Time for a new floor

When I was in high school my father bought a new house that we lived in for a couple of years. He rented out our other home and we eventually moved back there. I loved that house on Panarama Ridge. It was on an acre and a half and had a swimming pool in the backyard. It also had a big kennel next to the house, but alas, my parents wouldn't let me have a dog. They did let me bring my horse there one summer to eat down the overgrown lawn there.

I remember my father pulling up the carpet in the living room and discovering hardwood floor underneath. All the carpet was pulled up, the hardwood sanded and refinished, and a big area rug was put in the room.

Last year Kerry and I bought an older house in Cloverdale. I don't like the house. Its a place to live, that's about it. I like the sundeck and the size of the back yard and the big cedar tree in the back yard. The house itself is boxy and the room are small. It was built in 1964 as a one story rancher and in 1981 it was raised up and the basement was built. These days our basement suite is rented out to tenants. The upstairs where we live has ugly carpet in the living room and bedrooms, ugly linoleum in the kitchen and bathroom. But thinking back to my father's discovery in the Panarama Ridge home, shortly after moving in I asked Kerry if we could check under the carpet just in case there might be a hardwood floor. We went to the cold air duct in the hallway and lifed it out and checked there. Nope, was Kerry's determination. Just plywood under the carpet.

But I continued to hate the carpet. Its a light color and with two large dogs and Kerry refusing to take off his muddy shoes in the house, its impossible to keep clean. We have a carpet shampooer and one of us has to operate it while the other one collects the clumps of dog hair that roll up. Every time after we shampoo I get enough dog hair to make two new dogs!

I want laminate floor everywhere. Something that will be easy to keep clean. No more dirty carpets, no more dog hair clumps when we shampoo. Just easy maintenance for me. I hate that ugly, always dirty, hard to keep clean carpet.

A month ago we installed laminate floor in a friend's condo. That got me wishing for my laminate floors again. This time to the point that we checked stores and prices, with Kerry promising to take measurements so we'd know how much to buy for the living room, hall, and three bedrooms upstairs. I'm still waiting for the measurements.

On the other hand Kerry has started a project of installing a pocket door in the bathroom. This is because too many times our dogs go in there for a drink and accidentally shut the door and then they bark for hours (if we're not home) hoping someone will come along and let them out. The door he installed is a glass door - we're going to spray it with that frosted stuff so nobody can peak in. We have bought the drywall but haven't finished the wall he took down, so anyone in the house can peak in. This is going to have to be like my cousin's house with a sheet as the bathroom door if he doesn't get to this soon!

The other project is another closet for our bedroom. Remember the house getting raised in 1981? That left a high hallway on the other side of our bedroom wall where the steps come up. Kerry is going to extend the closet over the downstairs entry. That will be great. This house has small closets in the three bedrooms and a linen closet. There is no coat closet. Like I said, I don't like the house. And I especially hate the lack of closet space and nowhere to store stuff.

So Kerry is messing around on the stairs last night punching out part of the wall that he hopes will be approximately where the floor of the new bedroom closet will be. Then he comes into the bedroom and pulls the couch out from the wall to check where his hole came out. I hear him fiddling with the carpet back there. Then he looks up and tells me that underneath the carpet is a beautiful hardwood floor made of fir. I hop up to take a look. And sure enough, its like the Panorama Ridge house all over again, there is a gorgeous floor. Unfortunately someone long ago was painting the walls and got white paint splashed on the floor. Don't worry about it, says Kerry, that can be sanded down.

Now we're excited and go back to that duct in the hallway for a closer look. This time Kerry uses his knife and slices back part of the carpet to discover underneath - a tiled floor! Darn! Go more, I suggest. Maybe they tiled over the hardwood. Kerry peels off the vinyl tile, and yes! There's the hardwood floor. We go into the living room and pull back a couch. If we're ripping carpet we want to make sure it can't be seen. And if there's no hardwood, its no big deal as we're planning on the laminate. So he sliced the carpet, saw the tiled floor and peeled it off, and there is hardwood there too. We immediately check the other two bedrooms with the same story: a tiled floor on top of the hardwood. Clearly the master bedroom was the only room not tiled and where the hardwood is going to be easiest to uncover again.

But we're stoked. Kerry pulls up all the living room carpet, the underlay, and then the tile underneath. And its an odd tile. There are two different green color schemes in a checkerboard design. And no, its not the ugliest tile floor I've ever seen. That belongs to a house I lived in about 20 years ago. The owners told us that the previous renters had cats and dogs in the house and they were worried they may have peed on the floor. It was winter and we didn't notice any smells. But when summer hit - whooey! Stinky pee! We called the owners to let them know and they pulled up the carpet, to discover underneath a checkerboard tiled floor red and green. And they were hug tiles, about four times the size of the tiles we pulled out last night. After letting it air out for a couple of weeks the owners put in a lovely laminate floor. Anything was better than smelling the cat pee on the carpet during the hot summer months!

Its our guess whoever was raising a family in the sixties in this house decided to glue down a tile floor on most of the hardwood because it was more practical with kids in the house. Then in the seventies they probably carpeted the house, after all shag carpet was all the rage back then. And no, our current carpet is not shag. So the house has probably been recarpeted a couple of times over the years.

The hardwood uncovered in the living room has tile glue all over it and we're hoping it will sand down nicely. It also needs to be repaired in a couple of spots, looks like pipes came up through the floor at one time, and there are a couple of transition areas that plywood or similar was used. If worst comes to worse we'll put down laminate, but here's hoping the hardwood turns out well in the end.

Lucky at the Standardbred Show N Shine

Our local racetrack Fraser Downs has a horse adoption program called Greener Pastures to help place retired Standardbred racehorses into new homes. They make fine riding horses, they're versatile and excel in many disciplines.

To help raise money for Greener Pastures they've held a couple of horse shows this summer called Standardbred Show N Shine. They have classes in halter, showmanship, English riding, jumping, Western riding, and trail.

I have an ex-racehorse, Lucky, that I rescued from the local auction on December 15 2002. He was several hundred pounds underweight, covered in cuts, mud fever, and severely neglected. I got him for fifty bucks. The meat buyers weren't going to buy this rack of bones. I wasn't sure if Lucky would live or not, but that horse has heart and under veterinary care, some groceries and TLC he came back to be a healthy horse.

We've come out to both shows just for a little fun and an outing for him. At nineteen years old he's probably the oldest horse in the show ring and maybe the most obstinate too. The first show he refused to trot and paced nicely all day. His pace is so smooth to ride and I was quite comfortable, but he didn't score too well when he should have been trotting. The last show was held on September 7 and he was in a more agreeable mood that day and did everything that was asked of him. Lucky is a big boy with a big stride and when asked to trot and canter he decided he was in a race and ran circles around the other horses. He does nothing halfway. When asked to canter, he gallops. If I pull back the reins to slow him down he'll go into a trot.

Oh well, he can be a fun boy. I thought he would do his best in the trail class because he fearlessly goes through the trails and up and down hills, over bridges, around trees, and under branches as surefooted as a mountain goat. A trail class set up in a riding arena has makeshift obstacles. The bridge was a tarpaulin, and no way was he going to walk on that, even though he walks over a tarpaulin at home back at the farm. The gate was a couple of poles with a rope strung between them. Nope. No way. If it had been a real gate there would be no problem, but not this pole and rope.

But on the last show they changed the trail class a bit and held it in the warm up arena. They put the obstacles up ahead of time and let the horses practice a bit. This time they had a small wooden bridge. I tried Lucky across it with little success our first few times. Then he finally figured it out and crossed it nicely after that.

But the call came for the Western discipline classes and we returned to the show ring. Lucky picked up ribbons in each class and then the group headed over to the warm up arena for the trail class which each horse and rider would enter the arena one at a time and go through the course. When it was Lucky's turn he took the course wonderfully. And this time we were awarded a 2nd place ribbon.

Not too bad for an old, grumpy man!

Bear in the campground!

My idea of camping is in a luxury hotel on the beach of a tropical resort, therefore a driving trip in a partly camperized van across British Columbia and Alberta was not quite what I had in mind. We didn’t have a fridge but we had an ice chest that worked by plugging into the cigarette lighter. It had a noisy fan and I didn’t want to be kept awake in the evenings, so we put the cooler outside with the cord still plugged into the lighter, but the window rolled up against the thin cord, and the fan didn’t bother me. We were unable to put the cooler outside of the van while at a campground in Banff National Park in the Rocky Mountains. This was due to bears, and the campgrounds had posted bear warnings and gave us a pamphlet on how to avoid attracting bears to our campsite.

On our way home we stopped for the night at a campsite in Canmore. My husband put the cooler outside with me questioning if there was a bear problem. He used to live in the area and assured me that bears didn’t come down this far. I checked the bulletin board and there was no mention of any bear sightings in the area, so I decided the cooler was fine sitting outside the van where the fan wouldn’t disturb my sleep.

We had all the curtains closed and were reading around nine-thirty in the evening when I heard a noise outside. We listened and it sounded like someone was pushing our cooler. Who would be trying to steal it? I peaked behind a curtain and there was a black bear trying to take the cooler! Kerry jumped into the front seat and tried to go out the door. What was he thinking? Luckily the automatic door lock was engaged and he couldn’t open the door, so instead he honked the horn. The noise frightened off Mr. Bear and we both exited the van with flashlights trying to determine where the bear had gone.

The path the bear chose was through the next campsite where a couple was sitting by the campfire in front of their tent. The bear had run right past them, and all we could see were the two of them throwing water onto the fire, jumped into their car, and drove off.

The man in the campsite across from us came over and we were standing there talking when a man driving a car pulled up and asked if we'd seen a bear. He'd been walking his dog and saw a bear near the camp entrance pay telephone standing on its hind legs. The image is rather amusing: a bear standing up like he's using the phone. The man called the police and a short time later an officer arrived and alerted each campsite of the bear sighting.

As for the couple in the campsite next to us, we never did see them again. Did they go to a local motel for the night or did they abandon their equipment and just keep on driving?