Anyone live in, own, work on a sears kit house. Owned mine from ’80 -’88. in Potown (Pontiac).
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There used to be a couple of very tiny kit homes (not sure if Sears) in our small town. One was torn down and the other resided and added on to so you can't recognize it.
They were sort of log cabins. Basically pieces like car siding that were notched on the ends to fit together like logs. I suspect that they were delivered on a flatcar (both were only 2 blocks from the rail line).
happy?
This will kill you. It's all about location. My cousin has one in Venice, Ca. 2 off the Pacific and $1.4 Million. OUCH a far cry from the original probably 5K with the lot and labor.
I live in Carlinville, Illinois. We have the largest collection of sears homes in the world.
I lived in one for a while. They're notorious for being cramped, and having ridiculously small closets by modern standards. Most of them were put together by DIYers. Some did well, others didn't.
For instance - In the house I lived in, the floor joists were set at all kinds of odd spacings. I don't think they made any layout marks - They just nailed in a floor joist wherever it looked good. And the floor bounced like heck.
They're typically sold as "starter homes" to first time home buyers, or are rental properties. So a lot of them have not been maintained well. Some of them have had TERRIBLE additions put on them. But they're on really small lots, so you can't even put on a very big addition.
Since they're either rentals or owned by lower income people, the K&T wiring has often not been updated. Or it has had many pathes and new outlets tied in.
They can stil be bought for about $40,000 or so here, obviously depending on the condition.
Sears has a web page about them at: http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/
One interesting side story has developed for me. There was a lady named Rose Thorton who used to hang around here on BT. She wrote a book about the sears homes called "the House That Sears built".
A friend of mine named Lori Flori claims to have given her a lot of the material for the book. But Rose did not give Lori any credit in her book. So Lori got mad and wrote her own book about sears homes called "Additionally Speaking".
I can't find a link to where you can buy it online for some reason. Maybe it's too new to be out there yet.
There was a thread about this a few years back:
http://forums.taunton.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=tp-breaktime&msg=28189.1
Roger that on the small closets. Mine was a 2BR. The closet in the 2nd br was about 36" wide, but onlyabout 12" deed. Clothes hangers at45 deg. angle!
Mike
Looks like the 2 authors of the sears homes books aren't terribly thrilled with each other.From:http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=16107647&BRD=1719&PAG=461&dept_id=25271&rfi=6"Plagiarism, copyright infringement and defamation claims are flying between two authors of books on historic Sears homes, leading to a federal lawsuit."This oughta be fun...
When a person is calm, complex events appear simple. [John Heider]
""If Rosemary Thornton wants a fight, I am ready to take it to the mattresses," Flori said."Are they going to have a mud wrestlen match or hair pulling on the courthouse steps.
I've met both women. You wouldn *NOT* want to see the 2 of them wrestling. (-:.Honestly - I've known Laurie for a long time. Based on what I know of her, I tend to favor her side of the story.
Glass, china, and reputations are easily cracked and never well mended. [Benjamin Franklin]
having ridiculously small closets by modern standards.
My understanding is that most of those houses were for working class families. each family member had one good set of clothes that needed to be hung up. All other clothing was for work, play, or school, and as such was stored in dressers.
Of course in the simpler times families didn't have an extra ten tons of "stuff" to put in closets either.
Bowz
Forgot to add - No question that's a pic of a sears home advertisement.
I don't remember where the "Carlin" name came from, but it has something to do with Carlinville.
Those eave brackets are one of the trademarks of sears homes. There are others, but I don't recall what all of them were.
You can see from the floor plan that what I said about tiny closets is definitely true. I guess folks just didn't have that many clothes back then.
Got any pics of your house?
Got one four doors down from me, right on the park. I'll grab a pic if I get the time.
I've got a Montgomery Ward bungalow, from what I gather from looking at floorplans and drawings from old catalogs.
It has acetalyne pipes for lamps in every room and the remains of a DC genarator and batteries under the front porch.
Better built than the starter homes of today, but I am sure it was considered cheap compared to the Vics back then (19-teens)
Instead of plaster and lathe, it has thin 3/8 inch layers of paper glued up. (now covered by drywall)
The rooms are trimmed nicely, but not in extragavently as the west coast and chicago bungalows I see in mags.
I'm pretty sure ours was a kit, not a Sears but something with a hyphenated name or a 'X & Y' name. It's from 1921. Here's a pic from the 70s, before all the work I've done on it ha ha ha.
I'm not an expert, but I think you're right in saying that your house is NOT a sears home.
Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity. [Horace Mann]