In the first article in this series, Grandfather talked about building your own house.
Here’s his during the build:
And here’s where Grandfather lived while his house was being built:
When he was younger he and his friends (most now departed) had fun together, visiting each other’s houses en mass on Saturday nights.
The stairway down from the front hall to four bedrooms, a sitting room and a bathroom downstairs was the last project Grandfather built in his house. He and his friends could get going pretty good at times, so he built a thirteen-step circular stairway strong enough to hold two revelers per step:
Grandfather welds the tangs supporting the stair treads on the center post
The wood parts and construction props cut out beforehand.
The pipe uprights depending from the laminated railing support the tread’s outsides.
Done!
Actually, Grandfather doesn’t know why he builds things so strong. Grandfather went to Michigan State College (now University) on the GI bill. Great-Great Grandfather was general manager of the Chevrolet gray iron foundry in Saginaw, Michigan and he was pleased that Grandfather went to Michigan State, rather than the University of Michigan. Grandfather said Michigan State’s engineers were more practical. Great-Great Grandfather said he hired a U of M graduate to design a conveyor and it was too fragile and collapsed.
So, maybe that’s why Grandfather overbuilds — it’s because he didn’t go to the University of Michigan …
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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 22 February 2018.
Photos: Courtesy of the Blakeslee Family
Nice. If you’re going to build something, you might as well build it durable so it can last.
Come to think of it, you’re right.
That’s expressed this way in my life:
After my first wife died (you can read about her in the URL posted at the end of each of these articles – see the commentary there), I was determined to terminate my grief as soon as I could. Before I go on let me say that did not mean putting her out of mind – I think about her in love and awe every day. The one we happily call “my latest wife”, whom I married later, talk about her and her presence in the house.
With that background, back to the main point: I hired a therapist to help me and he pointed out that the house was my monument and said that if I had to live in my monument to be happy I might have trouble attracting a lady-love to the mountains of (shudder) West Virginia.
But I found one. She had spent much time in the Alps and loves it here.
Several erstwhile immigrants have come and gone over the years I’ve been here. Early on, the occasional hippie discovered why his grandparents left such places, when his bamboo strut and polyethylene “structure” blew flat in the winds of November.
One more substantial house, built with money the builder said he found inside the wall of an earlier, out-of-state house of his, burned down and his new-age barn was torn down after he went elsewhere.
For an o’er-arching perspective on monuments, read “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
That’s a beautiful staircase! You’re very ingenious to think of supporting the treads with the railing! I’ve seen some spiral staircases designed with an integral tread and tube that slides down over a solid pole, in which case the railing doesn’t need to be structural. Great idea!
Now for my burning question, what happened to all of the body panels on your tractor in the picture?
Well, that little Sears tractor started out as a normal (if there’s anything “normal” in my life) mowing and towing machine. Its engine wore out and I replaced it with a cast iron industrial engine running a generator, which you can see mounted on the front of the tractor. The sheet metal wouldn’t fit over the big-tall new engine and was discarded.
Amazing work! But I would expect nothing less from an engineer. There are many carpenters out there who have nary a clue how to build a proper staircase.
I’ll let you in on a little secret: My degree is a BA in production management.
As Len can tell you, getting an engineering degree ain’t easy and, opportunist that I am, I discovered that the Patent Office at that time needed examiners so badly that they would hire college graduates with any degree, provided they had a threshold number of credits in mathematics, science and/or engineering, which I had accumulated. So I switched to Business Administration. The rest is history.
I’m not much for credentials or authority-sanctioned activity.
Not all engineers are good with saws, Cowpoke. Unfortunately, I’m a good example of that.
I really enjoy your Grandfather Says stories! Please keep them coming.
How long did that project take from start to finish?
Hi, Sandy – Well, it’s hard to say – so much depends on what’s considered time spent on the stairway.
Acquiring all the tools over the years, salvaging walnut logs from the forest floor and making them into panels, pulling down the old barn for the oak to make the stair treads and waiting for the glue to dry between laminate applications to the railing, reworking old white oak fence boards for the laminate sections and sawing out their curves on my bandsaw, cutting he tangs and welding them to the centerpost …
Hard as I think about it, it’s not like the stone wall was and I really can’t make a useful guess.
Sandy, the blog is Len’s and so far he has seen fit to keep “Grandfather Says” going (he did fire me as an editor once. I found a mistake in one of his blogs and misspelled a word in a three-word suggested edit).
I’m honored and pleased to be able to share Dave’s stories for as long as he wants!!
RD,
I’m convinced folks that build their own homes are a breed apart from most, and will have little trouble doing well in life.
I agree, Andy, but what if at least one of us is wrong about that?
As one Puritan said to the other: “Silas. I think only me and thee are saved, and I’m not so sure about thee.”
I enjoy your articles, and photos Mr. Dave. My grandpa built everything to last too. He threw so much angle iron, and scrap steel into the forms of his garage foundation that we’ll all be dead before it cracks.
I wonder, do you think he threw fruitcake in there too?
😀
Well, now, several years later, I have a great deal of difficulty getting up and down my stairway, but I can access the downstairs area of the house through its back outside door, which is on grade. I have told about the influence for making all the entrances on grade elsewhere: I learned from my Grandfather’s house which had stairs to its entrances, that one couldn’t live well with that arrangement in old age. My Grandfather had to leave his house and go into a nursing home.
Len tells me he has enough of my stuff in the pipeline to last until sometime in 2019.
After it appears here, my daughter, who is a successful publisher, plans to edit and publish a print version – we’ll see (or maybe you’ll see – I might be gone).
My concern at age mid-forties for building a house i could still live in a half-century later depends om a conviction not widely shared nowadays, I’m afraid. A house can be a lifelong home; one has to make it happen by one’s whole way of life. Maybe i was born a century or so too late – I should have been in the 19th century.