Last week Lee and I and Paul Larsen went to Gunnison and loaded up the stone and took it to the Manti quarry fro splitting. State Stone owns the quarry and has a hydraulic stone splitter. We are hiring State Stone to split all of the stone to 4″ thickness for Lee’s new studio/barn and for a future house.

Paul and Lee with State Stone’s guilotine.

Luis is the opperator. The guilotine generates 250 tons pressure.

Gerrardo takes the split stone from the press and Lee stacks it on pallets.

Bud Snedocor moved to Montreal and left me his dump truck to baby sit. Since it was made in 1969 I named it Wood stock. Here she is all loaded with split stone.

Joe the mason tooling the split stone to be laid up on Lee’s studio/barn.

Here is the barn so far. The down stairs will be hay storage and horse stalls on the west (right) and printmaking on the east. The whole upstairs will be a painting studio. It will be way nice for Lee. The east end of the barn is a log structure. The west will be sided with rough cut pine boards.

This is our dream home. A month ago we purchased this pile of rocks from a fellow in Gunnison. When the snow melts and the ground thaws we will begin moving all 70 tons of rock to Spring City where it will wait to be cut and laid up in to our permanent home. Meanwhile I am studying all about stone cutting and masonry. The local JC is offering a three day workshop in the same in April. By taking that class I’ll at least know if I should just hire this out or make it a multi year project.
Since acquiring the stone we have been looking around our community for historic homes to use as models for our building project. The one we like the best is not even a stone house but an adobe one in the neighboring town of Ephraim. It is slowly being restored by McKay and Sharon Anreason. Here are some images of that home that I am posting so our architect can look them over and get a sense of the place.

What you have here is a walk around the house starting at the Southeast corner and ending with the Southwest. What follows are some details.

Years ago when we were all younger I bought an old (1953) GMC flat bet with my friend Bruce Burnham. The truck was used to haul firewood, coal, lodgepole pine, firebrick and whatever else needed to be moved. The old boy did some serious duty in his time. The Roid (short for Hemroid) was the baddest ride in Sanpete County all through the eighties and early nineties. On a trip from Salt Lake hauling fire brick for my wood kiln in ht early nineties he lost a wheel and the program ground to a halt. The rear dual wheel went one way and I and the Roid went on down the road flattening one side of the brake drum. I towed the Roid home and it has been parked here ever since. A few years ago, after considerable searching at junk yards, I got a new brake drum to replace the one messed up in the fire brick incident so I could move the truck into my lot to keep the city from citing me for having it parked in their right of way.

Saturday morning I drained the old gas out of it, put new fuel in the tank and dropped a new 6 volt battery in the truck. The old Roid fired right up and purred like a cat. I was delighted and relieved as I had arranged for Zina to bring a crew of her college buddies down to help us move the logs for our future home to our new lot. We purchased the logs (a disassembled 1880’s house ) from Scott Anderson and Kent Perkins. Kent dropped by to see how the project was going. I think the He and Scott are glad that we will be re-habing the old house and living in it.

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We recently purchased two log cabins from a couple we know. They had disassembled the cabins and stored them under tarps here in town. The smaller of the two (16′x28′) will be a new painting studio for Lee when we move to our new place. The larger one (18′x34′) will eventually be a residence for us. They are both quite old and came from around here in the nineteenth century.

The kids who live next door to where the smaller cabin was stored came over to help us move the logs. The two smaller ones were fun to have around. The largest boy was actually very helpful. Pictured are Lee, Wyatt, J.C. and Tyler.

The logs are now stored in the orchard on our new place close to where the studio will stand.