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How to Build a Cobblestone House
He huffed and he puffed and he blew the house down - certainly not if the house was built with cobblestones. Building cobblestone houses was a folk art that flourished in upstate New York from 1825 until the Civil War in 1860. Many of the 700+ cobblestone homes that were built survive today, a testament to their fine craftsmanship. To build your cobblestone house you'll need 5 main components: cobblestones, soft lime mortar, wood for windows and doors, cut stone blocks for quoins, lintels and sills, and lots of cheap labor. Lets take them one at a time - assuming the cheap labor is you, your family, friends, relatives and anyone else you can convince to do manual labor for $1.00 to $1.50 per day. The first step is to gather the cobblestones. This may take several years. Cobblestones are small fist-sized stones deposited by the glaciers that swept from the north millennia ago. Rough-shaped ones can be gathered from the farm fields or rounded, lake-washed ones can be gathered along the shore of Lake Ontario. You'll need over 14,000 cobblestones, so get cracking. As the manly work of stone gathering progresses, the women and children can be kept busy sorting the stones by size and color. You'll want to use the finest, smoothest, similar-sized stones on the front of your house, and save the rougher, odd-sized ones for the back, sides and interior of the walls. While this is progressing, you better start preparing the soft lime mortar. Don't skimp and use Portland cement. It dries too fast and will pop the cobbles out as it dries. Soft lime mortar is made of lime, sand and water. Find limestone (calcium carbonate) or dolomite (magnesium carbonate) and break it into pieces. Burn it within heaps of logs for 2 to 3 days to create quicklime. Add water to the quicklime to create a hydrated lime sludge. Mix in 5 to 9 bushels of sand to 1 bushel of lime sludge. Age the mortar in a ground pit covered by sand or cow manure for up to a year.Fell a bunch of trees. They'll need to be hand-hewn to build the doors and windows - each custom fitted to a specific opening. Also, find a quarry where you can get limestone or sandstone blocks for the corners of your building (quoins) and as structural support over the doors and windows (lintels) and under the windows (sils). Now the fun begins. Start by laying the stones in walls 18 to 20-inches-thick. Build the wall with rubble stone, faced by cobbles. Use elongated or triangular shaped stones to tie the cobbles to the rubble wall. Use the soft lime mortar as your glue, getting fancy with straight ridges between the horizontal and vertical rows of cobbles. Build about 3 rows (or courses) per day so the mortar has time to slowly begin setting. It will take 35 years for the mortar to fully harden. Lay in the cut-stone blocks at the corners to create quoins. To finish the inside, apply horsehair plaster to the stone. Once the walls are above reach, you'll have to build scaffolding by burying poles in the ground 6 to 8 feet from the wall and tying cross members from the wall to the poles with hickory witches. Then lay planks on the cross members to provide a building platform. As the walls rise, you'll have to repeatedly raise the height of the scaffolding. Attach a crane and tackles to the highest pole to winch up buckets of cobblestones and mortar. Hand build your windows and doors to fit each opening and hand-hew trusses for your roof. Winter is a good time to do much of your carpentry work. Depending on how many workers you have and their skill level, you may finish in a year. More likely, the building process will take about 3 years. When you're done, you'll have a fine home that will stand for centuries. Go see for yourself. A new guidebook called "Cobblestone Quest - Road Tours of New York's Historic Buildings" (Footprint Press, www.footprintpress.com, 1-800-431-1579) offers 17 self-guided car or bicycle tours for viewing the diversity of cobblestone buildings clustered within a 65-mile radius of Rochester, NY, and no where else in the world. "Cobblestone Quest - Road Tours of New York's Historic Buildings"By Rich & Sue Freeman 17 self-guided car or bicycle tours for learning the history and observing the diversity of unique cobblestone buildings in Western New York State.http://www.footprintpress.com/Cobblestone/CobblestonePreview.htm208 pages, 20 maps, 85 photos, indexed, paperback, 10 X 7 inchesPrice: $19.95, ISBN# 1930480199Footprint Press, Inc., www.footprintpress.com ###Photos available - email sue@footprrintpress.com or call 585-421-9383. Rich and Sue Freeman decided to make their living from what they love-being outdoors. In 1996 they left corporate jobs to spend six months hiking 2,200 miles on the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. That adventure inspired them to share this love by introducing others to the joys of hiking.They decided to focus on short hikes, near home and wrote "Take A Hike! Family Walks in the Rochester Area." They went on to explore hiking, backpacking, bicycling, skiing, and snowshoeing trails, waterfalls, and waterways for paddling throughout central and western New York State. Along the way, they kept discovering unique and beautiful places in this region. They saw unusual "potato" houses (to quote an architectural student visiting the area from New York City). Of course, these weren't potato houses at all. They were cobblestone houses. They not only inspired the architectural student, but they inspired the Freemans to find out more and share their find with others. Cobblestone Quest is the result of that curiosity. This is the Freemans' 14th guidebook.
Latest News:Site: Yahoo! News Search Results for news Sarah Palin docu wins record ratings for Fox News (Reuters via Yahoo! News) In a week of records surrounding the Republican National Convention, Fox News Channel earned another one with its weekend documentary on vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. MySpace ad business ahead of target: News Corp (Reuters via Yahoo! News) News Corp's (NWSa.N) MySpace advertising business is operating ahead of expectations and its digital ad business is performing better than the marketplace, the company's chief operating officer said on Tuesday. Relief: Cubs get good news on Zambrano, Harden (ESPN) The Cubs received encouraging news on pitchers Rich Harden and Carlos Zambrano on Tuesday. False bankruptcy item highlights risks in online news (Market Watch) Investors are getting a fresh lesson in the power and perils of lightning-fast news on the Web in an already fast-moving market. Petraeus to Brief FOX News on Final Battlefield Tour (Fox News) Gen David Petraeus, fresh off an announcement that thousands of U.S. troops will be withdrawn from Iraq, will give his final U.S. interview to FOX News Wednesday before handing over control of U.S.-led forces in Iraq to Gen. Raymond Odierno next week. Lesson 6: Broadcasting news (BBC News) Students practise reading the news and produce a news programme adhering to a strict deadline. UPI NewsTrack Quirks in the News (UPI) Car crash knocks woman off toilet ? Woman uses Feng Shui after car hits home ? Mistakenly diagosed man gives away savings ? Wisconsin man eats 23,000 Big Macs ? UPI Quirks in the News. Lesson 5: Ordering news (BBC News) Students order several reports to make a news programme which appeals to a specific audience. Lesson 3: Writing News (BBC News) Students write a news script which is clear, concise and correct - the three Cs of journalism. Yahoo News Redesign May Pull a Technorati ? Why Not Twitter? (Wired News) Bloggers have uncovered URLs for a new Yahoo News layout which includes a ?Most Blogged? section. The list is presumably based off Buzz Tracker, which displays related blog posts and those that link back to an article. But wouldn't a "Twittered About" section make the site seem more cutting-edge? Site: news - Google News CNET News Daily Podcast: Say hello to the Palm Pre - CNET News
MORE RESOURCES: Site: Yahoo! News Search Results for humor New play finds humor in horror (Brigham Young NewsNet) 'Bread of Affliction,' a new production by the BYU Experimental Theatre Company, which will run Sept. 12 and 13, demonstrates how the Jewish people have survived many things largely through the power of humor. 'Whole lotta kid' kept humor despite cancer (Miami Herald) From the minute he was born, on Nov. 22, 1995, at 8.2 pounds, Bailey Blu Kayes was ``a whole lotta kid.'' He was, said his mother, Nicole Bailey, ``all energy -- running full speed, nonstop.'' TenantReports.com Injects a Sense of Humor into the Housing Market Amidst Credit Crisis (PRWeb) The mortgage meltdown makes tenant screening more important than ever for independent real estate investors. Real estate services site, www.TenantReports.com , aims to educate landlords on effectively screening potential tenants, while bringing a smile to those wrought with anxiety or fear of foreclosure at the thought of taking on tenants who can't pay the rent. (PRWeb Sep 11, 2008) Read ... Try humor to discourage kids' drama (The Charlotte Observer) Q. Our 16-year-old daughter constantly tells her younger siblings what to do and how to do it, and that the way they do things isn't good enough. It creates daily friction. What can we do to make it stop? A sense of humor would help. Fifty-plus years ago parents took child-raising seriously, but they took children, for the most part, with the proverbial grain of salt. Today's parents take ... Glossy thriller "Fringe" has heart, humor (Reuters via Yahoo! News) Strange things are happening, which is what you'd expect in a new series from J.J. Abrams. York County calendar of events (York County Coast Star) Talk: "The Art of Maine Humor" by Tim Sample at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, at 6:30 p.m. 646-5511 / www.ogunquitplayhouse.org. Golden anniversary for Davidsons (Georgetown Record) What keeps a marriage strong and healthy for 50 years? The grown children of Georgetown residents Bob and Betty Davidson think it is their love of strong family values plus a shared sense of humor and acceptance of each other. ?Spiderwick Chronicles? comes to Fenton library (Tri-County Times) Fenton ? What do you get when you cross ice cream with a VCR? The answer? A ?time-out.? ?Hob the troll? from the Renaissance Festival, with his own special humor, music and stories, was the highlight of a ?Spiderwick Chronicles? event at Jack R. Winegarden Library in Fenton. Varner: College education puts wage earners ahead of curve (The Pantagraph) A grandfather in the area sent an e-mail commenting on a recent article and also remembered my youthful enthusiasm, humor and respect for students. He couldn?t however quite remember when he was in my class. A quick check in the grade book showed it was fall 1975. I was brand new at Illinois State University. God has a sense of humor (The South Alabamian) Psalm 59 :7-8 (NLT) "Listen to the filth that comes from their mouths; their words cut like swords. 'After all, who can hear us?' they sneer. But LORD, you laugh at them. You scoff at all the hostile nations." Jesus faced the problem of pride with many of his closest disciples. Site: humor - Google News 'Darwin Awards': accidental humor - Baltimore Sun
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