Hospitality Furniture

Bunk beds for hostel dorms from Panajachel to Flores:

the dorm bed is the hardest-working piece in Guatemalan hospitality, climbed by a different guest most nights. Metal bunks dominate because they cost less than wood, have no glued joints to work loose and leave fewer places for bed bugs to hide. Knock-down models come apart into two single beds when a dorm becomes a private room. Pine or cypress bunks look warmer in a lakeside hostel but need their bolts tightened more often. Almost every bunk bed here takes the standard local single mattress, so check the inside of the frame before buying either. Measure the ceiling too, since the guest on top has to sit up without hitting it. Hotel rooms run on double and queen beds, nightstands and luggage racks, judged like home furniture that takes more knocks.

The dining room, from the pine bench to the Tolix-style chair:

a small eatery chooses between cost and look. The standard set across the country is a table with two fixed benches, built by a carpenter in pine or cypress. It seats more people than chairs in the same floor space and takes rough use, but soft wood dents quickly; cedar and mahogany cost more and last. Cafés lean towards Tolix-style chairs, the riveted metal design with a wooden or steel seat, because they stack and wipe clean. Upholstered booths give the most seats per metre of wall, but each was built for one room, so measure before you fall for a pair. Moulded plastic chairs remain the cheapest way to seat a terrace. Ovens and ranges for the kitchen behind the dining room sit under commercial kitchen appliances, and the drinks cooler by the counter belongs in commercial refrigerators.

A closing restaurant’s chairs against a new set:

for metal the discount is smaller than you might expect, and for pine it is steep. A new carpenter-built pine table with its two benches is around Q600, and a sound used set goes for about Q350, because any workshop will build a fresh one for not much more and the used one has already taken its dents. Tolix-style chairs sold off by a café that is closing go for around Q350 to Q400 each, since a steel frame does not loosen or rot. The real value in second-hand is the batch: a dozen chairs that match are worth more than a dozen bargains that do not.

How a café chair, a bench or a bunk bed shows its age:

almost always at the joints first. Rock every table and bench on a flat floor, look for nails added at the joints, and check the underside for small holes and fine powder, the mark of woodworm. On metal chairs, look at the welds and rivets under the seat and at the feet, where rust starts. Sit on every plastic chair rather than one: white stress marks at the leg joints show where it will crack next. On booths, check the vinyl seams, which split before the surface does. Shake a bunk bed with both hands; a wobble means stripped bolts or a cracked weld on the ladder, and a knock-down model should come with all its bolts and slats. Check the seams of a hostel mattress for bed bugs: many buyers take the frame and leave the mattress.

When the whole dining room or dorm has to go:

sell it as a count first and a description second. Say how many pieces there are, whether they all match and whether you will split the batch. Photograph the most worn piece and its underside, where the joints show. For bunk beds, give the mattress size and say whether mattresses go with them. Buyers writing from Huehuetenango or Mazatenango will ask whether everything is already dismantled and how many trips it takes. A hostel owner driving in for six bunk beds wants to know, before setting out, that the bolts are in a bag and the slats are counted.