The Door Inside: things I've learned, seen, done or wondered about.: Renos With Rosie

All winter I heard it, "tap tap tap" then the sound of a squirrel or cat video and then again, "tap tap tap, tap tap tap". I should have understood what it meant! After all, I've been here before - in the scary place, that season when a bored wife with a few bucks in her pocket is searching, searching for, "A PROJECT"!

Noooooooo!!!

Rose talked about "the cuteness factor" and I remember her mentioning "Bolers" and "Scamps" and maybe even "Bigfoot" and still I didn't catch on. "Perhaps she's talking about some kind of mutant squirrels" I said to myself. Instead, it turned out to be tiny trailers she was searching for.

I imagined that when the winter was over and we could get out to the cabin and spend some time there relaxing, her new hobby of searching for small, lightweight trailers would come to an end, but "little did he know" as they say.

When my lovely wife get's an idea, sometimes there is really nothing to be done but get on board and eventually, after much leg dragging, nail biting and clenching of various body parts, that's what I was forced to do.

I got into much trouble the first time she found a trailer that she thought was just right because these things go fast, one minute they show up on Kijiji and the next minute, they're sold! She mentioned it, I think I said "sure, let's have a look, but not until the money clears the bank" (it just so happens that we had just sold a rental property and we were waiting to have access to the funds) and bang, it was sold, "oops".

Of course she kept looking and the very next week she found another one for sale right here in Edmonton, only 10 minutes from our house. This one was a 17' Bigfoot molded fiberglass trailer in great shape and it had just been listed so we immediately called the seller and made arrangements to come around the next day and view it.

If you know Rose, you won't be surprised to hear that she immediately hit it off with the young family selling the trailer. Of course I played the part of the slightly stand-offish, skeptical, tire kicking buyer while Rose ooohhhed and awwwed and gushed how perfect the trailer is and how cute their little daughter is, (she was very cute). When the time came for negotiating the price and Ryan fixed his low end price at a firm number, Rose offered him $100 more if he could deliver it to our driveway. So much for negotiating!

So we wrote out a deposit cheque and shook hands and went home to talk about what the plan is to transform our new family member into a rolling cat palace.

I forgot to mention earlier that one of the big reasons for getting a trailer is so we can bring our 17 year old diabetic cat named "Missy" on our holidays this year. Since we don't have any kids at home anymore, there's no one around to give Missy her twice a day insulin injections when we go for holidays so now the plan is for her to come with us in the Bigfoot trailer.

So now, where Scarlet (my old 1968 Ambassador that I sold in the fall) once stood on our driveway, we now have "Yeti" (name under review).

Over the last week I fixed a bunch of little things, set up the trailer wiring harness on Jimmy to match, registered the new trailer and now we've started on the upholstery, window coverings and preparing for painting.

Rose has spent many hours thinking about what the final look will be so right now I'm just trying not to get bowled over in the rush to invoke "the cuteness factor" in the plentiful, but as yet untapped, raw potential of our 1985 Bigfoot trailer.

It's going to be a good summer, right Missy?