Hostetler Construction

In July of 1963 Edmund Brown, the governor of California, issued George Hostetler a contractor’s license (#218608) and Hostetler Construction came into being. Well, in California anyways. My Grandpa Eli was a contractor in Ohio, I don’t know if he called his business Hostetler Construction. I don’t even know if you needed a license to build houses in Ohio at that time. If you did and that license is tucked away in an old collection of things, I would love to see it. That...Continue reading

I always try and notice when things go unexpectedly right. You know, you need to cut a 2x4 13-1/4" long so you pick up a board to trim and you measure it and it is exactly 13-1/4" long. Or your cutting a string of different length blocks out of a long piece, and the last cutoff you end up with is the exact length of the last block you need. It is surprising how often stuff like that happens. Noticing when things go wrong is second nature, you don't have to work at it, but ...noticing instead when things go right does wonders for your attitude. When I was younger and had a crew that for some reason was always coming up with corny "sayings", like "fine wood joinery with a jaundiced eye", and "piano framing" we got in the habit of saying "clean living" every time something good like that happened. I guess implying that because we were all decent upstanding young men, God was rewarding us with pre-cut 2 x 4's. Of course I didn't believe that then, and I still don't. After all, there are also those times when everything goes wrong, is God to blame then as well. But I do know this, the bible says that those who come to God must believe that he exists and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him. What does that mean, a rewarder, if it doesn't mean that we receive something good? For me, the point is moot. I am a big proponent of clean living regardless of how long the 2x4 blocks I pick up are. Well today I had to do some invasive investigating to determine if there was any insulation in the walls of a building I am drawing remodeling plans for, and if so, what size it was. Paper faced fiberglass insulation usually has the size printed on the paper face about every 4' or so. So I decided to cut a little hole that would be easily repaired to see if there was any insulation in the walls at all, and if there was insulation, then cutting a big enough hole to pull out a piece and determine the size. So I cut a hole about 3" x 4" and there was indeed insulation, and right in the middle of that 3" x 4" hole, a faded 30 year old stamp that reads R-11 (which is the size number I needed). The only thing that could have been improved was if it was right side up. Was it just chance? Probably. But maybe, just maybe, it was a father goofing around with one of his kids, because he can and he knew it would make me smile. And it did, plus it saved me the hassle of cutting a big hole in the wall and having to repair it.

Wainscot (Pronounced Wayne's Coat) is defined as the lower three or four feet of an interior wall when finished differently from the remainder of the wall. Not to be confused with Wayne's Coat (pronounced wainscot) which is a coat owned by someone named Wayne. Here is what about two weeks worth of wainscoting looks like. A couple of living areas, an entryway, and a hallway with a bunch of doors.... It was about 3 days in the shop making up the panels, and about that much time installing everything and scribing it to the floors and the walls. And then, to be able to get a smooth sprayed finish, a couple of days of masking everything off and sanding. If you are astute you might notice that doesn't quite add up to two weeks. Well what do you think it would do to the schedule if 5 of the panels somehow got made wrong? Not that I would ever do that, I'm asking for a friend.

Lines on a piece of paper. It is really quite remarkable that you can build something as complicated as a house, or in this case, a gymnasium, from a dozen pieces of paper with some lines on them. Simply by following directions, what starts out as lines on a piece of paper turns into windows and walls and rooms and amenities. Things that are tangible and usable and beautiful. Things that are real. Things that have value. The difference between the lines on the paper and...Continue reading

If you put a lot of stock in reviews, you may have noticed that Hostetler Construction has 13 reviews, and they are all 5 stars. These are all real reviews, none of which were fabricated or even solicited. So what does that tell you? Before you answer, let me fill in some of the blanks. Three of them are from family members, all cousins who I have grown up with. Five are from friends. (2 of which are pastors - I am not sure if they were speaking directly from God when they g...ave their reviews, but one can always hope :-) One is another contractor I have worked with. Three are from people I don't know, and one is from an actual client. So here's what you can logically conclude. I have a handful of good friends, a big extended family, and at least one happy client. And those three strangers...They are my favorite, because almost for certain they have mistaken me for my son Bryan who is also a contractor working under the name of Hostetler Construction. We all hope for our kids to be better than we are. If that happens, and we are occasionally mistaken for them, that is even better yet. A while back Bryan asked me if he could take over my Yelp account because his clients were leaving reviews on it. I didn't even know I had a Yelp account so I gladly said yes. Hostetler Construction--it is my son Bryan, it is me, Karl, it is my Dad, George, it is his dad, my grandpa, Bryans great grandpa, Eli, all contractors by trade. I don’t know about my great grandpa, or his dad, or his granddad, but they were all Amish. So it’s probably a safe bet that at the very least they built a few barns. It is a legacy. A legacy attested to on facebook by a handful of friends, a couple of cousins, a few strangers, and at least one satisfied client. Granted that is perhaps not enough to draw any definite conclusions, so I guess you might have to do it the old fashioned way, hire me to build something for you and then make up your own mind. Or you could just skip the old man, and hire his son. Along with his youth and energy and excellent people skills he has this going for him as well, he has me on speed dial. Or at least he would if speed dial were still a thing. So when Bryan decided to make some Hostetler Construction Tee shirts, he sort of captured this thought. Here they are, being modeled by three generations of Hostetlers. I am proud of my son and the businessman he is becoming. And in case you haven’t noticed, I have an insanely cute grandson. See more

I think that I shall never see, a poem as lovely as a tree. In the make a buck world of production home building, the first step is clearing the land. Taking everything down until all you have is dirt. And often you even strip off the top 3’ of dirt and compact it back in. You know, in case God wasn’t squeezing hard enough when he made this mudball we live on. I suppose that is all good, to have strong houses you need a firm footing. But for some reason I have never ...Continue reading

I used to make stained glass windows. It was sort of a hobby / business of mine when I was young. I guess if you don't make any money at it it is a hobby right? So definitely a hobby. Now my hobby is building houses. :-) Anyways, about 30 years ago I made this set of windows for the front door of a cabin in Arrowhead. About 20 years ago we remodeled that cabin. We added a new entry way, but the front door was reused and a stained glass side light of matching vines and... flowers was added. This Arrowhead project I have been working on for the last two years is for that same client. As part of this current project, that old front door has now been replaced with a new fiberglass door. The old door was in pretty bad shape. It would swell in the winter and it was sometimes hard to open and close so considerable force was occasionally brought to bear. FYI stained glass is not very compatible with considerable force. When I started this most recent project, one of the four windows had a handful of broken pieces of glass being held together with clear packing tape. I think it had been like that for years. On a whim I decided to fix it for them as a surprise. My stained glass supplies had been sitting unused in my garage for years and I thought I would see if I remembered how it was done. So one night I pulled it out and took it home and repaired it. The next day I put it back in. I waited to see if someone would notice it had been fixed. In a "no good deed goes unpunished" moment, before anyone noticed it had been fixed, a group of College age kids came up to use the cabin for the weekend. Apparently the door had swelled and was sticking so someone put their shoulder into it to get it to open. In the process they broke pieces of glass in all four windows, and the window that I had repaired now had probably half of the pieces of glass broken or missing. It was pretty unredeemable and probably contributed to the decision to replace the door. Well, if at first you don't succeed..... Unbeknownst to the owner when I got rid of the old door I saved the windows. They have been repaired and mounted in a frame. I am going to hang it up in center of the bay window next to the new front door and see once again if anyone notices. It is possible that some of them may see this post, but maybe not. So SHHH. Lets make this a facebook secret. I have decided that if nobody notices this time, I will bring it back home and hang it up in my garage where it is now, you know, just to keep it safe. See more

"Box of Blocks" was created when my kids were little, a box filled with wood blocks that were 1/2" wide by 3/4" deep by 3" tall. So three of them stacked on their side is the same height as two of them stacked on their edge - 1-1/2". And 6 on their side is the same height as 4 on the edge or 1 standing up - 3". This makes it possible to stack them up in lots of different ways and still keep things decently level. 144 of them will fit in a box that is 6" x 9" x 3", and yo...u can put them back in the box with all of them on their sides, or will all of them on their edges, or with all of them standing up, or with any number of combinations that add up to 3". There are hundreds of thousands of ways to put them back in their box making an almost unlimited number of different patterns which is a pretty cool thing in itself. When the kids were little we spent many hours building things and then knocking them down. I think the tallest structure we ever made was about 8' tall. They can also be stacked in long lines like dominos and toppled plus you have the worlds biggest Jenga game. We still have those original two boxes of blocks in our game cupboard and they still get pulled out every now and then and played with. Well two things have happened recently. I became a grandpa, and the milling of all the trim for my arrowhead remodel left my garage full of scrap pieces of Alder, most too small to be used for anything except maybe a 1/2" x 3/4" x 3" block. So the resulting pile of maybe a thousand of those little blocks was really almost inevitable. For a long time I have toyed with the idea of seeing if they would sell at a craft fair. Now that I have a bit of an inventory, maybe I will give it a whirl. If that doesn't work, I guess I am going to need more grandkids. :-) See more

If stone is a symbol of endurance, and a dove is the symbol for peace. What we so desperately need, in uncertain times, is a stone dove. Peace that is chiseled in stone. One of the memories I have from way back is going on a date day with my daughter. I was laying on my back under a tree in a park. The sun was filtering down through the leaves of the tree creating a dazzling array of different hues of green, the grass was cool, there was a gentle breeze blowing, a few st...Continue reading

Are you tired of your dreary old kitchen? Now, during this time of quarantine, you have a unique opportunity to get a brand new kitchen at a fraction of the cost. Hostetler Construction is proud to announce its virtual remodeling service. With this technology we can completely remodel your kitchen or your entire home without any of the risks associated with the novel Covid 19 coronavirus, or the inconvenience of remodeling. This is only possible because of the vast Hostet...ler Construction archives of before, during and after photos. If you have a laptop or a tablet, and a program like zoom that allows virtual backgrounds you can have a new kitchen. And your friends will never know since they aren't coming over anyways. We will send you before during and after pictures and you can do the rest. Best practices mandate that you change your shirt between screenshots to simulate the passing of time. Prices vary. See more

I am old enough to remember life before chop saws. In those day molding was cut with a sharp hand saw and a miter box. Every carpenter had one. And then they didn't. The chop saw changed the world of finish carpentry. Once you used one, there was no going back. And the saw that started it all was the 8" Rockwell miter saw. I would guess that any carpenter my age or older will remember those. I don't know if that was the first saw of its kind, but it was the first one I... ever saw, and the first one I ever used. You could buy them at sears. Today that little saw has been replaced by a bunch of big brothers. Sliding compound miter saws that can cut anything from crown molding to 4x12's. In fact, a 12" sliding miter saw which one man can carry and store in his garage is far superior to the 5 horsepower trailer mounted radial arm saw that we used to use for framing. 1000 lbs of metal replaced with 50 lbs of plastic. Several times cheaper as well. When I finally upgraded from that little Rockwell and got a 10" saw, I built myself a table for it. I used a multi-fold ladder as the base, and built a 10' long table with a fence that I could mount my saw to. I used that setup for years, probably decades actually. It was sturdy and really worked well. The one downside was that it weighed like a billion pounds. That is an estimate of course as my bathroom scale doesn't go that high. But it was hard to carry and awkward to store. When I bumped up to the 12" saw I currently use, it came with a free stand, so rather than fit my new saw to the trusty old stand that I had used forever, I switched to the Dewalt stand. I have been happy with every Dewalt saw I have owned. Obviously they were designed by different engineers than whoever designed that stand. It was a piece of junk. After a few short weeks things were breaking, you couldn't adjust it, and even with everything tight, it was sloppy and not very accurate. Unfortunately I had already thrown away my old stand or I would have switched back. I guess I see now why they were giving those stands away for free. Because I am cheap, I have continued to unhappily use that lousy stand for years. As I was putting it back in my garage this week I decided that it would make a good quarantine project, so I kept the legs and the base and built myself a new table. Now I just need a project to try it out on. Will it be as good as my old stand? It just might be. I weighed it ..... a billion pounds exactly. But because with age comes both weakness and wisdom, it comes apart and can be carried in manageable pieces.

Net zero. With the increasing focus on energy usage of buildings, a lot of attention is being given to how much energy a building uses. A "net zero" building, in theory, will produce as much energy as it uses. Starting next year, California is requiring all new houses to be net zero. That will make houses A) more affordable, or B) more expensive. This is a good idea, unless you would like to be able to afford to live in California. But enough about Jerry Brown and Gavin... Newsom. Another less obvious component of the energy usage of buildings is called embodied energy: the total energy required for the extraction, processing, manufacture, delivery, installation, and disposal of building materials. For example, when considering how much energy a solar panel will save, you would need to factor in how much energy is required to make, transport, install, and dispose of that panel as well. Another way to save energy, a passive way, is to use products with less embodied energy. Well, we have this pile of plywood that is going to be installed on a ceiling, and it isn't flat. Every piece has about a 6" bow to in it. So I devised a science experiment of sorts. What if we pushed all the plywood straight and let it sit for a few days? Could we straighten it out? My hypothesis was, that we could use a hydraulic jack to flatten the pile of plywood and let it sit over the weekend, and by so doing, it would make absolutely no difference whatsoever. I am happy to say that I was right. When we released the jack, the whole pile sprung right back up to where it was before. The jack is a ten-ton jack, I would guess we were pushing several tons to get the stack flat. So there is, by that rather rough estimation, in addition to whatever energy was used to manufacture and transport that plywood, 5,000 lbs of embodied energy in the stack of plywood that will need to be overcome as we install it piece by piece on the ceiling. After lifting each piece in place, we will then need to push hard enough to get the bow out of it as well. So Gavin, Jerry, for the sake of the environment, would you like to overcome some embodied energy and actually do something that makes a positive difference? If so I have an opportunity for you. Be the change.

Framing houses is just plain fun. I sort of miss the days when I did a lot of that. I love the way it looks right before you sheet the roof. You can see the shape, plus you can see the bones. And roofs are fun, particularly hip roofs, since they can be completely cut on the ground using nothing but math. Well, math and a saw. And I suppose a pencil too. Although you can't really tell from this picture, this is actually an irregular hip. The pitch of the roof is differe...nt on each side of the hip. That goes beyond pencil math and is getting pretty close to calculator math. There is probably a way to do it using new math if you have a whole day to spend and really really big piece of paper. Or, if your math is rusty and you are in a hurry. You can figure out and install the hip rafters, and then just measure everything else in place. I am not saying I did that, and I am not saying I didn't. Just saying there is always the old fashioned analog way for those who didn't pay close enough attention in trigonometry class. See more