When a young woman dressed in jeans and a stylish navy top wheeled up on her bicycle, none of us expected her to be Kathrin Mair, the co-owner of B&B Niedermairhof.

Ten minutes earlier, we’d arrived at the farming community of Teodone on the outskirts of Brunico (also known as Bruneck), parked our car in one of the many spaces by the old barn and called the cell-phone number posted on the front door of the B&B. In perfect English (in South Tyrol, German, Italian and Ladin are the official languages), Kathrin introduced herself, apologized for being away and welcomed us with elderflower juice. (And later, a bottle of Tyrol-style Prosecco.)

From the exterior, you wouldn’t guess the manor house is seven centuries old, would you?

Over the years, it has been a family farmhouse, an inn and a guesthouse. For the last 200 years, it’s been in Kathrin’s family. “My dad ran it as a youth hostel,” Kathrin told us, “And for 35 years it was a bull farm for 300 animals. The barn is now where we have the sauna.”

At the turn of this century, the farmhouse sat empty, slumbering in a Rip-Van-Winkle state. Architects and contractors had recommended demolition and new construction.

Instead, Kathrin and her husband, Helmuth Mayr, awakened the historic building next to their family farm with a daring architectural renovation, turning it into a B&B with eight lofty suites and a family home on the main level. Can you imagine the task, especially when they wanted to salvage and repurpose as much of the building as they could?

The B&B was featured in Farmhouse Fabulous (which is how we discovered it), so we knew it was stunning, but staying there for two nights and poking around was a joyous experience. How many B&Bs could honestly say, as Kathrin and Helmuth do on their website, that you’ll experience “Joy in the details”?

My favourite detail is the wallpaper, which I fell in love with when I saw its viridian green background, curious fox and autumn leaves in Farmhouse Fabulous.

During the reno, they discovered wallpaper from the turn of the last century in almost every room. Using a scalpel to expose it, they preserved “historical windows”  in one of the suites, in the reception area nd in the hallway—and complemented it with new wallpaper designed by the artist and interior designer Ingrid Canins.

Magellan’s favourite detail won’t surprise you.

When we walked up the outside stairs and Kathrin opened the front door, Magellan wasn’t thinking, “Wow, the original wooden staircase.”  He was thinking, “What a struggle it’s going to be to get our suitcases from the car to our rooms upstairs.” Kathrin and Helmuth thought about that—they installed an elevator on the exterior of the building at the back by the office, eliminating the need to climb one set of stairs.

Each guestroom has a unique space and design. Original furnishings (like the bathroom armoire) complement Art Nouveau and Mid-Century pieces (like the yellow chair). TVs are secreted away—hard to find even in the Waldite, the room that Lynn and Ward had.

On one side of the house is an ultra-contemporary annex, an angular extension made from a folded, prefabricated wooden frame covered with OSB boards and clad with blackened sheet steel. As Helmuth writes, “What was once the outside toilet area has now become a contemporary structure that stands out from the main building.”

The breakfast area and the relaxation room on the upper floor are open to guests 24/7, a nice feature when you want a larger space to curl up with, in our case, a trail map and a diary, or sit around and have a glass of wine and dissect the day.

Kathrin was most helpful on timing for the Kronplatz lift, recommending the Reinzbrau for pizza and affirming Lynn’s idea to go to the South Tyrolean Folklore Museum—the latter was free with the hospitality card she gave us. Her pride in their exquisite B&B, genuine wish that guests have a good time and knowledgeable enthusiasm for the area was refreshing. And rarer these days as innkeepers and hoteliers become more blasé, more attuned to their screens than to guests keen on making the most of their vacation.

The words of a poet (his/her name a detail I can’t remember) express my feelings of staying here: “Apricot joy.”

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B&B Niedermairhof For more joy, have a look at their website, especially because as I had the ISO too high on my camera, my photos are meh.

Ingrid Canins. For wallpaper joy, have a look at Ingrid’s site.

White Line Hotels. Farmhouse Fabulous. Austria: Thurnher Druckerei GMBH. 2020. White Line Hotels has morphed into The Aficionados, and while this book is no longer available from them, their site is a great place to find accommodation like B&B Niedermairhof in parts of Europe.