Church Porch

When Ossie Steiner made the finials and balusters and other decorative parts of the Oysterville Church, he intended them to last.  That they were beautiful and provided just the right finishing touches to the restoration of the old building went without saying.  Ossie was a craftsman of the first order and he fashioned those final embellishments as exact replicas of the 1892 parts they were to replace.  That was in 1978 – forty-eight years ago.

Painting Rack

So far, all of those parts, except for one, remain perfectly solid and look to last another forty-eight years – or at least another 36 which would be as long as the originals held up.  That one bad baluster was apparently hiding a rotten core from the beginning and finally, earlier this summer, it gave way.  Mychael Clarson removed it (and its next door neighbor) and Nyel took the solid piece to Richard Rank to duplicate on his lathe.  Nyel ordered six, just in case, and designed a painting rack so that he can paint them assembly line style.  A pair and four spares!  Ossie would be proud.

In 1980 Ossie began building my house (now owned by Cyndy Hayward) on the bay.  The Bank of Pacific building in Ocean Park was going up at the same time and I remember Ossie shaking his head over their roof as it was being constructed.

Bay House Under Construction, 1979

“Your roof will last twice as long as that one,” he told me.  And it did.  In fact, I think the bank building has been re-roofed twice since then and the bay house… not at all.  I believe that the difference was that Ossie used shakes, not shingles, and laid them on with greater overlap than those at the bank.  Even so, 47 years is pretty amazing! Whatever Ossie did might have been more spendy initially but since then, has been a money-saver many times over.

“They don’t make ‘em like they used to,” people often say.  I don’t know about that, but I do know that back in his day, Ossie set a high standard, indeed.   I’m glad I had the opportunity to hire him and to watch him at work.  He was a master builder, indeed.