#buisiness

-Ky

@otherworld-stories

Toulouse Airport

Step 1. Restoration of an old house.

This is a continuation of a previous post "From Baku to Kish - moving from capital to a village"

It took my mother almost two years to settle in the village before she could finally focus on searching and buying a proper house that would be turned into a mini-hotel. Before that, she had to build an own house first. Maybe I would cover it later in the future..

On the presented above pictures you can see the process of the total restoration of a house in the heart of ancient Kiş village, Azerbaijan. Different parts of the house were built in the different times. As hard as it might seem to believe, the front side of the house was constructed around 1870s (it suffered from bad redesigned later), and the back side (on the right pic) decades earlier.

The relatives of the house owner told that initially the house was owned by two tall brothers who were runnig a small silk buisiness.

"The master makes embroidery on silk fabric. Şəki 1917"

For centuries the nearby town of Şəki used to be one of the tradepoints on a Great Silk road, so the whole region was producing silk and silk-made products. Those two brothers produced silk fabrics, and due to precautions they had secret wayouts in case of local qoçular (gangsters) would try to raid the area. After they both passed away, the house, as well big yard was divided between their respective families, so the house that we bought today, is much smaller from its original size. Nethertheless, it attracted our attention by its perfect location and remaining old deseign features.

During the restoration works, our main objective was preserving and bringing back old details of the exterior, but making the interior modern for a comfortable stay.

We have correctected the roof inclination, updated the metal coverage, and added the original roof tiles, which were previously taken off by the former owner. We have also preserved the original window frames and painted them in light blue.

Might be also hard to believe, but under the house (was a small cellar). As can be seen on the right photo bellow, we have made it bigger, and even served us as a cozy winter kitchen.

The works that started at the end of the last year were going non-stop up until April 2023 when we finally were able to open the place for the visitors. Despite all dificulties, we felt satisfied, as we were providing local workers with work in the jobless period of the year - Winter (as locals don't even paint the walls during that time). Not to mention our further comitment to promote local culture, art and history within our new boutique hotel. My mom is also collecting local hand-made carpets and fabrics to present them in the room units and in our cozy cafe, which is located at the back side of the building.

Additionally I would like to highlight, that wooden sinks, mirrow frames and cafe tables were made by the hands of the local craftsman.

There is a big way to go, as we have plans for futher development, but for now, we are focused on making the place profitable, so we would be able to complete the full project. The rooms are available for reservation on different platforms, such as Booking.com

It turns out the original source is insanely hard to find, because the thing I originally found it from

x(source for this specific one)

Has been circulated around so many times that there are stickers, redraws, tshirts, and a lot lot lot more