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Well, this is something of a historic moment here. This scaffolding is coming
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down on this day and it's been up for longer than I care to admit. It was
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necessary to bring the stonework up to the peak of my house that I've built
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It's about 30 feet off the ground and the round window that you see here
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necessitated the construction of a round arch and you can see the stones here
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I cut all these out from rough slabs of stone, raw stone, that I've gathered here
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on Manitoulin Island in Canada where I live and the stones are shaped with
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following plywood patterns I made. You can see the inner edge here has been
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textured. I used an air hammer for that. The stones are all full thickness
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They're nine inches thick and they form this pattern with the rest of the
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surrounding wall. Today is the day the scaffolding comes down and I just
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wanted to share that with you and to give you a sort of fast motion view of
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this special day. You can't really see inside. That's the attic of our house
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There's a lot of reflection there but this is what it looks like from up here
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and I've spent a long time getting this far so help me celebrate in taking the
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scaffolding down. That's me there and my oldest son Robert. He's going to help me
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I started stoneworking about three years before Robert was born. He was born in
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1990 so I've been at the stonework thing for quite a while. The whole basement of
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the house is done in old-fashioned stonework too. That's two foot thick
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walls in that old structural stone kind of way. I've really come to love stonework
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and I will always have a stoneworking project on the go of some kind. It will
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be nice to see the stonework fully visible when the scaffolding comes down
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One of the other reasons I'm eager to get the scaffolding down is because the
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veranda roof at the stage really needs to be re-shingled. I didn't want to do
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that while I was still stoneworking besides the fact that the scaffolding
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was in the way. There's all kinds of mortar that falls down when you do this sort of work and of course that all has to be done before the shingles
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get replaced. They were ridiculously bad condition shingles actually. They went on in about the early 90s or so and they didn't last as long as other shingles
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I've seen. It's amazing that they could even keep water out at all but they have
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It's an open veranda. It doesn't really matter whether it leaked or not but it
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didn't leak and the real reason I think is because I did an underlay of tar
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paper under the shingles. That really saved the day. People who have come over
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to watch me work have often commented about this hoist arrangement that I
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built. That's that blue narrow frame scaffolding you see there in the
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foreground and that is nothing but narrow frame scaffolding. It's tied into
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the building and there's a six by six beam on the top with an electric hoist
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and that raises and lowers the plywood and and lumber framework that's there
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That's how I got the stone and mortar up and would bring tools down too. That's
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going to come in handy as we continue working and in fact after the
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scaffolding was removed, after the main scaffolding was removed, I have left that
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hoist there so that I can bring shingles up to do that roofing job. Stone working
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like this is ridiculously time-consuming. I'm not sure anyone could afford to pay
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me to do something like this. This is not like working with manufactured stone
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As I said before, all of this stone has been quarried, a lot of it by hand
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just prying up slabs of limestone from the island with a big pry bar and cutting
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chiseling, shaping the stones. No two stones are the same. The operation is basically measuring the space where you want the stone to go
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cutting a stone to fit, facing it and putting it up that way. On a good day
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I might cut and lay ten stones or so. The reason I do it, the reason I will always
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do it, is just because of the beauty. As the scaffolding comes down now
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you can see something of what I'm talking about. The texture of the stones
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for instance, the way they're a little bit rounded on their face, that creates light
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and shadow on the building that changes through the course of the day depending
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on the angle of the sun. Also, there is a kind of a pattern here to the stonework
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It's called a broken ashlar pattern. You can see there are some square-shaped
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lighter-coloured stones here and there, and they're punctuated by the narrower, longer stones that are next to them. The pattern is not entirely regular
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and I think for me that's part of the attraction. It's kind of like the
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architectural equivalent of traditional jazz music. There's a theme that runs through it, but there's also lots of tangents and frills and clarinet solos
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that sprout off in all directions. For me, the stonework is kind of like that
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At this stage of the scaffolding takedown, I'm feeling kind of relieved because these
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wider frames that have been sitting on the veranda roof, they actually don't belong to me
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They're from a contractor friend of mine, Rob Deering. He's been very patient
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because as I said, this project is something I just do on the sideline
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I rarely get two days in a row to work on it. So when I'm finished all my other work
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on the farmstead here at Bailey Line Road, I will try to get to some stonework
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So that's why it has taken me years to do this. And Rob loaned me his large
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scaffolding frames, and he hasn't complained about me having them this long
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It will be a relief. A few hours after what you're seeing now, I loaded them in
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the truck and brought them back, so I can at least feel a little better that I'm
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not hogging these particular frames of his for any longer. One of the especially nice things for me is that I get to do this scaffolding takedown
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with Robert. All the kids have memories of dad doing stonework, and I think
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I hope, that it helps them to feel rooted to this place, that we're not just living
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in an ordinary home. We're living in, essentially, my art. The art that I love
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to do best is what keeps the wind and rain and snow and sun off of us
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and stonework has been a part of that. I almost actually didn't build the house
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out of stone. I was originally thinking I might make a log place
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but I was committed to local materials wherever I could find them
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and we didn't have enough big logs on our farmstead property, so that's why I decided
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to go with stone. It was a happy coincidence, too, because there's something
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about stone for me that really works well. We're just finishing up here
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There's a lot of old mortar to clean up, but you've been in on this historic
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unveiling, and I hope you found this interesting. Thanks for watching
