The Hideaway Country Inn - a dream come true

Sarah Ein­se­len — Staff

The Hide­away Inn is located on Route 4 south of Bucyrus. For more pho­tos, scroll to the end of this article.

Story by Rachel Mendell

Pho­tos by Sarah Einselen

Deb­bie Miller is hop­ing to increase local inter­est in her dream project — The Hide­away Coun­try Inn.

Miller grew up in the area and was one of the first women to be involved in Craw­ford County FFA. Then, 22 years ago, she and her hus­band Steve bought the old Smith place, 1601 State Route 4 in Bucyrus. Miller wanted to find a way to stay home, raise the kids and start a busi­ness. The Smith House seemed the per­fect place. In the begin­ning, she said, the fam­ily lived in one half of the home on the week­ends and served guests in the other half as a bed and breakfast.

Miller, who now owns and runs The Hide­away Inn as a spa and resort, designed the build­ings to express the his­tory of the area and to share trea­sures and art­work from far away. The Louis XIV Room is home to a bed from the old Plaza Hotel in New York. The Africa Room houses a bed imported from the West Indies and was cre­ated from the choco­late mar­ble and cherry wood from the orig­i­nal Farm­ers and Cit­i­zens Bank in Bucyrus. The fire­place, pocket doors and columns come from Judge Bers’ office on the sec­ond floor.

Miller’s new project is expand­ing its din­ing room to the new bistro, sched­uled to be ready for busi­ness by Valentine’s Day. Going with green con­struc­tion, the bistro is lined with recy­cled oak wine bar­rel stays for the wall dress­ing, recy­cled ceramic and porce­lain (from Italy) for the wood-grain floor, and recy­cled plas­tic jugs (from Fre­mont) for the ceil­ing. The room is warmed using radi­ant heat installed under the floor served by a tan­k­less water heater. All these recy­cled mate­ri­als echo the color of the orig­i­nal stone installed in 1938 when the home was built.

Miller isn’t quite sure what to call the new bistro, per­haps The Lean­ing Oak Bistro in honor of the many oak trees that grace the property.

Besides run­ning the inn, Miller has been involved in busi­ness, gov­ern­ment and lead­er­ship includ­ing serv­ing on the depart­ment of devel­op­ment advi­sory board under Gov. Strick­land, and serv­ing on the Ohio Hotel and Lodg­ing Association.

Miller is look­ing to increase local inter­est in the Inn. Hide­away is known in the Cleve­land and Colum­bus areas as a quiet place to get away, but locally it seems very few peo­ple know of its exis­tence, said Miller.

The Inn has a strong web pres­ence bring­ing in guests from far away – Europe, Eng­land, Aus­tralia, and Rus­sia. The Inn has enter­tained British Roy­alty for a week, held a mar­riage cer­e­mony aired on Skype for the mother in Spain and the bride who was soon deployed to Afghanistan. The inn was also tem­po­rary home to mem­bers of a Russ­ian Sym­phony as they shopped for ket­tle drums in Bucyrus. Hide­away housed a legal group that needed com­plete pri­vacy as it car­ried out depo­si­tions for a large case in Ohio.

Some of the unique fea­tures of the Inn are its rooms. Each of the 12 guest rooms are dec­o­rated with a dif­fer­ent theme and named accord­ingly like Investors, Hunters Den, Africa, Louis XIV, Gar­den and Smith.

The Smith room is so named for the gen­tle­man who orig­i­nally built the house in 1938 – Samuel Harold Smith – who was an inven­tor and indus­tri­al­ist in Bucyrus, said Miller. A large wooden pro­peller graces one wall in the large sec­ond guest build­ing in honor of Smith’s con­tri­bu­tion to flight – the vari­able pitch air­plane pro­peller that increased effi­ciency in fighter planes dur­ing World War I. Miller said the pro­pellers Smith con­structed were made of metal, but she has been unable to find one, pos­si­bly because all unused metal was melted down and used again. The large sec­ond guest build­ing was orig­i­nally the place where Smith did his inventing.

The home speaks to Smith detail with per­fectly plumb con­struc­tion, wind­ing stair­cases on both sides of the home, large rooms and clos­ets (some of which have been con­verted to whirlpool baths) and 157 doors.

Smith also built a bomb shel­ter with 24-inch-thick con­crete walls that Miller has con­verted to an award-winning wine cellar.

Hide­away Inn boasts chef Marc Sleeckx and his culi­nary exper­tise, who serves those com­ing for sup­per or guests of the Inn. He also con­ducts cook­ing classes that some­times include tours of local farms. The kitchen strives to use local pro­duce and meat as much as pos­si­ble. There are reg­u­lar cook­ing classes (such as the one sched­uled for the end of Feb­ru­ary), but classes can also be arranged for spe­cialty orga­ni­za­tions or groups.

Classes are hands-on, says Miller, and range from 90-minute classes to 3-day schools. There are also sea­sonal classes such as the Kitchen Gar­den class and edu­ca­tion in can­ning and freezing.

The Inn holds open din­ing Thurs­day through Sat­ur­day evenings and Sun­day brunch. It is host to all kinds of gath­er­ings includ­ing Bike Night, Cruise In, wed­dings, anniver­saries, fam­ily reunions, class reunions and get-togethers of all kinds.

There is a spa room that is avail­able seven days a week with five mas­sage ther­a­pists on staff. The meet­ing room, devel­oped with the help of 42 dif­fer­ent facil­i­ta­tors, is avail­able for any kind of meet­ing. WiFi is also available.

For more infor­ma­tion about The Hide­away Coun­try Inn call 419–562-3013 or go to The Inn’s web­site at www.HideAwayInn.com.

Posted by Rachel Mendell on Jan 27 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.