At 61 She Built A Rock House By Hand

we built it 20 years 22 years ago from scratch wood is handsaw you built it with a cowboy from Montana yes the front porch came from an old motel that they tore down and it cost $75 that's a good deal you originally met Laura in my video about an 84-year-old American woman who tastes veite for the first time now I'm outside of wienberg Arizona and Laura is going to tell us about how at the age of 61 she started to build her own two-bedroom one B home with free local materials and lowcost scrap wood to create a darling Rock House with all the amenities I'll tell you how much it all costs soon rock hopper here some people may not think that the often brutally hot Sonoran Desert a place of scorpions and snakes is a good place to build a house my friend Laura however felt differently so tell us about the house Laura oh we built it 20 years 22 years ago uh from scratch the rocks are right from here the sand is right from the dry River bed um we mixed all our cement and most of the windows are secondhand and all the wood is secondhand and we didn't have electricity so the windows or wood is hand sawed the front door hand made um of course and there's some problems but it's very cozy it's about 2 feet thick how long did it take you to build it oh a year and a half and it we had to have the roof on before they would give us electricity so with a rock house it takes a long time to get the roof on and you got all these rocks from right nearby yes all the rocks are for in the yard or out in the river we have a dry river that goes by us we have a fireplace 2 and 1/2 acres and there are Horse Pens for horses I don't have any horses right now it's really a lovely area most of the time and you built it with a cowboy from Montana yes and did you run into any problems along the way probably it's been so long I don't remember we had a lot of people stopping by actually we had an English couple that stopped by and they were so cute and they sent us and they had a little boy and they sent me us a letter afterwards um that they really loved the house and appreciated what we were doing the water we had you have to have water to make cement are our neighbor across the way L us a 100 gallon tank with a spet and we would fill it with his water and pay him for that water once a month and that's where we got our water the front porch came from an old motel that they tore down and it cost $75 but it's all of the rafter wood and the pillars that hold the front porch up and Cedar shade and $75 was a good price W good deal well I think it's a cute little house I really like it yeah it's cozy very very cute and cozy and I'm going to show people the shower as well Rock shower that's kind of cool all right let's go back through here well first I'll show the the bedroom here's where I stayed is had a nice really warm down comforter on the bed so I got to sleep in a real bed which was nice for a change and uh this is the rock bedroom here you got a nice bunch of books and we'll go back be careful with that the step okay oh I don't want to to be in here necessar and this is a shower this is the rock shower in the back here this is really cool so yeah that's that is the rock shower and got a little window all those curtains to keep it warm so this is really can't buil a heat lator fireplace this is if the fireplace is going oh this is like a little heat heat alator heator yeah comes down there so the heat comes through there from the fireplace it can yes oh it can okay that's pretty neat yeah do you want to go outside and this is the front porch a little bit of a mess outside out here you got the nice big wooden door there and over here somebody gave us that wood it's so beautiful and Arley the cowboy built the door beautifully um those are our first three Christmas trees the fur trees Big M Mountain well that's a pretty nice place to just sit and have a view and wonderful place look at the horses out in the distance there right and there's the future redneck swimming pool big suaros and there's another one right over there and that aaro right there in there in those trees yeah yeah it was only this big when we were building it and Arley always said I'm going to go water the sororo every day well it's a good thing he did cuz look how big that thing became that's pretty cool and then those pieces of wood that was all $75 we had to go get it take it down yeah and bring it back but what a deal 75 bucks for all that that's a good deal yes good deal and these and these from the the motel the $75 we spent on all of [Music] this it's snowing in Arizona where there's cactus I have beautiful birds around here Cardinal there he is the Cardinal it took 2 and 1/2 years for Laura to complete this Rock Solid house with her cowboy assistant thousands of stones and 300 bags of cement later she moved into her new home by the time she finished with the electric plumbing stove pipes flooring septic and well factored in she had spent $30,000 I hope her story inspired you don't forget to give me a like on the video share and subscribe until next time this is Rock Apper I'll see you oh