Pete was doing some work on his cottage and--just like him--there was an impossible but fun task which he had decided to accomplish.
He had come by a BIG slab of dressed granite somewhere--it was about three by five feet square and about four inches thick. It was a BIG, solid, heavy slab of granite!
He had decided that it would be fine as his back porch floor--you would step out of his back door-- which was about six feet over the ground level--onto this slab and then down some regular wooden stairs to the back yard.
When I arrived he had already built four sturdy pillars to support the slab so the porch floor, resting on these pillars, would be just a little over shoulder height to a person standing on the ground. When the slab was in place he himself would carpenter in some wooden stairs and add a handrail. Perfect!
But--how to lift this mighty slab up over the pillars and into place at the door--remember this is a small Swiss village--not a California ranch-style suburb with lifting machines and contract laborers easily available.
Solution: wait until you get six friends visiting at the same time and they can lift the slab into place by brute force.
Pete was especially happy to have me visit because I was his sixth man. The rest of his crew were strong looking skier friends who had just skied over the mountains from Interlaken where he had been a very popular bartender.
I didn't think it would be possible, but we did it! No smashed fingers no hernias--by golly we just did it!
Pete got his solid granite back porch!
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