These look like a lot of the houses that are on Ashland and Saint Joseph Missouri. Wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of them were Kit homes. But they’re very elaborate compared to the Kit homes today it seems

My friend & his wife owned one in NJ. It was fantastic and large. You show the same model at 1:16 The original builder added in a basement and installed steel I-beams to support the middle of the house. It was a great design.

The house next door to my childhood home is a Sears home. I remember as a kid looking at the pictures of it arriving on a train and being being built.

There’s several Sear’s homes in Hopewell Virginia.

We live in one.

💙

You definitely did the right thing.

Your son was lucky to have a handy dad with a plan! 🤠

They don't make them like they used to. Many homes in the most expensive areas of Seattle were Sears catalog kit homes. Houses that were bought for $6,000 are worth a couple million dollars now. They're still standing and while they may require some updates and maintenance, the overall stature and stability of the original structure is impressive. As you'd mentioned, solid oak beams, strong frames, heavy doors, etc. They used to do it right.

Great job, Dad!

Glad you enjoyed it!

Modern custom homes are nowhere near as cool as these.

And the fact that the most expensive home, adjusted for inflation, cost under $90k

Matt if you account for labor, foundation, land and all the new systems that are standard it would be much closer to 300k plus

I worked in a Sears Home - the original owners had bought and assembled the home In the late twenties - once the owners had passed away in the late seventies the family kept the home for several years and then decided to sell it in the late 1980’s - being it was located on a large plot of land on the water in Florida - it was purchased and turned into a restaurant with a tiki bar that is still open and operating today after 35 years of business !

Prove it.

@@solstice1977 GFYM

Some of these designs look really familiar, and I'm in northern California

Fenton Michigan has a lot of sears kit homes.

@@solstice1977 prove you aren’t a mistake

My grandparents had a large one. It had skinny stairs in the back near the kitchen for the help. They Had one bedroom downstairs, and many upstairs. Big sliding wood doors & stained glass. I was only about five but I remember sliding down the big front stairway bannister. My Aunt had the smaller turret room upstairs when she was a kid. She said it was cold. Their house got demolished sadly but I see it in my dreams.

I lived in a town that had 4 in it. They were gorgeous. I’d love to have one.

I often go to Wainwright AB. It would be nicw to stop by Vermilion and see your brother's home.

Wow

A tree too? Holy wow. When did they stop loving Americans. Why did they ever give up on making the American dream a reality?😢

@@chasgarza3960 inflation, and rise of living cost I guess. Happened on a global scale, tis why it is nigh impossible to buy a decent house for a young folk with no help from parents.

Back when waste was lost profit.

And they look really pretty too

What's the difference if a board gets trimmed to fit in a factory or on the job site, either way, the boards need to be cut to fit. There is very little profit for contractors building houses, so they don't waste any more than is necessary. What makes you think there is so much waste in new housing construction? I'm not sticking up for new houses, they are junk, and every corner that can be cut is cut, I'm just saying I've seen no evidence of them wasting materials.

@@bigredc222 New home construction is the field I have worked in on and off for years. I still work in a related field and almost daily work in new homes. In my experience, new home construction is terrible in the Southern U.S. It is still alright in the Midwest. The problems seem to be the use of cheap materials, the price charged for the cheap result, and the managment of the building process. In the Midwest, we would build a house and it would end up looking very high end at a generally low price. Some relatives moved into one of the houses that I had helped frame a couple of years before and they really liked it. It was a good builder I worked for and a quality home. In the South, the superintendents are rarely involved, spending most of their time busy with tasks that have little to do with actually building. I have watched as the same mistakes happen in, for instance, cabinetry, for years. The result is houses that the new home owners tell me themselves, are cheap and plauged with problems. My younger brother and his wife wanted a custom home here in the South and went to get pricing from builders. I then took a couple of hours and added up all of the materials for their plan and they ran the numbers. It was unbelivable how much could be saved if they just found a builder to sign off on work they had done by paying friends, etc.

@@matthewmosier8439 I'm an electrician, I started out wiring new houses, but I only did it for about three years then I got with a company that only did commercial work. After you've wired five or ten houses there's nothing left to learn, I like a challenge, I like learning new things. The only challenge with residential is to see how fast you could do it.

That would be amazing!

Southerlands still does this.

I heard Amazon is.

I so agree with you!!

@@janeanf123 I think they sell tiny houses.

I've been in an Aladin model. Simply stunning indoors and out.

My boss lived in one. There were 4 Sears homes on her street. In Michigan there are a lot of them

I'm sorry, but many of these were balloon framed, one of the worst ways to build a house.

@@kstorm889 Balloon framing is still used today even in 2022, but especially for masonry walled housing.

@@kstorm889 "one of the worst ways to build a house" ,but still standing straight well after hundred years. maybe you should know something before opening your mouth.

@@brianfairchild7819 ...wow! Did you INVENT balloon framing??? Getting a little angry over a simple comment!

Hi Martha. Small world. I'm from Hartville. I didn't know there was a Sears' house in Canton. I would love to see it. Where is it?

@@cremebrulee4759 It’s on the corner of Frazer NW and 19th St (fronts on 19th) in Canton. It’s owned by Mary Cirelli. I’ve heard that she allows tours occasionally--for local charitable organizations, but I’ve never had the pleasure. I’ve read about that house’s origin, however. Quite interesting.

I understand that many other Sears houses exist; it’s just that people don’t realize it. Not all are nearly as amazing as the Magnolia. Sears did really keep track of where it’s housing kits went. There are 2-3 good books (by the same author) about Sears houses. Some are in the Stark County library system!

Canton gal here as well.

@@Hamigal That’s great! Maybe you know of more Sears houses in the area. The Canton area has three Frank Lloyd Wright houses, as well, but they are also privately owned and not open to visitors.

Went back to the catalog, our home was the brentwood.

It seems to me that the rate of housing price inflation from then to now is greater than the cost of living inflation. IOW single family residences are less affordable now.

It has been noted that a typical housing loan had a repayment term of five to ten years. People seemed more inclined to buy within their means. I would love to pay off my house in five years.

That’s when an American dream existed

You know you can still get kit houses for cheap. The trick is you need to build them and have the lot to park it on.

@@kstorm889 - If you consider modular homes as well, there are other inexpensive options. The trick is finding a community where the zoning laws allow you to place the home.

I think they were still harvesting what was left of the virgin timber in America, its no wonder they had great wood!

Settler colonists ruined America's nature and landscape. It's a shame What a happened to north America, it was soo much more beautiful before settler colonists extracted, exploited and degraded the nature that natives preserved and nurtured for millenia. The same goes for Australia.

@@nataliekhanyola5669 Strongly disagree. We made efficient these formerly unproductive lands, ushering in an age of hope for the future.

Makes total sense many of them would be in Chicago.

@@nataliekhanyola5669 I recently learned that all the tallest and straightest trees in America were claimed by the King of England for ship masts. I'm guessing there may have been more timber than just those trees that made it over. I wonder how much American timber is in English (other countries too?) homes and buildings? 🤔

That's really interesting, I'll keep an eye out!

I worked in one about 20 years ago in Central Illinois

Yes indeed and it’s nice that one of the example address labels 🏷 Ken showed us had “Clayton, MO” as the location! 😎

I could’ve spent hours just looking through a Sears catalog. Sounds really interesting.

@@danielevans8910 I have a small paperback reprint of their FALL 1900 Catalog. It makes the mismanagement of the current SEARS look all that much more pathetic. Richard Sears and Alvy Roebuck are spinning in their graves!

They went so far as to offer complete cars and farm tractors through the mail order catalogs.

@@adamantman3200 Sears really could've been Amazon before Amazon became a thing. They already had the system with their catalouges in place! All they had to do was move everything online. It's such a waste of opportunity and sad to see a company that was integral to the development of America as we know it today. A huge part of our history, gone. Such a shame.

All it takes is one inept CEO making a series of major mistakes and the whole thing snowballs. RADIO SHACK is a perfect example. The company would have turned 100 in 2021. @@Tea_Noire

That's amazing!

That's tragic.

Sears gas station with a lifetime supply of pickles.

That is really fascinating! I'm glad that we could share with you the history of another Kit Home manufacturer! -Ken

That's really interesting! It always leaves me befuddled when a house appears that way lol -Ken

It would be interesting to know the sq. footage of the most commonly ordered houses compared to the median sq. footage of today's houses. Little closet space because they had much fewer items of clothing--just such a different standard of living from today when most houses need two incomes to maintain them.

At the turn of the 20th Century homes modest homes were often built with some built-in bookshelves, nooks, or seating. The lack of closets or original kitchen cabinetry is because large wardrobes (free standing cabinets for clothing) and "Hoosier" type cabinets (also free standing) were more common. I like to think that people had less stuff, ha ha.

@@user-mv9tt4st9k Both were true. Fewer possessions and free-standing wardrobes and cabinets. And smaller beds. Bedrooms were much plainer and pared down for the average people.

@@WinstonSmithGPT That’s simply untrue. The vast majority of people buy ordinary, distinctly non- luxury homes.

The are actually enameled steel houses made of panels inside and out. To hang pictures you need to use magnets instead of nails. I read once that you could technically disassemble the house and take it with you and reassemble on a new slab. I think they are kind of cool.

lustron houses are awesome!! they were popular with vets returning from ww2 i think

There are two Lustron homes in Los Alamos, NM. The joke at the time was that if you forgot your key, all you needed was a can opener to get in. Both of these homes are occupied.

Had one in Monroeville Pa. I worked in town and drove by for years not knowing about the house due to brush growth blocking street view. When property debris was cleared by municipality this metal house with rusted out panels caught my eye. Read up on owner history thru deeds (before internet) and found it to be a Lustron . Lasted a few years before it was razed.

@@brianmcdaid3178 laughed at can opener saying. The beginning of mid century atomic age. Would of liked to have see America at that time.

Sorry to hear it was torn down!

@@ThisHouse me too. I put a lot of work in that house. It was cool.

@@MizMissiB Sounds pretty neat. Did you find out the name of it? What style is it in?

@@jakekaywell5972 I’m not sure about the style. It was a full two story house. I found all the clues that it was a Sears home though. I should look up the style. When I gutted it to remodel, there were numbers stamped on several of the pieces of wood for the main structure

Thank you so much for your kind words, I really hope that we will be able to hit the road soon and bring you more houses from more cities. At this rate, we should be able to start traveling further by spring time of next year! -Ken

@@ThisHouse Road Trip!!!! How exciting!!

@@ThisHouse that’s wonderful, I can’t wait

Illinois has some great houses, and would be awfully close to home 😉

LOL if it was anything like assembling a piece of furniture from Ikea, I'm sure there were some laughable moments! Happy Thanksgiving, Ken

I can't imagine the average person could do it by himself. Wouldn't a local builder be needed?

Nothing last as long as good old-fashioned lead paint!

@@zachsheffee8458 including humans as lead paint can be cancerous and accumulates in your body over time....the longer it lasts the more unhealthy you get haha

I forgot to add that it’s cost was $1200.00 . Fantastic!

That's awesome!!

That’s interesting. I’ve lived in Tullahoma since 2016. I know where that road is, but I never had any idea there were Sears Kit houses on the road.

Yup abet it’s a out side water furnace 2 tons a year with left overs and yes the soft coal and a mix f hard coal heats the house and shop along with the domestic hot water and the hot tub only have to shake it down and reload it once a day gives my son and his collage buddy’s some thing to do when they visit they think it’s cool to fool with it .

in my city there was a giant fire in 1877 and they had to build a bunch of super janky garbage homes to house everyone since most houses downtown and south of downtown were totally destroyed. my house was built 1879 and its just a cookie cutter square house, also with no insulation, theres a coal fireplace still there but its sealed off and we got electric heating

Yah. Sears was basically a combination of Amazon, Cabellas, Home Depot, and Walmart.

💙

We hope to be able to feature one on a tour some day, I'm always keeping my eyes peeled for them. Happy Thanksgiving, Ken

@@ThisHouse Oh boy that would be great!