He Put Up His Own Building

He Put Up His Own Building BUILDINGS Miscellaneous 30-1-35 "It took me 10 days to do a job that the company says a 4-man crew can do in one day. But I did it all myself," says 69-year-old Lester Rose about the 30 by 40-ft. building he recently erected on his farm. Rose has been a "do-it-yourselfer" most of his life. FARM SHOW featured his mobile workshop a couple years ago (Vol. 28 No. 6). He and wife Audrea spent 14 years on the road doing volunteer construction work. Now, they're "settling down" on their mountainside 4-acre place near Yellville, Arkansas. Rose put up the building to use as a shop but after learning how long it would take to build a new house on the property, he decided to use the back 16 ft. as an apartment for both of them. The $4,900 building kit (including shipping) from U.S. Building came packed on a 4,700-lb. pallet and included 4,100 bolts. Rose says the hardest part of putting up the building was lifting each of the twenty 2 by 30 ft. overlapping metal spans. "They're like wet noodles. When you start up with them, they go this way, that way, and every which way," he says. To handle them, Rose used his little Bolens 17 hp 4-WD diesel tractor and put a 4 by 4 on the front of the grill guard with a battery-powered winch on the back of it. A cable runs through a pulley at the top that hooks to the span and lifts it up. He built A-frames out of 2 by 4's and put a come-along on each corner to get each corner to come up at the same time. "Then, I had to continually climb on the tractor, off the tractor, and on the tractor again. That's the part that took most of the 10 days to do," he says. Rose didn't think the company's directions for securing the structure to the ground were adequate so he did it differently. He laid a 40-ft. piece of angle iron the length of the building and drilled holes every 2 ft. on the bottom so he could pound a 40-in. length of rebar through the angle iron into the ground and weld it flush with the angle iron. He also drilled holes every 2 ft. on the side of the angle iron so he could bolt the spans and angle iron together. Rose later paid a contractor $700 to lay a 5-in. cement floor on top of the angle iron. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Lester Rose, 2136 MC 8050, Yellville, Arkansas. 72687 (ph 870 449-2125; lester_rose @hotmail.com) or U.S. Building Direct (ph 800 463-6062; www.usbuildingsdirect.c om).

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