It started in Colorado. My boyfriend and I were on a chalet snowboarding holiday and having a day apart, with him cross country skiing whilst I was snowboarding. As I was sitting on a chair lift I suddenly thought “we could do this”; we could buy a chalet somewhere we could afford and run our own chalet company. Bizarrely, when I got back my boyfriend came rushing up to me saying “I’ve been thinking all day about us buying a house in Slovenia and turning it into a ski chalet” and so the die was cast.

It wasn’t Slovenia that we went to however, it was Slovakia. After a summer of researching the area on the internet we arrived in the Liptov valley September 06 and totally fell in love with it. The mountains were beautiful, the huge Liptov Mara lake offered all the water sports for summer, the town and roads were modern and clean, everything was beautiful. Having got to the town on Liptovsky Mikulas on the Monday, we looked at one house. It was exactly what we wanted. In walking distance to the town centre, affordable, big and perfectly laid out to turn into a B & B style ski chalet. We put down the deposit the next day. We managed to scrape the money together that we needed for the full amount, including the hefty £30 stamp duty, and two weeks later, on my 30th birthday, we had the keys.

Unfortunately, at this time Dan had developed a serious case of colitis and was struggling with his health. We returned to Slovakia in the gloom of November to find that actually, the house would really need a new roof in order for us to turn the huge attic into our living space as well as complete rewiring. We discovered other hurdles: no one spoke English, everything needed permission and builders were very keen to make as much money from us that they could.

The sensible thing to do would have been to spend the next few months working as hard as possible in England to save up some cash. Instead we decided to go to the Alps and work for another chalet company and promote our business, ChaletSlovakia for the next season.

We had managed to arrange for some building work to be done, but of course this didn’t happen whilst we were away from the country. When we arrived for good in April 07 it seemed like the task before us was endless. Neither of us had any building work experience or really knew what we were doing, let alone any experience running a business or if any guests would come. The house needed a new roof, electrics, 4 new bathrooms, including the actual walls, complete redecorating, including floors, lights, paint, furniture, absolutely everything. We had a very tight budget of £50,000 which would also have to include a brand new people transporter for the business and our general living expenses for the rest of the year.

We managed to find a builder whose wife spoke English and a new roof started to take shape. It was during this time that I told Dan about a further complication to our problems, that I was pregnant with the baby being due in December…

The next 6 months we worked non stop from 6 in the morning until 10 at night renovating the house. The stress was unbelievable. There seemed so much to do and weeks and months just weren’t enough time. Every job depended on another being complete. The builder came by every day for three months to say he would finish the plastering the next day. It never got done and in the end we did it ourselves.

By November we had two guests booked and the house still needed a lot of work. Upstairs didn’t even have a floor and it was critical to finish as the baby could come any day. But the baby’s due date came and went. I was 9 months pregnant and spending my time plastering the walls or holding great planks of wood which Dan was banging into the upstairs walls.

We took another booking and our first guests were due on the 27th December. Now we were panicking. Every English person we knew in the area was at our house helping us paint, make beds, anything.

On Christmas eve I went into labour, conveniently the only English speaking doctor had left the hospital the week before. I had a caesarean which meant I was kept in for a week, whilst my Mum and Dan were welcoming our first guests, who loved it.

Our first season was a success. We had about 90 people stay, which was more than we had hoped. And although we had to come home in May to work for the summer and autumn, we hadn’t gone bankrupt, but were now business entrepreneurs, owners of a large house in an amazing location, proud parents and living the dream. (www.chaletslovakia.com )

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