The Greenhouse & the d'Auto House — A Racer's Dream
Thank you for choosing to stay here. The building you are staying in — the Greenhouse Loft and the d'Auto House — has a story all its own, and it begins with the man who built this place.
Joe was a car man through and through, and a volunteer firefighter. His dream was to turn this property into a bed-and-breakfast with a theme all its own: racers coming to Qlispé Raceway could pull parts from old cars, weld them together, give them a fresh coat of paint, and get their cars ready for the track.
The d'Auto House side was his detailing shop, where cars got their final touches, washed and detailed before and after a race. Joe understood water and pumps the way only a firefighter could: he buried three cisterns on this land, one for each structure, to collect the rainwater, then pumped it up to a 1,000-gallon tank on the roof of the detailing shop to wash the cars. We took the tank down during our renovation, but you can still see the space where it sat on the roof. The greenhouse side was part of the same plan — its garden would drink the same collected rainwater.
The big yellow house across the way was built mainly for the bed-and-breakfast. But the county turned down Joe's permit, and in 2014 he took his dream with him. We are finishing the yellow house now to honor his legacy. There will not be a parts yard in the back, no race cars and no car washing — but the bed-and-breakfast heart of his dream lives on, and racers still stay with us every year during race season.
In the Loft, we left the original cedar walls uncovered on purpose — we did not want to bury the beautiful story behind these walls.
This story reached us secondhand, shared with us by our neighbor Allen and by Jean, and we know pieces of it are missing. Joe has a son somewhere on the West Coast, and Jean is still with us. Our hope is that one day Joe's family will come stay here, walk this land again, and fill in the missing parts of the story for us.
You are not just staying in a house — you are stepping into a story, and we are grateful to have you be part of its next chapter. Welcome, and enjoy your time here.