Hand-Built Stone House Tour

Well we're almost 30 feet off the ground here on some scaffolding and it's a special day. In 1987 I laid the first stone in the basement foundation of this house and I'm kind of embarrassed to say that it's taken me 31 years to get this far but this particular stone you see here is quite significant it's the date stone I'm going to be setting this and I wanted to let you see that. This is a special time I didn't think it was going to take this long as I said I'm kind of embarrassed it's taken me this long but in my defense I have financed a household of seven people we have five kids now all of which came along since I started this project and after this stone I probably have four or five more stones to go and then it will be done. The last thing to do when you're setting any stone or when I'm setting stones here is to to do the pointing and I've gone with an old style here all old stonework a traditional structural stonework that I've seen has mortar joints that cover the edges of the stone. This tool is kind of interesting it was given to me by an old stonemason he was born in 1909 his name was Ivan Bailey I've written about him many times actually and and this is one of the tools that he'd use to make this line profile here so for most stones it actually takes just as long to do the pointing as it does to set the stone so I'll put a little more mortar in there later now I'm just I'm just connecting these lines I mean they don't look all that important close up but far away it really changes the look of the stonework and now it's the time for the this vertical one. Well I'm about to lay the last stone I'm going to take you up in the scaffolding and show you how that works it's a little different than regular stones but I've been I've got the last load of mortar here and it's in a special wheelbarrow this is a wheelbarrow I haven't used for years because it's getting kind of old and feeble but it is the wheelbarrow that Mary and I built the house with so the vast majority of mortar was mixed and dumped into this wheelbarrow stones were moved before I had running water when I was living in the shed I used to take baths in that wheelbarrow on Saturday nights and I figured the last load of mortar should be transported by this wheelbarrow since it's been with us from the start so as you see it's kind of messy but I'm going to rebuild it when we're all done but I wanted it in its original condition for this particular operation so the mortar goes on this hoist I've built here and I'll see you up top okay so I've got the last stone here and it's very different than any other stone I've laid in the house and except for the other peaks it's got to fit between the the the soffit here and of course once the stone is in place I can't grab it and move it and set it so I've drilled a hole here for this this masonry screw which gives me a handle and I'm going to be tipping the stone back and moving it back like this laying in some mortar and then lifting the stone up and pulling it forward by the handle and setting it down on the mortar going to let that harden and then the very last thing to do is to come up a couple of days from now and and take this screw the hole won't be visible it's too small so I'm going to get to it okay now that's that's way more mortar than we need but that's just what I want because it lets me wiggle it down here really awkward here because very much room lucky for me it's kind of hard to see what's going on down below that's it all done