Upon our return, we stayed for a while with Ruth’s parents (William and Hazel Mull)and then for a while with brother John and Leona. About this time I began to build a the house for Ruth’s parents. They were living in house in Hughesville NJ, and they were thinking about buying a house since retirement was nearing. I told them I would build them a house if there was nothing available at that time. After they began to look at available land they found a parcel that Conrad Folk had for sale. After some thought, they purchased the property. Ruth’s parents liked the house that Frank and Audrey Dalrymple had just finished and they decided on that design. One variation was that the house would be stone instead of brick like the Dalrymple’s. I sent for the plans and when they arrived I decided to start. With the hole for the basement dug and help from William, I laid the basement blocks. After the completion of the blocks and the concrete poured we were ready to start the superstructure. We were promised help from Ruth’s brother but when the time came for moving concrete the help didn’t materialize. There was always an excuse that there where other things to do. I had to do much of the work alone, I hated to ask Dad to help because he had a bad heart.
I began the framework and began to put up the Celotex. I had laid up the basement with twelve by sixteen inch blocks so that there would be room for the stone facade, which would not cost us anything. I got the doors and windows and I was able to install them myself, even though I could have used some help in leveling and plumbing them. I put up the rafters and William help me. He helped as well with the roof. I then began to work on the interior. Before I could put on the sheet-rock, the electrical work had to be completed as well as the plumbing. William wanted the large sizes of Celtex to reduce the number of joints so when I started the installation I found it most difficult. The sheets where four feet wide and fourteen feet long. The walls were not too bad, but when I had to put the ceiling in, again with no help what so ever, I had to devise methods to position the sheets and hold them in place so I could nail them in. In time I completed the work. That left the stone work for another time.
Soon after I began to look for a lot for our family. We were now living with John and Leona. John suggested I ask Bill Stamets about a building lot. He was agreeable to sell me a lot for a house. His price was 10 dollars for a lineal foot and four hundred feet deep. In time I also bought a pie shaped lot on the east side because that side was not a right angles to the road. Now with the new addition the lot wider by 90 feet in the back and one hundred twenty five feet in the front. The land cost $1,825. This addition permitted me to back the car from the garage without driving on my neighbors land. Pop signed the bank note for me so I could buy the land. I soon paid that off and he co-signed another note so I could buy the blocks, concrete, and cement for the masonry and as well as the floor joists and plywood that would eventually be the floor. I later covered that plywood with tar paper to form a flat roof, 3 feet above grade, so that our family could live in the basement. I had electricity brought in so we had lights and heat. I build a chimney through the floor and put a furnace in the basement so would have heat throughout and later in the house proper. I had a two hundred ninety foot well drilled which gave us eleven gallons of water a minute. We lived in the basement for about five years before continuing with the superstructure[1].
I paid off the second loan and now took a third loan and started to lay the blocks for the walls of the house. I bought the ceiling joists and rafters and then the plywood for the roof. I went to Bangor, PA slate quarry and bought a special sized slate which I was able to get for eleven dollars a square. Ruth’s father helped me put the slate on the roof, and then I was ready to put the metal lath on the studs and ceiling and to begin plastering. I put the windows in as I laid the block, so after plastering[2], I was ready to do the outside work. I told my father that I was thinking of putting a stone facade on the front of the house and brick on the other three sides. He suggested I put stone around the whole house. He offered to go with me to Ruben Van Horn who lived next to the Kingwood Methodist Church to inquire about getting some field stone from his property. Mr. Van Horn agreed that I could have the stone with the stipulation that I should leave the stone rows in as good shape as when I started. It was already early winter and there was little I could do outside, so I spent evenings and Saturdays sorting the stone from the stone fence rows. I separated stone suitable for building and rebuilt the stone fence behind me with the rejects. When I thought I had enough stone I hired Bob Hartpence and Howard Schaible to haul the stone. I hauled four large truckloads to my place and three loads to my father-in-law’s place.
When I went to Ruben Van Horn to ask him what I owed him he refused any money. I gave him ten dollars a truck load, but he said that even that was too much. He said I laid up the stone behind me making such nice rows that he thought he owed me something. He did accept what I gave him and I was thankful.
It was winter when I brought home the stone so the next job was to build the fireplace and chimney. I built it up to the roof, but the hole for the chimney to come through and put the tile flue so we could have heat. When I was ready to start laying the stone, Pop came days to cut the corner stones. He said it took too long to cut the stone and also lay them up, so he took it upon himself to make all the corners. When I came home from laying brick at the Delaware Valley High School, Pop had a number of stone cut and mortar mixed. After a quick supper I was at work. That year I completed the house with the exception of the east end above the ceiling line. I had the help from Greg and Mark who helped carry stone and mortar[3]. That left the fireplace and the chimney flues to finish.
I enjoy building fireplaces. Mine was built in rather cold weather and I finished it in the spring. I then was ready to plaster the interior. I bought wire lath and nailed it throughout the house. When I was ready to plaster, brother John, Frank Dalrymple, and Bob Kocsis offered to help me. We plastered the scratch coat in the house in one day, and I plastered the brown coat with their help. This took longer because the surface had to be straight. I put the white coat on by myself which took a day’s plastering for each room. The white coat is slacked lime and guaging plaster. I slacked the lime over night and could use it the next day. The white coat is put on in two layers and finished and troweled smooth serveral times with a water brush.
The house was done in 1959, the plaster came to be a job without a crack. There was but one small 12 inch crack along the doorway from the kitchen. Flooring was the last job before painting and tile setting in the bathrooms. The final job was putting the kitchen cabinets in place and then painting. Ruth’s father being a painter offered to do this throughout the house.
After completion of my house, I began to lay stone on Ruth’s parents house. I completed all but a small area which he asked me to leave so that he could practice to lay stone. He never finished the job because one day as he was preparing to go to town he had a massive heart attack and died at the age of seventy.
When the time for retirement neared, Pop began to look for a house in which to retire. He did not wish to get too far from the farm. When the Search house was put up for sale, he and Mom bought it. It was across the street from the Baptist Church. It was an ideal place for them, near enough to the farm and across the street from the church.
John and I put a new roof on the house and I plastered a new ceiling in the living room and patched all the cracks throughout the house. We sanded and varnished the floors and pointed the house’s interior and exterior. We had Bob Hartpence dig up the septic system, and their neighbor gave them permission to put the septic field on their land.
[1] Editor’s Note: The family entered as a family of five, and moved to the completed house as a family of seven.
[2] Editor’s Note: Frank Darymple helped plastered the house. He accepted no pay, using the excuse that his payment was that he was learning a new skill.
[3] Editor’s Note: The east end was 2 ½ stories above the ground. Stephan determined that Greg would not backup if crowded on the scaffold, while Mark would have certainly backed off the planks. Consequently, Greg was “top-man”, stocking stone and mortar, while Mark was “bottom-man” mixing up the mud and hoisting it up by rope and pulley. The bottom-man could retire to the TV to watch cartoons between mud batches.
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