Princess Auto

I have a buddy out in Nova Scotia, he notices that when something breaks or is needed, Canadian Tire often have it on sale that same weekend, in a similar fashion, after the wheel blew up a few days ago, I was browsing the vastness of the interwebs and noticed that Princess Auto had a 13 x 2-1/2 in. Solid Rubber Wheel Assembly with 32% off, usually $21.99 and on sale for $14.99 and it was a stars aligned moment as we were down in Victoria on a mini break, so a visit to the smelly place was required, a warehouse full of forever chemicals and foreign goods, to hopefully buy one, and we were not disappointed!

So, the old wheelbarrow is now back in business, all I needed to do was cut the spacers to the correct dimensions, apply lashings of grease to all the old bolts, add bigger washers to the bed connections (the bed is split in four places, this old "spare" wheelbarrow will live the rest of it's life on light duty) and I oiled the wood, which is in surprising condition for the age of a "lower shelf" unit.

In the next few days, three more yards of alder mulch will be delivered, moved and spread, which fundamentally gives us a break from gardening for the rest of the year.

Wheelbarrow, sort of...

The end of the month of April brought lots of weeding, as usual, and a delivery from Sooke Soils of some alder mulch, a dark, almost black mulch that we lay an inch or two on top of our weeded areas, it has been a fun week and of course, the old wheelbarrow was dusted down again, the tire was inflated and another year in the long life was to be started.

It was today that I was moving the last of the first lot of mulch about that I felt the inner tube go, I found that out afterwards, when it happened I just thought I had hit a bump. It was another issue in the life of a garden object, originally bought from Gibsons Building Supply, and I considered I would repair it again, so taking it apart I noticed that indeed, the inner tube was breached at the root of the valve, the tire and wheel seemed good except for the rusted out bearing, time to consider options.

Usually, taking my time and repairing things, while saving money, is the approved approach but at the moment, we are on a timetable with the mulching and need to finish phase one (more mulch arriving soon) so I replaced the old wheel with an "in stock" smaller diameter one which was sufficient but made the wheelbarrow a little more unstable and difficult to tip up over the larger rocks. In addition, overall the entire thing was in need of triage as the old bed of the barrow had previously split in four places, the handles needed attention and of course, now the tiny wheel, so perhaps it was time to replace the whole thing, although of course, logically I would keep the old one for a future repair or even if it is destined to be a planter.

The research online took no time, a new inner tube would be $20, a new wheel would be $30 which included an inner tube, no contest there, and then a whole new barrow, with two pneumatic tires would be $80 and after a little thought we had a trip to Home Hardware and a new sparkling one was bought and assembled over the period of an hour or so.

It is more of a garden cart type of wheelbarrow, more suited for bringing all the items to various job zones in the yard :

It is always a strange thing to move on from something so familiar, as I have said, the old 'true" single wheel barrow will not be discarded, I will bide my time and take it apart, maybe repair the split bed, oil the handles and brackets and keep my eye out for a full size replacement wheel or inner tube.

After all, storing useless stuff, that's what garden sheds are for.