was a recent conversation I had with someone in my local community. He and his wife have been renting out their mountain home through a service locally. He is being charged $150 per booking to cover the cost of cleaning and preparing the home for the next short term renter. He told me that there was a 12 day gap a few months back where the property was not rented. they decided to take the 9 hour drive to use the house themselves during this break and enjoy the local dining. When they arrived the house was not only dusty, but there was pet hair along the molding in the living room and the carpet was filled with dirt, dust and dog hair. It was obvious that the house was not done properly. He checked the external security cameras and saw that the “cleaning crew” sent as a part of the $150 contract was in his home a grand total of 19 minutes.

For any of you doing the calculation – that is $7.89 per minute.

INVENTORY MANAGEMENT

I have clients who asked us to design a itemized checklist list of every item in the house – broken down by room.  Each item is then cross-reference on every final review walk though when a short term rental departs. This small financial investment upfront, can save you a significant amount of time, money and effort later when you are looking for items you purchased for the house to make it a beautiful experience. Remember, these items are a cost and if you keep replacing them you are loosing profit. If you are going to do Vacation Rental Bookings, you might seriously consider treating your guests as a business transaction.

PROPERTY MAINTENANCE

The cleaning charge allowed through most of the Vacation Rental Booking sites sadly will not help compensate you for upkeep and property management required.  Truth be told – those tasks would be easy “for us to do ourselves” if we were living in a close proximity or renting the property while we were away – but still living at the property. Using an online Vacation Rental Booking service to book guests does take steps to assist you, including offering “best practice” suggestions, but we also need to have people we can trust locally to help with the things that we would have been doing ourselves.

If you need a plumber, a roofer, etc., your typical cleaning person cannot be expected to do that, nor should they. What that “team member” MUST do for you, is provide you with vital information important to your property.  We call it the “need to know” conversation. This is vital to you so the issue can be addressed & not get worse.We here at CabinCare WNC developed a checklists and very specific processes for each service we provide. What these checklists do is help our customers address issues and manage risk that someone working out of his or her vehicle cleaning could never provide.

My father was fond of saying, “look at it as a cost and not as an investment, and you will pay less for it now but really pay for it later.”

Again, I am not implying to spend wildly, don’t take cost into consideration, or do more than is reasonably expected to maintain the property for long term income generating viability.

WAIT SERVICES

One of the services we provide is called Wait Services. When the need comes up for you to get some large repairs done or something delivered when you are not here (especially if you are using Vacation Rental Bookings), we can help you manage the property and the vendor (or the full project for you locally), or you can manage it from your location.

I or one of my team will go to your property with the key (another service we offer for Free is called Key Holder Services) and connect with the vendor you have selected and help you oversee the project locally to make sure it is done correctly and as you requested.

If your need is something I or my team can do without the need of an outsourced team, like freshen up a bedroom with a coat paint, wash the towels, order new towels (or anything from Amazon), put in a new garage door opener, install a Nest Thermostat, put a new screen on the patio door, etc., we will give you an estimate for what you need done and handle it before your next guest arrives.

As you know, “cleaning services” is the generic title for what you are looking to get done to help you manage your Vacation Rental Bookings, but there is much more that you need to consider. You need someone you can rely on to be there when you need them, especially if something unplanned happens. Depending on your needs, we can do it all, from large to small. If you don’t have the time, we can even assist you with setting up the proper program for the Vacation Rental Booking business to be successful long-term if desired.

Let CabinCare, even when you’re not there!

I hope this overview helps. Happy Vacation Renting!

Hiring the right housekeeper through CabinCareWNC can be life-altering for a busy family like yours. It’s more than just tips for Cleaning with Hydrogen Peroxide. Think about your life where it is right now – whether single, a couple, retired or a family of any size. Maybe you struggle to fold laundry, clean ovens, get groceries, clean counter tops, or scrub bathrooms. Maybe you need to clean your house fast for a party, need help to scrub guest rooms, or are looking for a professional to help with general housekeeping tasks. The long and the short of this is simple, you have no time to keep your home as organized or clean as you would like. Do you feel like you can’t find the time to do the smaller tidying jobs that would make a huge difference?

Now this suggestion of life-altering may seem to be a little over-the-top for most, but I am serious.

It seems cliched to say it, but often we let things slip through the cracks. We spend too much time thinking about them, too much energy worrying about them. You deserve the support that CabinCareWNC provides, whether that’s a house cleaner or someone to get to the Honey Do list that continues to grow. The goal is to make your life easier. The fact is, you deserve professional house cleaning, or even the reliability of a dedicated housekeeper. Now to be realistic, all relationships whether working or personal, have a starting point, and with the right match, can grow into something much more. It is certainly so with a new housekeeper. You look for certain qualities in a person, offer them a job and hope that it was a good choice.

Here is the question that we would like to ask you:

“What is the one quality that you would have to have to see when hiring a new housekeeper?”

Before you answer, here are 10 clever uses for Hydrogen Peroxide… in the off chance that you are going to clean yourself!

When it’s time for us to clean our Cabin in the Mountain, we have our trusty green clean supplies ready – baking soda, vinegar and hydrogen peroxide. The little know truth is you can use Hydrogen Peroxide anywhere, and if your cost conscious like us… you can’t beat the price: A 16-oz. bottle only costs a buck or so.

Here are 10 ways you can use hydrogen peroxide in your home:

In Your Kitchen

1. Clean the cutting board! Hydrogen peroxide bubbles away any all that gunk left after preparing meat or fish for dinner. As you should know by now, the small cuts in the wood of a cutting board is an area to get clean. Let everything bubble for a few minutes, then scrub and rinse clean.

2. Inside your refrigerator & dishwasher. A non-toxic cleaner, hydrogen peroxide is great for cleaning places that store food and dishes.

3. Clean kitchen sponges. Soak them for 10 minutes in a 50/50 mixture of hydrogen peroxide and warm water in a shallow dish. Rinse the sponges thoroughly when done.

4. Remove baked-on crud from pots and pans. Combine hydrogen peroxide with enough baking soda to make a paste, then rub onto the dirty pan and let it sit for a while. Come back later with a scrubby sponge and some warm water, and the baked-on stains will lift right off.

In Your Bathroom

5. Whiten grout. If excess moisture has left your tub grout dingy, spray it down with hydrogen peroxide and let it sit. for a little for 15 to 20 minutes. Grab an old tooth brush scrub the grout. You may have to repeat the process a few times, depending on how much mildew you have.

6. The toilet bowl. Pour half a cup of hydrogen peroxide into the toilet bowl, let stand for 20 minutes, then scrub clean.

In The Laundry Room

7. Remove stains from clothing, curtains, and tablecloths. Hydrogen peroxide can be used as a pre treatment for stains — just soak the stain for a little while in 3% hydrogen peroxide before tossing into the laundry. You can also add a cup of peroxide to a regular load of whites to boost brightness. It’s a green alternative to bleach, and works just as well.

Other Places

8. Brighten floors. Combine half a cup of hydrogen peroxide with one gallon of hot water, then get down on your hands and knees and start focusing on the flooring. Because it’s mild, it’s safe for any floor type, and there’s no need to rinse.

9. Kids’ toys. Hydrogen peroxide is a safe cleaner to use around kids, or anyone with respiratory problems, because it’s not a lung irritant. Fill an opaque spray bottle with hydrogen peroxide and spray toys, toy boxes, doorknobs, and anything else your kids touch on a regular basis. You could also soak a rag in peroxide to make a wipe.

10. On plants. To ward off fungus, add a little hydrogen peroxide to your spray bottle the next time you’re spritzing plants. Use a 1/2 cup of hydrogen peroxide added to one gallon of water for your plants.

What does it mean when someone tells you that you are “covered?” In reality it could be a porch, a gazebo, a roof, a hat, financial backing, an insurance policy, an umbrella in the rain… the options are endless, especially without context. So what do we do in this age of technological advancements when there is a question without an answer? Look it up.

According to Merriam-Webster:

To have someone or something covered: to have done, gotten, or provided whatever is needed : take care of everything.

We have intentionally made the decision to focus our services on the area(s) closest to our home here in Sapphire, North Carolina. We believe that this type of focus will help us cover all of your needs, and help us achieve our goal of individual satisfaction, on an everyday basis, on every project we work on, and with every client who has provided us the opportunity to work with them on achieving their goals.

As my father told me many years ago, don’t expect to be able to be be all things to all people.

Over many decades in the corporate environment, something became more and more pronounced the older – uh, I mean more experienced – I became. If the business was going to be successful, “we” the representatives of the business needed to be intimately familiar with and completely understand what it is the client really needs, spoken or not.

As a leader in the organization what you need, should be the exact same thing that WE NEED or HAVE NEEDED. Let me attempt here to get away from the obvious and move into the more focused examples.

When we moved up to the area, we needed to find a few trustworthy sources that could help us out do things around our house while I was working and my daughter was at school. What we were looking for was craftsman who could do what was in our best interest, when we were not there “doing it” ourselves. While I have completed many of the smaller projects personally, I have also used support workers locally for some of the larger and more labor intensive projects like graveling the driveway.

While I will spare you the details of disappointment, let’s just agree that if you were to talk to your neighbors as we have, the outcomes were depressingly similar with vendors in the local area. In reality, craftsmen are not the same as they were ten or twenty years ago. I am in no way implying that there are not top rated craftsmen who can do the tasks with excellence, but the reality is they have become few and far between. Here locally, handling “smaller projects” is not something an artisan is willing to put in his or her schedule. The fact is, smaller projects with smaller budgets, are not worth their time.

If you want to find out more about how we operate or our beliefs, message us. We would appreciate the opportunity to discuss your needs and get to know you better. Much like you, we choose who we want to work with and it all starts with getting to know each other.

Until then.

I remember how easy it looked when my father did home repair and improvement projects. Remember dear reader that this was before the DYI (Do It Yourself) movement. We didn’t have the luxury in my house to watch it on HGTV. We were expected to be actively involved.

I was dipping the mops in the blacktop when he was blacktopping the driveway. It was made to look effortless when he put a cement parking pad on the side of the house, so mom could back out of the drive. I remember the unbelievable heat when helping bring the pink rolls of insulation up the attic stairs. Do you remember the Pink Panther commercial making it look so easy? I recall getting sunburned as we tore out and rebuilt the deck during my summer vacation Junior year of High School. I can still remember watching my dad as he managed a crew while building a cement bunker (OK, it was a garage…) in the side of the hill behind our house, so he could store his 32ft Chris-Craft boat out of the elements over a Wisconsin winter. Ah, those were the days.

“Dad, why don’t we just do it?”

Getting snapped out of deep thought is sometimes jarring. Here I was thinking about a time before my daughter was even born. “What do you think Dad?” she asked again. An honest question from a ten year old. “Hold the phone”, I told her. “I know it seems easy watching me do all the work around here, but sweetheart it’s a lot of work do do what I am doing in and around our own home… let alone someone else’s.” What she said next made me want to take on all those “smaller projects” each and every neighbor says that they are in need of getting done.

“Look at everything you have done here already… and how wonderful it looks now.”

Huh, it’s not close to her birthday or Christmas. Maybe she is buttering me up for some over priced video game, or technological do-dad. Or maybe she sees what I was missing. Maybe in my haste to come to a conclusion about how to handle the next project here at the CabinCare Cabin, maybe I have become a little cynical, I got tired of people not showing up, not doing a quality job, leaving a job site (my property…) a mess, showing up late, leaving early, being on their phone more than they were working?

Maybe there are other people that are having the same difficulties and want someone reliable to handle the small stuff for them? If you are like me and want even the smallest projects done with excellence, contact me by clicking here and let’s talk about the project you have in mind.

Large or small, CabinCare can help with it all.

While preparing to start the CabinCare WNC blog, we though it only appropriate to start with a what you should expect as a reader, potentially as a customer, definitely as a vendor, and without question as someone interested in joining our team.

Let’s focus on first things first… what you should know about working with us.

We as a company, are not looking to “compete” with the undocumented workers behind the gas station, someone who will accept a minimum wage offer because they need to feed their kid (or their meth addition), actively choose to use substandard “products” to save money while increasing their profit, neglect to see the value in carrying the proper insurance coverage, don’t see the value to our community or our country in paying taxes for their “side hustle,” accept to exchange their time for “pittance,” because of the need to pay rent or engage in the popular pricing game of “a race to the bottom” that leads to cutting corners, subpar results, eventual resentment, and a guaranteed relationship termination.

So we are clear, if you want to find the cheapest, lowest dollar per hour human willing to work on whatever project you have or simply can’t do whatever it is for yourself, please consider using someone… other than us.

When you are not happy with the results or the services ended up being sub-par, it will just cost you more in time, money, effort and energy to repair it or do it correctly later when you are doing it again… and you will be doing it again.

Before you hire, think

Please, if you are going to bring non-residence working people into your home, onto your property or in our community – at the very least – conduct a criminal background check online just to make sure they are not currently wanted by the police or the FBI.

At MINIMUM make sure they have been arrested for theft, drug usage, narcotic distribution or are on some pedophile website. You are bringing potential problems into OUR community.

Maybe you are not a “full time” resident, maybe you are simply looking to save a little money on that Honey Do list, but this is still your community. I will bet you dollars to doughnuts, that its not the residence of this community that are throwing trash out the windows of the vehicles that are on the sides of our roads and within our communities.

We would hope that you would want to come up to the Mountain for a visit, and know that you, your family and your loved ones are safe and there is not a three time sex offender working next door because he was the lowest bid.

If that is the level of work you want or if that is who you would like working at or in your property, there is someone to is always willing to provide that level of service for you, and as sure as the sun coming up… it isn’t us. So do us all a favor, and don’t contact us or take us up on the FREE quote.

When you are ready, contact us and we can talk about a long term solution with someone you can trust.

If you are reading today’s post, most likely you have clicked a link… so thank you. Thank you for your interest in our company and your time getting to know what we stand for.. and what we won’t. The one major take away from my time in business is that time is the one thing that we can’t get more of, no matter how much we hope or how much we have to spend… so we truly appreciate allowing us some of yours.

When it comes to matters of the heart, we have all been advised at one time or another to take our time and be patient. Well, if previous dealings in the romantic arena are any clue to how things of an important nature should move forward, the same advice might also have value in a relationship where trust is required.  This level of trust includes relationships with someone who has been hired to come into your home or has been granted approval to access your property.

Trust is earned, not given.

If you are going to work with our team at CabinCareWNC, there are a few key things that are important to us. One of the most important is that we need to know each other on a deeper level. Deeper than your typical handy-man, paint vendor, cleaning service or any other type of on-call service. While having someone on-call (or on speed dial if they have been with you long enough), to “go fix” something at your home… especially your second home… nothing trumps having a trusted resource that can help you manage your time, your home and your property… in the way you would want it done, without doing it yourself.

To accomplish this level of trust, I am sure we would need to agree on a few key areas.

First, you will need to be able to get to know that person, I mean really know that person, if you are going to allow them the opportunity to earn your trust. To know how you want certain aspects of the request done within in your home (and outside for that matter), open and honest conversations are a must. Without these conversations, vendors may fail to meet your wants and needs, and we are not looking to be just another vendor. When the time is right, this earned trust will allow this “partner” to take the reins and do what needs to be done on your behalf. That is not as easy as it might seem simply reading it.

“The best way to know someone is to spend time getting to know them.”

I know this statement seems very basic, but is it? When my family used a “service provider” around our properties, we were always taught to go out of our way to try to have more in-depth one-on-one conversations and get to know who we were dealing with.

This kind of depth allowed us to get to know someone more intimately, how they operate, how they invoice, what we should expect, to make sure they were fully aware what we expected and to clarify what we should expect from them. While the wisdom was passed down multiple generations, the take away was more than just making sure a “vendor” knew what we wanted him or her to do. It goes much deeper.

This leads me to why you are here…

I would like you to consider allowing CabinCareWNC to work on your behalf.  We are aware that you have a list of people that you call for all those “little things” around your cabin. If they are good at what they do, we would like the ability to refer them for our requests as well. If you have someone you know, like and trust, tell us about them here. We also know (first hand) how much of your personal time it takes to manage multiple people and projects.

Living in the area we service, we understand the hassle of trying to get someone “local” to come out to your property to give you an estimate, show up for what you believed was a scheduled appointment, or to finish interior work while you are there… especially if you are only up for the weekend or a holiday to supervise. We know the frustration of trying to wrangle service providers, so much so if I told you our experience was like herding cats, you might tend to agree.

If you have lived here long enough then you may have come to realize that many of the top local service providers are so good – not only at doing the work, but managing their processes – that the ability to get those providers to work on the smaller projects that you need to be done (from $250 to $10,000), has become virtually impossible. The issues this causes homeowners like you and me, and the process of locating and retaining some to work “locally,” seemed not only inefficient but ineffective. If you are like most, good enough has become the norm. What it does accomplish could almost be considered theft.  It has stolen large chunks of your valuable time, stolen it away from the things you would rather be doing while you are here.

This leads me to why we are here…

We at CabinCareWNC would like to offer you a trustworthy solution locally. We want to earn your business. So much so we have designed this company to be more like a partner. In our opinion, not only have we lost the beauty and art of business to “box stores,” but we have by default trained the workforce to run the race to the bottom while engaging in pricing wars and putting integrity and professionalism last. More importantly, we are not teaching the future generations how to “properly” open, manage and operate and successful small business.

But there is another reason…

I am helping my 10-year-old daughter’s business idea.  If you don’t know the CabineCareWNC back story, you can read it here. Needless to say, when she expressed interest in opening a service company here in the Sapphire Valley, successful or not, I wanted to expose her to what the process was  to start a small business and what it would take to follow through on her idea.

Like any parent, I could not be more proud of the vision. It was her choice, after all, to find and purchase the rights to the Black Bear hugging the trees because she said the image expressed what we wanted people to know and the importance of keeping this area beautiful.  It is not a simple thing to open a business, and so she didn’t struggle, become frustrated (as we all have started a business) and eventually quit, I submitted my resume and fortunately was hired as her Operations Manager.  I say this tongue in cheek of course, but I wanted to make sure all the “T’s” were crossed and “I’s” were dotted.

I believe in her idea so much, that when she is working on a clients behalf on one of her services (Residential Cleaning, Pet Sitting, and House Sitting, I am right by her side making sure it is being done correctly and she is learning not only the how… but the why.

I also had the selfish desire to make sure that people like us (you and I), have access to quality sources to do work on our properties here in Sapphire.  It was my goal to build a list of people and local businesses that we can trust. I wanted to be a resource for people that are actually doing the work, so they could focus on doing what they were good at while allowing me to focus on my skills (marketing, customer service, and design). Most of all I saw a need for hardworking and dedicated people from within our local community, that could not only take care of the things that we needed to be done, large and small but would join us and continue to add value, work hard and improve the community – one property and one client at a time.

No matter you need, I would be honored to discuss it with you at no charge. Click here to send me a message.

Sincerely,

Chris Bauer

Operations Manager

CabinCareWNC, LLC.