It’s probably safe to say that today’s West Windsor contains very few people who would get actively involved in building their own houses. For one thing, there are probably few who would know how to do it, let alone be inclined to spend all the time it would take. If the full parking lots at the station are any indication, it would seem that the non-commuter daytime population is probably made up of family members who have had little experience cutting and nailing lumber or laying bricks and pouring concrete.
If you want to add another bedroom or bathroom to your house, you talk to a building contractor. But wait, you probably should engage an architect first so you have an expert opinion on what can be done and the best way to do it. (I might add, “the cheapest way to do it,” but who wants cheap, anyway? Well, maybe, “least expensive.”)
The point is that, as the saying goes, “times have changed.” I don’t mean to underestimate the creativity we have today in West Windsor, but I’m sure that most people here today would not look upon building a house as being “creative.” It’s just a job that “builders” do. But it hasn’t always been that way.
When we came to West Windsor in 1957, we knew quite a few people who had built their own houses. For one thing, many of the farmers who were here then had built their own — mainly because that was the only way then to get a house in the first place. So-called ”builders” were few and far between. Sometimes building the house was a family job, and it was no big deal to cut up 2x4s and nail them together.
(Notice that I refer to a place to live as a “house,” not a “home.” I’ll never get used to the idea of saying “home” the way the real estate people do, trying to make a residential structure seem to be endowed with some private meaning of its own. If you want to refer to the place where you live as “home,” fine, but the structure is still a house.)
Naturally, you had to have a plan or “blueprint” to guide you along. But house plans like that were easy to find. A number of plan books existed then for sale, so it was just a matter of deciding on a house you liked the looks of. Then you put together a list of materials and went to a lumber yard and placed your order. In a few days you would find the building lot covered with piles of all kinds of lumber.
That’s assuming, of course, that you had prepared the foundation first. You can’t put up the frame of a house on bare ground. And what the foundation looked like depended on whether or not you were going to have a basement or cellar under the main living space. And the foundation could be either poured concrete or built up with cinder blocks. But the “floor” of the foundation would have to be poured concrete that was finished off smoothly and level — a job best left to a trained mason.
Not long after we moved to Grovers Mill, I noticed that a new house was about to be built on the south side of Cranbury Road between the Mill and the bridge over Big Bear Brook. Since I drove to work in Princeton Junction every day on that road, I had a good look at the progress. It was impressive.
I learned that the new homeowner was Chick Tindall. From one of West Windsor’s old farming families, he was a mason by trade, but had decided to build his own house at that location because of the nice setting — woods, a stream, and a convenient road that connected with the “business areas” of the township. Watching him work laying bricks was a pleasure. And as far as I could tell, he did it all by himself.
When it came time to do carpentry, as in the interior construction and the roof, he did that, too. I never had a discussion with him about how he could schedule such a large job while still making a living as a mason, but I’m sure he had it all figured out ahead of time, and just went ahead and “did it.” For all I know, he also did the electric and plumbing work, as well.
Tindall’s house was not the only one I saw as a “do-it-yourselfer.” Over the years, half of the dozen houses on my street have undergone major renovations or additions in which the owners have
done a major part of the work. And that includes my own.
After just a few years in our new — but small — house, it was obvious that we needed to expand it to accommodate our family. With the proximity to my job and the very nice surroundings we had, the idea of moving to a larger house somewhere else was not very attractive. Who wants the hassle of moving and making new arrangements for paying for it all? Not very appealing. Obviously, you make the house you have bigger, as some of our neighbors had already started to do.
Also about that time, a couple of new houses started to go up on the few remaining empty lots on our street. That was exciting to me, because it gave me a bird’s-eye view of some of the construction techniques — should I have wanted to apply them to my own house.
So in 1962, serious planning began to add another bedroom and a half-bath to our house. Also included would be a breakfast room, a redesign of the kitchen, and the enclosing of a screened patio to make a “play room.” And I shouldn’t forget closing in the carport to make a fully enclosed “garage.” (Since that time, the resulting space has been my shop; it’s never had a car in it.) In keeping with the approach many people used then, the idea was to “do it yourself.” In my job as a research engineer I spent much of my time inventing, designing, and building new devices for special purposes; so what could be so hard about building an addition to my house?
Of course it would take time, but the labor would be free. A major advantage was that there would be no basement, so major excavation would be unnecessary. Before starting I had to get an official approval of the plan by the Township building inspector, Joe Luther. This required me to draw a detailed plan and to have real blueprints made. You don’t see many of those these days.
What needed to be done first was to dig a trench for the concrete footings that would underlie the cinder block walls. The trench I dug with a shovel — how else? — and then had the concrete delivered by Warner Concrete — it used to be by the train station in Princeton Junction.
Since placing the wet concrete was a time-sensitive job, I invited several of my colleagues from work over for a beer and a little “concrete arranging.” It all went smoothly, and when the footings hardened I went to work laying cinder blocks. By this time, I had an easy reference next door where masons Stan and Clifford Reed of Dutch Neck were busy laying the blocks for the foundation of the new house there.
Little by little the walls took shape and the family began to appreciate the prospect of a finished addition — along with a show of great patience, I should add. With the cinder block walls completed, the next step was to build the roof — a simple carpentry job. That
done, it was time for the Reeds again. This time to pour and finish the interior concrete floor slab and to do the interior wall and ceiling plastering. I decided on having the plastering done because the original part of the house was plastered, and it looked better than sheet rock.
Finishing up involved choosing and installing the windows and the plumbing fixtures for the new and relocated old bathrooms and the relocated kitchen sink. Extending the hot-water heating loop and providing a new well for our water were also required.
The latter came about because our original well ran dry soon after it was covered by the floor of the new addition. That episode and the hooking up of our new bathroom to the existing septic system are too taxing to go into here. All I can say is that the municipal sewer and Elizabethtown Water were very welcome when they came.
Looking at some of the invoices for the materials needed for the job brings back memories of old places that haven’t been around for many years: Mach Lumber (Etra Road, Hightstown); The Building Center (Conover and Emmons); Morris Maple & Son, Grover Lumber, Moore’s, Frank Millner Co., Castle Lumber, Farr Hardware Co., Two Guys From Harrison, Princeton Electric Supply Co., and a few others. Who recognizes any of these now?
Finally, after about 18 months the addition was complete, and the family was able to relax a bit. It was to be almost another decade before we needed “Addition 2” upstairs. Nowadays, that’s the place where I write “Looking Back.”
