There is something unique and special about stone houses. A person can even build one by himself with the help of a few friends as farmers sometimes did years ago. Basic raw materials, field stones and sand from a creek, are free for the taking. Tools are relatively inexpensive: shovels, wagons, hammers. Then of course there are expenses for a roof, windows, doors, plumbing and electrical connections.
Alan Rucker and his wife Shelia live in a stone house on Arnold Mill Road in Alpharetta. Alan’s grandparents L.G. (Lawrence) Rucker, a cotton farmer, and his wife Byrd Broadwell Rucker built and lived in an oak and pine frame “shotgun house,” a narrow rectangular home, usually no more than about 12 feet wide, with three to five rooms arranged one behind the other and doors at each end of the house with one hallway running the entire length of the house. It was a very popular style in the South from the end of the Civil War through the 1920s.
Unfortunately, the house burned down in 1939. The entire Crabapple community came to the rescue and built the stone house that exists today. Granite from Stone Mountain was used in the construction. Sand from Little River about 3 miles north of the house was brought in by mule drawn wagon and mixed with Portland cement and crushed stone to make concrete. Timber was cut on the property. Rocks were shaped by hammer on site. To assure straight walls, a frame was built and covered with 1 x 6 or 1 x 8 inch rough cut lumber with the stones set outside the frame much in the fashion of modern bricklaying. Plumb bobs assured vertical walls. Only the exterior walls are stone. Inside construction is tongue and groove pine. The floors are heart pine. Two fireplaces provided the only heat. Alan’s grandparents added propane tanks to the fireplaces a few years later. Like many farmhouses of the…
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