To Stretch a Shoestring | Knowledge & Wisdom

When my husband and I decided we wanted a summer home on the family farm on Great East Lake in Maine, my mother-in-law’s only comment was: “I have heard of folks doing things on a shoestring, but you two haven’t even got the money to buy lacings for your shoes!”

Not to be deterred, we bartered and swapped for everything we could. We cut trees from a neighbor’s woodlot “on shares” and took them to a local sawmill with our brother’s truck; in return we helped with his haying. The mill owner kept a third of the logs we brought him in exchange for cutting our logs into whatever lumber we needed.

Work was traded with summer people for nails and cement, and we salvaged windows for 50 cents apiece from a house that was being razed. The fireplace was made of native fieldstone (there was no shortage of that on our rocky building site) at a total cost of 5 cents—the price of a government pamphlet titled “How to Build a Fireplace.”

The project took five years to complete and cost us exactly $33.95 in cash. The major portion of that went for asphalt roofing shingles. Not a bad price for a house that’s stood for almost 50 years through countless winter storms and two hurricanes.

—Adapted from “How to Build a House for Under $40,”  by Ruth Langley Hill (April 1981)