Gutters clogged with pine needles
One of the sure signs that Spring is on the way in Vancouver (apart from the daffodils and cherry blossom of course) are the explosion of new shows, exhibitions and displays. All centered around doing up, clearing up and generally sprucing up your home and/or garden.
So last weekend, we sent off to North Vancouver to attend the local Home Show, this is held in one of the local activity centres and admission is free. Well, it was a wet Sunday afternoon and we were interested in collecting information on houses maintenance. (All houses here need regular maintenance, as we live in a rain forest and the houses are all made out of wood.) Go figure.
We had met our favourite contractor at one of these shows in the past, so knew there would be some interesting stands there.
First stop was a vital stand offering “composting in bear country”. Sue spent some time here picking up tips on how to make compost for the garden that would not attract a host of wildlife to a free banquet. (Since she strongly suspects there is a rat living in the compost bin, I get to put the food scraps out.) Armed with our new advice which seems to include shredding newspaper, a strong stick and a lot of digging, we moved on.
What astonished us, there were about 8 stands there all offering completely different ways of keeping leaves out of your gutters. Now this did merit some serious consideration. Before moving to Canada, we had no idea that we would spend a great deal of time, twice a year, picking pine cones, needles and assorted gunk out of the gutters before giving up and hiring someone with a large ladder to do it for us. Having a gutter product that kept your gutters gunk free was an attractive thought.
Giving in to Sue’s quite unreasonable desire for gutters that do not constantly overflow, I weakened and arranged for some guy to come around and give us a quote. His product looked like a large brillo pad that filled your gutters up but let the water through. (Presumably the pine needles collect on top like a sort of porcupine.) Can’t wait to see what that will cost.
Another product that caught my eye was a re-conditioned roof made out of old tyres (tires as they are called here). This looked exactly like a slate roof but was bouncy. It also looked quite hefty, so if your house was a bit on the elderly side, then it might need a fair bit of reinforcing, which would make it pricey. This time I resisted the urge to get a quote since we have at least 25 years worth of life left in our roof.
There were of course the stands that collected a large crowd of men, who stood around in admiration, remarking on the beauty of the product. I refer of course to the companies who put down a colourful rubberised designer floor in your garage, so your car can have the same level of luxury as your house. Not for the householder who regards the garage as a temporary storage depot for all sorts of junk. I am, of course, not including myself in this shameful category.
We also collected business cards from anyone who could build, saw, plumb, tile, grout, drywall and design everything from your garden to your curtains as you never know when they will come in useful. Perhaps Sue thought they would be useful since I have spent years carefully reputation as a reluctant and hopeless DIY guy. My favourite tool remains the cheque book!
Finally, having exhausted the entertainment on hand, we departed Lynn Valley for home. I needed a rest as I could predict a busy time ahead with Sue’s new list of jobs to be done.
