DIXVILLE – With little more than a week to go until Christmas, just as homes across the land are getting spruced up for company, so is The Balsams.

Tucked in the craggy Dixville Notch, one of New Hampshire's oldest surviving grand hotels has been undergoing an extensive renovation since the end of October. New carpets, fresh paint, brighter wallpaper, they're the new lipstick for the grand old dame.

"We've been at it since the third week of October, and we'll be done Dec. 20," general manager Uwe Roggenthien said as he stood amid the detritus of the project - plastic sheeting protecting the new carpet, ladders, hardware and tools. "We'll be setting up the furniture on the 20th and 21st; we're right on schedule."

He's confident the work will be done in time not only for vacationers arriving this week but also for the millions of people who will be watching Dixville and its two dozen or so voters cast the first ballots in the New Hampshire presidential primary minutes after midnight Jan. 8.

Surrounded by the sharp walls of Dixville Notch, The Balsams Hotel is preparing for the holiday season, as well as the first in the nation presidential primary voting next month.

A week ago, the Ballot Room, where red-, white- and blue-curtained voting booths will be set up, had nary a trace of the memorabilia usually found there that chronicles the political life of the first-in-the-nation community.

The rough-hewn walls, however, got a new coat of color in a deep, rich brown, and it won't be long before the collection is returned to its rightful place in the small, historic room. In another few days, Lamar Alexander's black- and red-checked shirt will be back on display along with photos of other candidates through the years - Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and John McCain.

"The photographs are being reframed," Roggenthien said. "We've got 120 pictures down in Concord. They're going into a little larger frames."

Hundreds of photos tell of the role tiny Dixville has played in presidential politics since residents first went to the polls just after midnight in the 1960 general election, giving Richard Nixon all nine of their votes and John F. Kennedy none.

Three new pictures will be added.

"Ron Paul, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain came by, and we took them through the construction," Roggenthien said. "They really enjoyed it, and they want to come back when it's completed."

Roggenthien said it is important the hotel preserve this one-of-a-kind collection.

"It's part of the stewardship of the place," he said. "This is a place in history that needs to be preserved."

Especially for political junkies, the Ballot Room is a treasure trove of names and faces of politicians who went on to lead the nation or fade into obscurity.

"People come in and this is a time capsule," he said. "They read all the comments under the pictures and look at how the candidates have aged gracefully."

Opened shortly after the Civil War, The Balsams was first known as the Dix House, named after the Revolutionary War patriot and founding father, Timothy Dix. About a half-century later, Philadelphia industrialist Henry Hale bought the place and in 1918 added the Hampshire House, still known as the "new wing." It's the public rooms - such as the Ballot Room, the Billiards Room, the Sun Room, the Ballroom - that are being renovated. The dining room is not a part of the project.

Roggenthien declined to say just how much is being spent on the work, but the improvements are in keeping with the period of the hotel. The tall columns in the lobby area have been topped with gold paint, and the new wallpaper is a soft pastel that both brightens and soothes. Upstairs from the lobby, an old phrase has reappeared on the fireplace:

"Silver birch and sugar maple.

A friend or two, a timely fable."

The Ballroom, one of the meeting spaces at the hotel, has been opened up, with some of the levels to it removed. The hotel will also get air conditioning for the first time in its history.

It's been an uneventful renovation, the first in a number of years, Roggenthien said. But a wall in the Captain's Study did give up a curious piece of the past.

It is a picture, obviously rolled up tight for decades, perhaps from the 1940s. It is sepia-toned and brittle with age. It shows a well-dressed woman seated at a meal, smiling broadly and raising a glass as if in a toast.

Roggenthien said no one has any idea who she was, where she was from or how her photo got secreted away. He plans to have the picture restored.