The Travels of the Agnew Family

The house is back together, I went to Burlington to see my mom so now it's time to take a couple of days off. And what better place than Rob & Ellen's cottage at Sauble Beach. We're really lucky to have friends that are OK with us inviting ourselves up to their cottage.


Happy boy at the cottage.

When I was in Burlington, I purchased a croquet set. I've been wanting one for awhile and Costco had them on sale. The croquet set came to the cottage.


Zaph really liked the croquet balls. He was put on a leash to prevent the balls from wandering off the playing field.


Not sure how he did it, but Rob was a couple of wickets behind the leader (Ellen) but he managed to win. If only Ellen hadn't gotten stuck in the mud. The playing field added some extra challenges to the game --- slopes, mud and trees and tree roots.


Pouting boy, he didn't get to have the croquet balls.


That cat's not going to attack me, is she? Rob and Ellen are cat sitting their daughter's four cats. Cashmere, the deaf one (in the photo), had no fear when it came to Zaph. Little Whinney, the tiny Persian, hissed at Zaph and scared him. Ebony and Sosa walked around Zaph cautiously.

This evenings car show was washed out, only a few brave souls brought their cars to the beach. Luckily the rain stopped in time for fireworks. Not sure why Sauble Beach chose the 30th for their Canada Day fireworks but it does mean we can go to one of the other local towns for their fireworks display tomorrow evening.

It's been a long week and a half. Once the last coat of polyurethane was put on the floor we had to wait seventy-two hours before we could go in the house to start putting it back together. The 72 hours took us to Sunday afternoon so we decided to extend it to Monday morning. While we were waiting, Ed puttered in his workshop and I painted doors, baseboard and quarter round (it had been removed so we could do the floor). We did manage to sneak away for a half day of geocaching in the Miata.

Knowing we were going to generate a lot of dust, I had held off my spring cleaning so on Monday morning I started cleaning beginning with the kitchen/family room. By Tuesday the kitchen/family room was cleaned and the new cleaned area rug, couch, loveseat, chair and TV were moved back in. Wednesday saw the bathroom and our bedroom get cleaned so we were able to move back into the house. Thursday the spare bedroom was attacked and Anne and Victor came in the afternoon to help install the new overhead fan and play a rousing game of "musical furniture". The dining room and my office were cleaned on Friday and finally on Saturday "stuff" was put back into the closets and laundry area. Feels good to finally have the house back. I even managed to squeeze in cleaning the trailer.


The new light in the kitchen.


New fan in the living room.


The rearranged living room. Took a lot of time to end up with this configuration but I really like. I can't thank Victor enough because without his input I don't think we would have got here.

My sister Carol and her granddaughter Sarah drove up from Texas to visit my mom for not quite a week. Unfortunately the timing wasn't the best as they arrived when we getting ready for the floors to be done and are leaving mid afternoon tomorrow (Friday). I had hoped to get away for a day and drive to Burlington for a visit but the floor disaster prevented my hope of sneaking away for the day. Instead we arranged to meet for dinner in Elora, the half way point between Burlington and Walkerton. We met at the Gorge Country Kitchen where we enjoyed dinner on the patio. As it was sunny, Zaph couldn't stay in the car so he joined us on the patio and enjoyed his dinner there as well. After dinner we drove over to a park on the river and went for a nice stroll.


The Bissell Dam on the Grand River.


Mom, myself and my sister Carol.


Sarah and Zaph.


The Grand River from a bridge. A couple of girls jumped from the bridge into the river while we were there --- don't think I would jump into the dark murky water.


This chocolate lab loves to swim. Her stick is thrown from the bridge and she runs down the hill and into the water to fetch the stick. Swims to shore and runs up the hill and onto the bridge to her dad. Where the process is repeated. Today, Sarah got to throw the stick a few times.

I'm blending a few days here as I don't really want to relive each and every painful day of getting the house ready for refinishing the floors and painting. In retrospect, I really wonder why Ed and I did all the prep work ---- oh yeah, it saved a lot of money.


I think I talked about the big crack when I removed the wallpaper in May, but here it is all fixed up ready for priming. As the previous owners enjoyed busy walls, there were a lot of patch spots everywhere and in places you wouldn't imagine.


Most of the furniture was removed from the room but Ed kept the TV and kitchen table there for as long as possible. The wall with the large patch is primed as well as all the little the patches on the other walls. Ed doesn't paint unless it's with a spray gun so that's my handiwork.


The decorative splotching.


I put on 2 coats of primer and covered the splotches with the green as we weren't changing the paint colour. We like the colour plus it matches the area rug, so why change.


We moved the remaining items out of the room and taped the cupboards to keep the dust out --- by the way it did work.

At this point, we moved into the trailer as it gave us a bed and a kitchen. Ed didn't want to have to think about dumping the black tank so we used the bathroom in the basement. This worked out not too bad except I really didn't enjoy the middle of the night trips to the bathroom. Shouldn't complain too much though as mother nature co-operated and stopped the rain when I needed to use the loo in the middle of the night. I really love my little trailer so it was actually fun getting to live in it but by day ten Ed was ready to move back into the house --- I think he missed the big TV.


Glen, the fellow we hired to refinish the floors and paint, busy sanding the floors and creating much dust.


A woman's work is never done ... for some reason I was given the job of vacuuming.


First coat of the green paint. The guy at Home Hardware did a fantastic job of making matching paint, it was a 100 per cent match.


Painting the trim.

We ended up having the kitchen/family room and the main hallways plus trim painted. Glen paints a lot faster (and better) than I do. In two days he sanded the floor, put 2 coats on in the kitchen/family room, painted the trim in the kitchen/family room and hallways (and there's a lot of trim in the hallway as there are 10 door frames (I painted the doors because that's easy)) and put on one coat of paint in the hallway (just wanted to refresh it and we had enough paint left from when I painted it in 2009).

Up to this point everything had gone smoothly but unfortunately the tide changed. We wanted to put three coats of oil based polyurethane on the floor. The can says you can recoat in 4 to 6 hours and if you wait more than 10 hours you need to sand between coats. So Ed and Glen decided to try and do in one day to avoid sanding. Glen arrived at 7am (yes, Ed was up to help) and the first coat was on by 8:30am. Glen came back around 3pm to put on the second coat, finishing applying the coat about 4:30pm. When we check the floor around 9pm we realized that coat two was a disaster --- it was full of air bubbles, ripples, and blobs of dried polyurethane. Coat three was being delayed as we definitely needed to do something to try to fix the mess. In retrospect we think that coat one was not dry enough when coat two went on, plus the application method was introducing too much air into the polyurethane. When coat two was good and dry, the guys hand sanded it and coat three was applied. I'm not entirely happy with the results but I don't think Ed and I could live through refinishing again. Part of the problem was the non-straightness of the room which made it hard to apply the polyurethane following the grain of the wood. We've decided to live with the floor and when it bothers us too much will put in a new floor. That'll be a big job but it shouldn't be as dirty and definitely won't be as stinky.

Ellen and Rob invited Ed, myself, Zaph (of course) and Anne and Victor to the cottage for the day. We decided to take the ATV's so the boys could ride and the girls could have some quiet time. For some reason, once again I was the only one to bounce on the trampoline. I'm always surprised how much work it is, after about 5 minutes I'm huffing and puffing.


Heading out on the adventure --- Ed, Victor and Rob.


Zaph said that even though it was a little chilly he felt like a swim. He carried his stick to the beach so we could throw it for him. We provided entertainment for an older couple sitting in their car watching the waves.


If you look carefully you can see ground fog down the beach. The water must be still quite cold that low level fog was rolling in.


The boys back from their ride. They weren't as muddy as I expected, but the machines needed a bath. I think everyone had fun.

Ed and I decided that the kitchen/family room floor needs refinishing and the room needs painting, so we hired a fellow to come and do those things but for some unknown reason we also said that we would prep the room, i.e. remove the wall paper, wash the walls, fill holes and cracks remove the baseboard. I forgot how much work it is to get a room ready for painting. The saddest part of all is the room isn't going to look all that different when we are done as we are painting the room the same colour --- we both like the colour and it matches the area rug. So the only difference will be the lack of wallpaper and maybe furniture rearrangement and a shinier floor.


Ed's removing the baseboard, not an easy task as they were caulked (as they should have been) and were in place the first time the floors were finished.

My gardens are doing pretty good this year even with the shortage of water. Thank goodness for water barrels.


I'm already picking leaf lettuce. Thanks for starting lettuce for me Anne.


The peonies are loaded,


the Japanese Iris's are beautiful,


and even with being split and transplanted the coral bells are happily blooming


and the best flower of them all. Don't know why but he loves to sit in the garden and walk through the peonies.

When Ed and I bought our trail passes and joined the South Bruce Peninsula ATV club we were told about a ride and luncheon they were having to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the club. As Ed and I didn't have any other plans for today we decided to go .... plus there was the enticement of a free lunch.


Our RAV4 and trailer with some of the people going for the ride.

The ride left from the Sauble Beach School and followed the trails to Wiarton (about 25 kilometers) where we stopped for lunch at the Top Notch Restaurant and Motel.


The ATVs parked at the restaurant.

After enjoying a really good buffet and listening to a few speeches we road a different route back to the school, stopping at one of the club member's cottage for a beer. Well, it had been his cottage till it burned down in March. He has all the permits in place and hopes to start building the new cottage soon.

Another beautiful day at Sauble Beach especially for a bike ride.


We rode through town to Sauble Falls Provincial Park. It's been a really long time since I've been here and I didn't remember it all. The waterfalls are a lot smaller than I thought but maybe that has to do with all the waterfalls I've seen over the years.


Ed didn't bring any photographic devices with him so he got to be in the photo. Thanks for the photo, Rob.


Zaph met someone new on our walk.


That is the perfect bathing suit for Rob.


Not sure what Rob was pointing at but Ellen and I were looking.


Splish, Splash, I was walking in the water.


Zaph looked at me with his big brown eyes, so I gave in and took the leash off so he could play in the water.

After a week of cleaning, gardening, etc. it's time for a couple of days of play. Rob and Ellen went to their cottage in Sauble Beach and we asked if we could tag along --- it's nice when you can invite yourself to fun places. The ATV's and bicycles came with us.

This afternoon Rob, Ed and I explored some of the ATV trails near Sauble Falls. None of the trails are very long but the terrain does change --- Sauble River Trail runs through the sandy forest going around trees and up and down small hills, Swamp Trail always has wet sections with at least a foot of water on the trail, and Boat Lake Trail is full of rocks as it goes through the woods.


I was prepared for the dust this time around.


For some unknown reason I can't resist trampolines. Rob and Ellen decided to set up their trampoline this summer as Dustin (the grandson) loves to jump.


This evening was a perfect evening to walk along the beach --- Rob, thanks for the photo.


At this time of the year, the beach has almost as many cars parked on it at sunset as it does during the day.