Our New Sign

Its official! The sign is now painted and back to the style and colors from the 1960’s. We’ve been anxiously waiting to tackle this project since we aquired the motel in July of last year. It looks beautiful. Now the only thing left to do is outfit it with the LED Neon lights…

The Benches

Someone close to me said we are going a little overboard with the Desert Air sign logo. I just stared back confused, that’s just ludicrous! Ok, so we might be getting a little carried away with Joe’s CNC metal cutting tool, but what the heck, its fun and the results are awesome…

The Desert Air Motel Guest Book

A lot of folks that stay at the motel ask us what is there to do in Sanderson. When we tell them the brief history of the town, things to do, and some of the sites to see, it helps our guest gain an appreciation of the area…

This Old Art…

When we took over ownership of the motel last year, I remember our first impression of the rooms was that they were cute, but needed to be updated. The decorations in the room were relatively sparse, the primary art work were all these unique wood wall pieces. We thought they were nice, but didn’t fully appreciate them for what they were…

The Room Renovations Continue - Part 4

We officially tiled the last room last week. No more carpet! This is a pic of the last room before the carpet was pulled out…

Check out these Brackets!

As part of the Double Rooms renovations we are installing countertops in these rooms. One of the intended results being to open up the area as you walk into these rooms and make them more spacious…

The Room Renovations Continue - Part 3

We are making great headway on the renovations. Thanks to the help of Curtis and his daughter Kelly (two locals with a talent for construction), we are down to only 3 rooms left to tile. Towards the end of the month all the rooms will have tile, and of the 16 rooms, 8 of them will be freshly painted, have new base boards, and new drapes. We’ll tackle the painting of the other rooms in the following weeks. …

The Room Renovations Continue

This week we gave Room 117 a facelift! This is the first guest room to get the living area completely redone. We wanted to make sure we were happy with our selections before ordering in bulk the materials for the other 15 rooms (headboard, baseboard, paint color, curtains, etc)…

The Room Renovations Begin!

We’ve got big plans with the room renovations, but as with everything we have to bite it off is pieces we can manage. The first step is to get the carpet out of the rooms and replace it with wood plank tile. We’ve completed 3 rooms, only 13 more to go!

Come, Sit, Stay Awhile

Friends, our courtyard is looking so inviting!  When we came up to Sanderson to visit the motel back in May, we all saw the potential of the courtyard area in the middle of the parking lot.  All rooms face the area and it seemed the perfect template for creating a community space for guests to relax…

An Evolving Motel Office

When we took over the motel in July we were taking over an operational establishment with clean rooms and and an inviting exterior courtyard.  Most of our projects (except the deep cleaning Kalea has been killing!) have been about adding a fresh coat of paint here or new seating there…

Testimonials of Our Own

It sure has been a whirlwind of a summer.  We took over ownership just two months ago exactly and so much has been accomplished already.  Turning this place back into its *new* vintage form will be a long process, but the place looks better every week…

Friends lend a hand and Tabb shares his thoughts about it

Last month we had the priveledge of welcoming a couple of friends to help in our motel endeavors.  Ava came up from Austin with great enthusiasm to be a part of this motel revamping experience.  She was a huge help with painting.  Joe's friend Tabb traveled all the way from Virginia to help us run the motel for a couple weeks….

The Breezeway

The area between the motel apartment and the first guest room was originally open and not connected.  In recent years, a roof was installed connecting the two structures and walls put up to make it into a storage area.  The problem with too much storage is you tend to fill it up.  Plus, this eliminated a lot of natural light for the apartment bedrooms…

Adding some shaded areas….

We love spending time outside, and we want to provide some additional areas for our guests to hang out comfortably and be protected from the sun.  The current shade structure has one table that is frequently used, but it's not quite enough space.  Our first project will be to add an arbor in the center grassy area in front of the motel rooms.  The arbor will provide shade for a set of swings and some seating…