Carpentering for the Carpenter

My earliest recollections of anything that related to carpentry was Dad building a house when I was three. I remember him having his John Deere "B" with a Farmhand loader on it in the basement hole doing a bit of touch up before starting the foundation. When he and the carpenter he had hired were building the back porch, my twin brother and I kept asking if we could have the short boards they were cutting. But they were for the short wall beside the porch door.

When I was six, Dad built a large round roofed barn. Ted (my twin) and I scrambled all over it as my oldest brother, Jim, sheeted the rafters. Later we learned how to lay cedar shingles (something I could still do today from that experience back then). Soon after that, Dad bought a little homemade sawmill and began sawing up logs for his own use. Over the years he built a complete set of outbuildings on the farm from the lumber he produced. Having three boys as a "ready" labor force certainly helped too.

Ted's and my first private venture was building a three-story tree house out behind the barn when we were about 12. (The sawmill produces a lot of scrap lumber for our various projects.

My first paying job was the first summer after high school. I helped build a Church. (Wiesenthall Baptist Church, still visible from Highway 2, just north of Millet, Alberta) The first's month's work got covered up by the concrete slab floor. But in a few days we had the arched beams up. Then the cedar decking and roofing soon fleshed out this skeleton.

Throughout my life I continued to learn by doing and by working with others. Although I've worked on many building and renovation projects, I've never build a complete building except for a few camp cabins and a 500 square foot addition to our house in Uranium City. By using donated or recycled material and volunteer labor, it only cost about $3000. Even 25 years ago that was a bargain!

At present I am a maintenance man at small Christian College. This means I am learning something new almost every day. That's just a part of "Carpentering for 'The Carpenter.'"