So as many of you south western BC people know we do indeed live in a rain forest, and Squamish gets a fair amount of that rain, just in the winter alone. So in the midst of the summer heat wave we were already beginning to wonder how much mother nature was holding back, just waiting to pummel the Squamish Valley with her rains, so naturally the beginnings of a horse shelter were in thought. I’ve always had a very firm belief that in order for horses to live a sane and happy life they need to be horses, and horses innately like to be free of constrain, so living on acreage with free will to move is very important to me, and building a horse shelter needed to have this in mind. Run/in shelters are a great way to keep your horses out of the weather, yet able to do as they please, so we decided to go ahead with a simple 3 wall run in shelter design. Coming from a family of carpenters I wanted to touch base with my father and brothers in building this to make sure I was on the right path. They were all very helpful with steering me in the right direction, from a ball park figure on cost, materials, etc, and so Johan and I rolled up our sleeves and got to work. What we thought was originally going to take a weekend with myself, Johan and my father turned into many weekends of hard work, missing tools, lack of materials and the like. To say the least we learned a lot about what not to do and what to do. Biggest learning lesson I took from it was to get your math straight first, luckily this is a horse shelter and not our first home so the slightly un-squared corners and the off kilter studs don’t put us off too much, but it sure was a pain when trying to put the walls up or the roofing on. I’d have to say though, that within all the long days, my favourite moment was when Johan screwed in the last roofing screw just as dusk was settling in and we smiled and high fived one another to finally see the many hard days were done.. I think my greatest pleasure with this project was knowing if you really put your head and heart into something you can do anything. In the end I took a lot of experience from this project, many of my days off spent working on it and feeling proud to know I have an amazing man like Johan in my life to get the job done with.. And quite honestly, for beginners, I don’t think we did to bad in the end..
