Grandfather sees that very few folks build their own houses anymore. But Grandfather says he thinks the increasing concentration of US housing in the hands of wealthy owners, who then effectively control them as rentals, may make some of you enterprising youngsters think about revisiting do-it-yourself house building.
Sears Roebuck offered pre-cut houses from 1908 to 1940; Grandfather owned one between 1964 and 1977.
Then, starting in 1977, Grandfather and his sons built a house of Grandfather’s own design — from scratch.
As you can see, Grandfather never tells anybody to do anything he hasn’t done himself.
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About the Author: RD Blakeslee is a nonagenarian in West Virginia who built his net worth by only investing in that which can be enjoyed during acquisition and throughout life, as opposed to papers in a drawer, like stocks and bonds. You can read more about him here. This article was originally published on 6 July 2017.
Original oil painting by: Grandfather’s wife
Looking forward to more of these. How long did it take Grandfather build his house? More and more people are starting to buy (and build) their own “tiny” houses.
The family lived in the house while we built it and other enterprises( e.g. establishing a cattle herd) stretched the construction time out some. Also, some of the details, e.g. a massive stone wall in the great room, were labor intensive couldn’t be done quickly. “One stone at a time”, so to speak.
But we started the house in June 1977 and were occupying it by November.
I should add: We hired subcontractors for site preparation, foundation masonry and to help us with some of the framing and roofing.
Grandfather says he’s sorry to hear of the “tiny house” movement.
He believes we as a people shouldn’t settle for that.
Grandfather bought a small “house trailer” to use, along with a pre-existing cabin onsite, to house the family and provide a bathroom and kitchen during construction of the manor.
Thank you for your response, Grandfather! I think tiny houses are a crazy fad. I don’t see the appeal of them, or the practicality of squeezing a family into such small spaces.
Most people today would rather buy an existing home and flip it for a profit.
Thanks for the article, I enjoyed reading it. Several people in our neighborhood had Sears & Roebuck prefab homes. The Sears & Roebuck catalogs were great in the forties. It was fun looking through them. Some of the other things that we might find odd in a mail order catalog today were common place then. Live baby poultry, bees and bee keeping equipment, trusses and corsets, horse harness and saddles, farm equipment, guns and almost everything needed for country living.
Sears & Roebuck was the Amazon of their day. For rural people, and working people in towns, for folks living in a small village with a little country store and not much selection, Sears was a God send! You tore out the order blank (Been there, done that.), enclosed a check and sent it off in a envelope which was also in the catalog. You had to use your own stamp. Ten days or two weeks later, the item appeared on your door step. The regular catalogs spring and fall kept you up on fashion, fabrics, accessories. The Christmas “wish book” was my favorite reading as a child, and I was free to circle anything which interested me with a pen in case anyone wanted a hint of what I’d like for Christmas. What fun! I guess all that era Sears (and Montgomery Ward) executives from then are long dead, as surely they would have come up with a modern replacement for the wish book and the catalogs on the Internet and saved Sears (Montgomery Ward succumbed long ago.) from destruction by online shopping and Amazon. I have never heard that Sears has any online presence. There’s just those empty, echoing, lonely stores stocked with a sparse, non appealing jumble of merchandise, and once great Craftsman tools which now are badly made in China. We buy vintage tools at yard and house sales, getting better quality than anything Sears sells from China today. You could even buy saddles, a driving cart, horse tack, and a pony from Sears when I was a kid, but since they didn’t GUARANTEE that you’d get the beautiful spotted pony which illustrated that ad, I was not tempted. There was that disclaimer about “This may not be the exact pony which will be delivered.” Even at that age I realized there might be bait and switch and I’d get the plain dark brown pony instead of the flashy paint!
Most of my best tools are vintage, as are yours, Karen.
An old ca. 1900 Crescent square-head planer, which I converted from flat belt drive to 3-phase electric, planed most of my finish lumber out of barn boards and windfallen walnut logs, slabbed out on a 36 inch bandsaw, also ca. turn of the last century. My handheld belt sander is a Craftsman ca. 1970, or so. The square planer was also used to mill moldings, via a molding cutter ground to shape on a bench grinder, also old, picked out of a load of old “antiques” from a Pennsylvania barn.
The square planer could never be sold new these days – too dangerous, say those in Washington who champion our right to be protected from ourselves.
Way back, there was a time when my first and only thought for hand tools was Craftsman. These days I take time to compare and think about it. I think that’s a combination of being wiser and a decline in my trust of the brand. I think they still make some nice tools, but it’s hit and miss, so I’m prone to look elsewhere these days.
The Craftsman brand was sold to a Chinese firm with predictable results: The brand was exploited with cheapened products for a quick, short profit.
Stanley is now making a genuine effort to produce high-quality tools.
Wife and I are one of the “millionaire-next-door” type folks….and a whole lot of it is because we built our first, and later second (and current for 30 years) homes ourselves….drove every nail, pulled every wire, laid every brick, etc.
We left our parents home in our late teens with an old second hand car and a few bucks in our pockets, and retired with a 7 figure net worth, all done without any family financial help.
That’s encouraging to hear, andy! Congratulations!
Sometimes I feel pretty lonely, out here on my counterculture limb…
Kinda sad when DIY and living within your means are “counterculture.”
I learned how to do basic plumbing, electrical, and so on when we left our pretend mansion in ’09 and began renovating our much lesser rental property. Ten years later, I’m not sure I want to move to somewhere better if it means having a mortgage again.
Sad, indeed, Clete!
But hard times precede cultural re-evaluation and those may be coming soon.
Maybe self-reliance will be more widely valued, after that.
As the series runs again, Grandfather will respond to all new comments.
Deja vu all over again – Yogi Berra
Assuming you have the lumber delivered, does anybody know the bare minimum number of tools needed to build a house including the wiring and plumbing (but not counting the foundation)? Can you build a quality house with just a hammer (or nail gun), saw, measuring tape and level?
You got Grandfather there. He used a good many more tools, but never thought about the minimum required.
It’s immediately clear, though, that you would need at least a few more tools for plumbing and wiring.
TN Andy, if you’re on the channel: Any thoughts?
Well … I think you would need a screwdriver and wire strippers/cutters as a bare minimum for the electrical! If you don’t mind flying without a net, you could probably get by without the multimeter, although I wouldn’t try it.
I grew up a DIY. I highly recommend that all people learn skills, and teach them to their children. Although, I do suggest you spare them the experience with a cotton hoe. lol