Sears offered complete houses in large DIY kits
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Even the quality of lumber has decreased as old growth forests that were harvested 80 years ago no longer exist. Heart pine lumber that were used in 1940s homes (I own one) is more dense and stronger than new growth pine lumber. [1]
It would be tough to offer the same kind of kit in this day and age given the difference in building material back then compared to now.
[1] https://etmoore.com/news/reclaimed-heart-pine-vs-yellow-pine....
I'm a woodworker and I've also owned a property management company and done my own home's remodeling (the kind of remodel that means you talk to structural engineers). What you say is true, in some ways and with asterisks. It is also irrelevant. New growth pine is preposterously strong when loaded in the correct dimensions and balloon- and platform-framed houses are designed to do exactly that.
Modern silviculture is an absolute marvel. It turns out prodigious amounts of more-than-good-enough material at remarkably cheap prices.
Your average framing contractor is going to already buying from a lumber yard most likely, so they haven't seen that change, but in the consumer space it's been noticeable.
Buying from lumber yards also matters due to grading and various standards builders have to abide by that weekend warriors do not.
Both are soft enough that you can't really beat them up.
But you can get nice grain out of other softwoods, too. Because it's very easy to get hold of here, I use white fir sometimes in furniture. Not "fine" furniture, but simple house stuff. This tabletop was actually the first thing I ever did in my shop and while it hasn't held up amazingly (my breadboards popped and I haven't fixed them yet) I quite like it for what it is as a learner messing around, more or less, and the sap intrusion along the breadboard still makes me happy when I see it: https://i.imgur.com/nipUhLs.jpg
There's a joke that an ungraded bolt is guaranteed to catch a magnet and sink to the bottom of a bathtub. "Whitewood" is that, but wood.
Think of all the things this chart promises. Then assume none of them.
i'd imagine the averages are down across the country but that doesn't mean things are cheaper everywhere, esp. if you're in a high COL area and they know you can pay
One piece was a 2x4 from 1982, from RONA (a Canadian store) and it a very beautiful piece of pine. It was exactly 2” by 4”, and straight grain. Obviously it was air-dried by then :)
Now it might have been from the select pine section of the store, not SPF construction lumber.
Pine ought to be treasured, not tested as a garbage wood like we do nowadays. If it were scarce it would be priceless.
I am a big fan of ash, but the bugs are going to make that very hard to source going forward.
That said, unless you are framing a wall I think that the real key for dimensional lumber is to forget that 2x4s exist. Big-box stores start giving you much, much more uniform material once you get up to 2x6s. While I work in hardwoods sometimes, I like making simple furniture and gifts out of softwood because of the regularity, the price, and because I don't care nearly as much if I make mistakes. My primary materials are 2x6s and 2x8s from my local Lowe's and Home Depot (because my jointer can't handle anything bigger). Lowe's are Idaho-sourced white fir and Home Depot are unknown-source Douglas fir. They both make pretty decent 1" x 5" milled boards, for the most part. Knots in white fir open and crack in interesting ways that give it a rustic feel that I like, but the color is pale and weird (so I break out stain for most of those projects, shhh don't tell). In other parts of the country you can get stuff like the southern yellow pines (slash pine most common), which have interesting properties as they age with regards to strength. Though I think they're kinda ugly.
I will tell you for sure, however, that the stuff you're buying is dry. It's just not dry to what you think it is. Dimensional lumber is dried to somewhere between 8% to 12%. That's dry enough to drive out most bugs and to reduce the future movement of the wood to the point where it can be safely and effectively constrained by fasteners--that is, while it may try to warp, it won't warp so much that it can potentially strain a fastener (which can absolutely happen, wood is strong). HD will not put lumber that is not adequately KD'd on the rack (barring accidents, etc.) because the stuff won't get signoff from builders, who absolutely do buy from HD and buy in bulk, and incurs liability. (Builders, at least where I am, do a lot less with lumber yards, because HD's prices are cheaper.) But 8% is the top end of what a furnituremaker or somebody making something that needs to be stable will expect; many aim for 6% moisture content, and that's in hardwoods which move a little less.
Plywood...is a different story, but plywood is having much bigger problems across the world right now. Again though, depending on where you are, you can do OK. My local Lowe's has adequate (not good) hardwood-veneered; my local HD has a "birch" ply that, while probably not entirely so, isn't awful. The bigger problem is that both are still ridiculously expensive, while both dimensional lumber and hardwoods have largely come back down in price.
Old pine sold her in New Zealand was full on knots and was pretty gnarly stuff. Anything I could buy now (except fencing timber) would be straighter and of more consistent dimensions.
What really determines how long a house will last is water/moisture management.
Denser growth means it's harder for pests to damage and water to penetrate.
My mom's place is build with high grade fir for every stud and beam and there's clear differences in how it's holding up to contemporaries built using pine from the same era (old growth too). Materials make a difference.
Wood isn't magic and no common softwood is particularly moisture resistant. It's more likely that the envelope of the house was built better than anything to do with the framing materials.
I really question if you comprehend the type of wood I'm talking about. The contemporary pine is like butter by comparison...
While driving the fastener, or over time while the structure settles?
Either way, I can't see how this is a problem with the wood itself. The structural design and material properties have to be specified in a compatible way. The only three options are the spec is wrong, the materials are out of spec, or the engineer considers it a non-issue.
In any case, is unnecessary to use wood like that.
(And hardness has little to do with the strength or survivability of a constructed building.)
And it absolutely 100% does, as I've had it happen to me many times. It also gives circ saws a hell of a time.
Don't know how to prove this given that's an 18 hour drive from me and she's not currently doing renos....
Although actually afaik older buildings are often overbuilt because there was no engineering to figure out the least you could safely get away with.
I agree with you that houses are more likely to rot than to break from under building and fall down, although events like decks collapsing during party or roofs collapsing in heavy snow do happen.
This is just absolutely false.
Older growth wood is more stable and more likely to resist moisture.
We have zero examples of homes built with fast growth SPF (etc) lasting 100 years or more. Hell even 75. On the contrary, we have a plethora of examples of old growth pine lasting centuries. Just look at the cold, wet, and snowy northeast. Plenty of moisture there, yet the historic homes still stand.
No contractor I've spoken to thinks the homes being built today will last half a century or longer.
edit: I will stand by my comment. Lets see how many 70's and 80s era houses last until 2040.
If "older growth wood is more stable and more likely to resist moisture" it still stands that any wood can perform well in the absence of excess moisture.
I certainly agree that my 120+ year old house made of fir would last much longer with a leaky roof than a house from the 1960's or 1990's with a leaky roof.. but all of those houses would be unfit for occupancy while they deteriorate.
75 years ago is 1957 by my reckoning, you have some example of 75 year old houses deteriorating because of the quality of wood in the absence of moisture penetration?
There is no point in having a structure that is uninhabitable due to moisture penetration that still stands except for the purposes of salvaging it.. which I guess has some value..
My personal opinion is that building built to code today will stand for 100+ years no problem, buildings built in the 70's, 80's and 90's to code in many places will also do so if moisture (Rh) mitigations are reasonably executed (lots of mould & vapour barrier issues in that era). Older houses don't face the moisture issues because they are not as well sealed and as with all structures - keep a good roof on them and they are fine.
Framing wood quality doesn't matter, how fast that wood rots is a question of every other material used in the construction of the envelope.
It certainly could be the case that something like spray foam degrades over very long periods of time.. but you'd have to figure the savings from the enhanced insulation value over that period would more that pay for its replacement.
Does spray foam have a failure mode just sitting in a wall?
If it does, I wonder if they'll have some special robot to replace it one day.
Contractors adhere to code largely as far as they can be forced to and work on a "we've always done it that way" basis. On the other hand, architects and engineers are pretty sanguine about modern softwood, and for good reason. You start seeing "modern" SPF in broad use starting in the mid-seventies and construction from that era is by-and-large fine.
Remember that the houses that sucked--and there were a lot of them in the 1900s and earlier--simply no longer exist. Survivorship bias is real.
2040 is only 17 years away! Houses from the 1970's and 1980's are selling for top dollar today in suburbs all over North America, if the expected life spans of those structures were only 17 years they'd be worthless.
Where I am from the late 60's and early 70's homes are the worst quality ones on the markets, really a terrible time for home building. The issues are all foundations, plumbing, and wiring.
The only major advancements beyond the late 70s-80s are energy efficiency-related.
What really matters is the foundation.
Forgive my skepticism, but for wood boards (and not engineered materials being used incorrectly), ones not stored in deeply failure-causing conditions to the point where you wouldn't want to touch them because they'd be gross, this just does not happen.
Check them out, they’re nice.
Look at https://www.wood-database.com if you want numbers. Balsa is around 9 lb/ft^3 dense, with a crush strength of 1,690 lbf/in^2 and a modulus of rupture around 2840 lbf/in^2. White spruce--which is a pretty representative member of "SPF" in the USA--is about 27 lb/ft^3 even in its modern, "oh so weak" form, with a crush strength of 4,730 lbf/in^2 and a modulus of rupture around 8,640 lbf/in^2. That's, uh...a lot. Is it Good Old Hardwood? No, but who cares? The numbers we're talking about are so strong that if you need more, you need a big span or something, you throw a 2x12 at it or you go to engineered materials (which are basically wood alchemy, they're magic).
From a numbers perspective, the modern "oh they take so much off" 2x4 is overkill for things like external wall framing. We use them because of safety margins and because it allows us to box in more insulation.
Where it can matter is in terms of rot resistance. Sort of. Heartwoods do have accumulated waste products (they're basically dead while the tree is standing, if you ever see a tree desleeve it's because there's too much heartwood for the sapwood and it just peels off) that bugs don't like. And you can tell why; if you've ever bought a decent-sized board, you can taste the difference if you lick your finger, touch the wood, and lick your finger again. Heartwoods are bitter. There is value in that, and old growth does have more heartwood. But we have modern building practices that maintain a better moisture envelope not "because the wood is worse", but because it makes for a nicer house to live in. It also happens to compensate pretty well for that.
The people who fulminate about "the wood isn't as strong" are old and old at heart. It is not just "strong", but it is strong enough, and the fact that we can produce so much softwood for so cheap at such truly incredible strengths is worth celebrating.
Jarrah looks like:
https://youtu.be/jdBHtUN5gAE?t=217
and sounds like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGFqvOEL5bw
https://youtu.be/uKxAkfI2pNo?t=39
Jarrah was used to pave high traffic thoroughfares in London at the turn of last century.
Once our state stopped the wholesale clear felling of jarrah by europeans, we turned to harvesting regrowth:
Jarrah is a sustainable, exclusively sourced from regrowth forests in Western Australia. Strict regulations are in place to ensure jarrah sustainability is managed in a way that balances ecological, economical socio-cultural factors.
The guidelines and policies outlined in the The Forest Management Plan and the WA Regional Forest Agreement are regularly reviewed to ensure world-class standards are upheld. All native forests that are harvested in Western Australia are regenerated or replanted every year. Jarrah can be recycled and repurposed for other uses.
Even though Jarrah is very sustainable timber, the West Australian Government has made the decision to ban logging any native timbers by the end of 2023.
Natural edged shelves, island tops, tables.
South-West W.Australia has a lot of old craft skills kicking about - I was in the midst of a crowd doing glass blowing, cabinet making, solid and ply shell drums when I was writing pre-Google Earth not exactly KeyHole geo spatial processing and display software and we'd often going out to retrieve all manner of wood and rock that was toppled or exposed by storms.
It's not just jarrah stashed away, there's also wandoo, granite slabs, numerous burls extracted .. and a lot put back in terms of replanting, cool burns, 'artifical' hollows, culling ferals, etc.
It looks incredible when oiled.
I know this first hand, having once hit myself in the head with a 4" x 4" x 8ft piece of it while building a bed.
Really...
"The increase in number and specificity of building codes has come in-part due to foreign-made building materials and poor QC."
Quality Control from foreign made building materials was far less than those components manufactured in the U.S. at the time. I grew up in a pipefititng and piping wholesale family, which is closely adjacent to steel manufacturing. You're welcome to dive in if you're genuinely curious, there's tons of reading material available. I'd recommend starting with the decline in fitting production and consolidation in the U.S. in the 90s with the introduction of Korean-made fittings. Chinese-made cast iron is another one to poke at. Starting in the 70s, Chinese-made cast iron was widely imported and was used widely in underground piping, namely sewer and sanitary. Cast iron failure was a huge problem for 20 years.
If you're looking for a xenophobe angle to argue, it's simply not there.
Your complaints aren’t directed at Swedish steel or German fittings. They’re directed to Asian sourced parts imported by American companies.
The regulatory context that permitted self assembly of houses seems wholly orthogonal to parts supply chains for professional manufacture.
The price of them being imported does not have the same meaning to me that I think you want it to have. Why are we pussy footing around this? Shit is just made with less quality than it was "back in the day". Even shit made in the USofA is of lower quality than it used to be, so it's not just something "foreign made". Why? Because consumers did not want to pay for quality. Making it right is expensive. Good quality assurance is expensive. Manufactures trying to get ahead decided to start cutting costs and lowering quality and lowering QA standards, and consumers bought that shit up left, right, and center. People decided they preferred to have cheap things now, and if it breaks and it's still cheap, then just replace cheap with cheap.
This is not any different than companies looking for short term profits to make stockholders happy rather than what's better for long term results for the stockholders or the company itself. So, it's not just a thing evident in manufacturing but in all business.
We (the royal we) have lost long term vision in pretty much all aspects
So I think the thing I'm confused about is what this has to do with Sears kit houses.
Were they, like, really good quality? Was Sears not an incredibly profitable company that made its money by volume supply of cheaply sourced parts?
I got the impression Sears houses were basic but functional. The fact that "Remarkably, almost 70% of these Sears DIY houses are still standing today" is reported uncritically in almost every online source about them, including the original piece, but... is that remarkable? How much 1920s suburban housing stock in general is still standing today?
It is however true that corporations have strong incentives to support politicians and media entities who are aligned with their own interests.
Oh, that old trope that never dies. Companies that sacrifice the long term for short term profits have their stocks tank and go out of business.
Big investors are not the fools people imagine they are. About 3 milliseconds after they catch wind that a company is eating its seed corn, they dump the stock.
But if you are sure you've identified a company that is doing this, then short their stock and make a bundle.
You're probably right about big public corporations and institutional investors. But PE firms don't have the the same incentives; their incentive is often to squeeze as much ROI as possible out of the companies they purchase, consequences be damned. You're mostly right though on this part:
> Companies that sacrifice the long term for short term profits have their stocks tank and go out of business.
Or they file for chapter 11 bankruptcy and let someone else pick up the pieces, while destroying a good business and leaving a bunch of people unemployed.
> The increase in number and specificity of building codes has come in-part due to foreign-made building materials and poor QC.
And clarified specifically:
> the decline in fitting production and consolidation in the U.S. in the 90s with the introduction of Korean-made fittings. Chinese-made cast iron is another one to poke at.
I’m not pillorying anyone, I’m just trying to get them to join some dots up.
Why is the location of fitting manufacture relevant to the decline of the Sears house?
Doesn’t the availability of cheaper parts manufactured to apparently lower quality standards make it easier for catalogue houses to exist?
And didn’t the Sears house decline long before the Chinese cast iron of the 70s and these Korean fittings of the 90s?
Did building regulations make it harder to offer kit houses? Yet building regulations did not prevent cheap imported parts coming in to the US apparently, so… building refs both were a reaction to foreign parts but also a cause of a decline in US part manufacturing?
Another problem is home designs are adapted to their locations. That doesn't work so well with a cookie cutter design.
If I were to say, purchase 100,000 gpu's direct from a chinese manufacturer, and half of them were dead on arrival, what is my recourse? Where does customs fit into that recourse?
Now if I were to purchase them from an american company, I may have an opportunity to sue.
So a cheap and bad option appeared on the market it was only from overseas, not domestic. It's not an issue of where it's made - just different qualities made available.
It's not what was built in here per se, it what wasn't - not back then at least - cut out to shave a penny (or a buck) off costs. On the other hand, to break into a new market (lower) price - often with lower quality - is a known entry path
Along the same lines, look at American made cars back then. Sure there were sloppy manufacturing issues. But no one accused any individual part of skimping, cutting corners, etc.
Believe it or not, things were noticeably different back then.
So much of this is survivor bias or just nostalgia. Some things were better back in the 50s, some weren't. Somethings in the 50's seemed great but in hindsight were pretty bad (asbestos, thalidomide, DDT, aluminum wiring).
And some of the "American Exceptionalism" was also a response to WW2. I know an entire generation who would never buy anything made in Japan because of Pearl Harbor. And I had an uncle who flew in the 8th AF who would go into a rage whenever he saw a VW Beetle on the road. In electronics, Japanese-made used to be a slur, until they dominated electronics.
My first home was a Sears home. It was small but seemed okay for a first home. It had new siding, and the previous owner had replaced the aluminum wiring. I don't know if the plumbing had been replaced, but it was, as most houses are, a House of Theseus.
Sadly, everyone had to learn this lesson "the hard way", the timelines were just different.
Pinto didn't explode because the material used for the gas tank was too thin or defective. Pintos exploded because the design was bad.
That said, building codes are about creating safety and resiliency in structures, primarily as a safety issue. They've been around a very long time, with events like the 1886 Chicago Fire and the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake being drivers for big change.
There isn't much in terms of code to stop you from using crappy materials in a house, as long as they are safe.
Of course there is nothing inherently less dependable about something made in Japan compared to the United States. But things made cheaply are generally less dependable, and a lot of that stuff was made on the cheap for a reason: to break into the U.S. market.
I see a lot of houses going up around here using metal studs...
Menards carries house kits. I looked into them about 20 years ago, and a search tells me they still exist today.
And these kits are nicer than the sears kits. Many of the sears kits wouldn't have factored in electricity. Some of them wouldn't have plumbing. Insulation was probably minimal and I'd not be surprised to find out that folks have had to deal with asbestos in their house. Central air/heating might not have been the same: My parents had a house built in 1918. It had hot water heat. The hot water was supplied by a huge boiler, insulated by asbestos, and originally fired by coal.
It should be tough to offer this kit in modern times: the new house kit of today is much better.
In other words, when American companies would leave profits on the table by providing building materials of gratuitously good quality, rather than cost-shaving them?
Given what the US food industry was doing pre-FDA, that sounds .. questionable.
I think some of the low quality materials available with globalization might be because other places understand how to use those materials better than we do, we're still trying to use the old mindset with the new materials.
We might not be able to do kit houses, but I think it's pretty cool that we don't chop old growth anymore, and we use less material for most things, and it all still generally works except when it's designed to fail or there's extreme corner cutting.
I added Ethernet wiring to the whole house when we had it rewired off knob and tube. It would take ten minutes through each stud and my hands would often tire of holding the drill
That stuff is amazingly strong.
Someone in architectural engineering — feel free to correct me.
I agree, due to your uae of "in-part".
Foreign parts are indeed very low quality, comparatively. What's worse are bog box stores importing, creating their own brand, and selling this junk.
I honestly believe we should pass a law, if a big box retailer does this, they assume full liabilty and responsibility for QC and all damages. This includes if they have any ownership in any corporation, no matter how many shells or distance orml country, and the CFO, CxO should be criminally liable for compliance.
EG no hiding.
The big box guys like to import off brands by setting up a shell company, then in a few years axe the brand and close the corp, evading liabily. It needs to end!
That said, I think many building codes exist because too many people take shortcuts.
people looking for still standing Sears houses
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/do-you-live-in-a-mailo...
Sears house sites https://www.searshouseseeker.com/2015/11/blogs-about-sears-h...
House database(s) http://www.sears-homes.com/2015/02/wheres-list.html?m=1
https://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/26/business/sears-eliminatin...
Instead of adapting to the medium, they tried to force the medium to their offering, suffered when web-first companies showed up, and then decided the internet was a fad.
https://searshomes.org/index.php/2012/05/08/the-sears-homes-...
The lumber they used for structural members (huge, 8x10ish boards, very long, all around where the foundation met the house; joists; et c) or for other parts that were never meant to be seen, like floor underlayment (which was a bunch of ordinary boards laid diagonally, so they wouldn't match up with wood floor boards laid atop it—not plywood) would probably have gone to veneer these days. Knot-free, perfect stuff. Much of it's likely nearly impossible to get these days at any price, in the same size and quality, short of salvage from houses like that. I never got much of a look in the walls, but it was 2 stories plus a full-height floor for the attic (need that for temp control, in the days before air conditioning) and was "balloon" construction, which means they used a whole bunch of boards 2-3 stories high to frame the exterior walls, which, again, probably nearly impossible to find these days, straight and strong enough to do such a thing.
I notice that working-class houses of the 60s-80s (and a bit into the 90s) usually had solid wood trim and doors, too, typically throughout. Those are now luxury-tier, and even rather expensive houses will use particle board (basically cardboard—sawdust and glue) or pieced-together pine that must be finished with paint, and hollow doors, often without even finish-grade veneer (so they have to be painted, can't stain and varnish them). Expensive houses where the person building it cared a little more (or the buyer had input) may put solid wood in certain public areas, but e.g. bedrooms? Hardly ever, now, at least in houses built for/by people who work for a living. So the process of lumber-worsening may be ongoing.
I am not positive, but increasing temps and lighter winters, more CO2 in the atmosphere, probably also increase the growth per season even in a forest that hasn’t been logged, if there are any.
They are pretty nice!
It wasn't red oak?
https://archive.org/details/artisticmodernho00asso/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/BetterHomesAtLowerCostACollectio...
https://archive.org/details/ClevelandPublicationsModernhomes...
https://archive.org/details/GarlinghouseAmericasBestHomePlan...
https://archive.org/details/honorbiltmodernh00sear
https://archive.org/details/ModernHomes-Sears/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/modernhomes00nati/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/ModernHomesSearsRoebuckCo
https://archive.org/details/PlansOfModernHomes320/mode/2up
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sears_Modern_Homes is a good coverage of a lot of the details. Shame that isn't the root for this, as it has a lot of good details.
There was a fun article a few years ago of some folks that built a house in WA. Still very doable, but probably not right in the city that easily.
Don't ask for a citation on that.
You can also buy log cabins that literally go together like Lincoln logs.
Sadly, they both are usually more expensive than standard stick-built.
This often comes up as a "look how much cheaper housing used to be" discussion. Keep in mind things like gfci outlets, fire code, insulation requirements, electrical/plumbing inspectors, permits, etc weren't an issue back then.
You will have a "builder" who hires a GC, the GC will then hire subs. The subs will bring in crews and the crews are typically two guys with a truck and whoever they picked up at home Depot that morning.
Every one prices per job except the home Depot laborers that end up doing all the work and they get like $100 / $150 a day cash. But they are who is doing 90% of the work.
In the 40s when you hired someone to build a house they actually built the house, like would be out there sawing or even straight up milling the wood themselves.
Today almost no one that's experienced does new construction where they actually do work themselves. The actual quality workers are all in remodeling because the price to time/work/labor ratio is so much more profitable.
It's not like real estate developers pull numbers out of a hat to determine how much to charge. Most areas will have several major developers in direct competition to attract new home buyers, and if their costs every get out of hand people will just start buying land and managing the build themselves.
Personally I suspect the land cost is one huge part of why people don't build their own homes today. Today's version of the sears catalog home would be like "2 dozen people buy a small plot of land together in/near the city and build a condominium to share the land in a cost-effective way". But while random people can build a basic pre-fab home with lots of determination, they probably can't build a 5-over-1.
You haven't been in a factory lately, or toured one from 100 years ago?
Its exactly opposite to how you say. Mechanization slimmed the employee count, then automation did it again, then again with everything going digital.
This is seen in all sorts of industries.
The plant I work in has loads of empty offices, former machine shops bereft of millwrights/used for storage), and only half the lockers in the change room are claimed, and that's after they carved out a locker room for female employees. And that's only a 50 year old place.
One night I was working alone, and the site labour supervisor was the only person I saw all night, as he stopped in a few times to check on how I was doing. I asked him how many people he had on site, and he said about 30, including he and I. Since then, when I work nights, I check up on people too. Its a big place. The population swells during the day, but most of it is contractors(like me) and office personnel. But the plant runs 24/7, as much as possible.
I've worked nights in another part of the plant, in finishing/warehouse/loading, and there's about seven people there overnight (and the same during the day), and only one (me) doing actual physical labour(and not hard stuff at all). Because product is mechanically wrapped, packaging is machine counted and printed these days, not hand lettered, moved around via conveyor and forklift, and loaded for shipping with machinery. Even closing the rail car doors is done with a machine.
Even 50-100 years ago, the world ran much more on muscle power and human eyes, and many more employees were needed.
Especially worth thinking about in the most extreme cases, like when it’s a state with very high housing costs (like California) and extensive mandates (like EV-ready wiring in all new single family homes). There are many who wouldn’t have chosen some of these specific tradeoffs!
My guess is those Sears houses were more than good enough without all the added bureaucracy of today.
The house kits seemed to started falling out of fashion as society started deeming electricity an essential, though the timeframe also had other things like the depression/ww2 going on to cause issues with it too.
Bathrooms have usually been gutted though, if for nothing else than the common designs had windows in the bath/shower and pretty much guaranteed water damage in the wall.
many have extensive renovations, others are essentially standing as-built. typically they are worth millions, but that's more about geography and zoning than the construction itself.
i have lived in a few, all with the original plaster, and a mix of original plumbing/electrical. generally i would say even the mostly-original ones were are some of the nicest places i've ever lived, but that's not saying much.
there is definitely a survivorship bias, but the ones still standing seem to have weathered the moisture well. much of the ~70/80s era construction i have seen seems to have fared worse, and the new construction i've seen is downright laughable.
>typically they are worth millions
That might be just a more generality of single family homes in the Seattle area than a nod to their craftsmanship.
Things like fire rated doors/drywall might not lower the likelihood you'll have a house fire, but they will give the occupants time to exit safely. Ditto for electrical breakers/gfci.
There are often laws that say repairs beyond a certain point must bring it up to code, but minor repairs to keep it working are fine.
Now you may want to get it to code, but that’s another question.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36500744
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36499459
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36488803
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36488260
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36486717
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36480645
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36448458
(We're trying to avoid any kind of repetition on HN, and certainly rhetorical repetition on divisive topics)
What I found particularly interesting is that what Americans today consider stereotypical American farm houses were actually these Sears houses! They had a significant influence on the country's architectural history.
source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/bgxt8q/in_re...
The houses look fairly ordinary, here's an example: https://img.atlasobscura.com/w5ka7Nu51kS6w9gIH24ObDyeKBfhbkP....
I wonder if I've ever visited one unknowingly.
I don't know if I'm just nostalgic for American homes, but that home looks striking to me. But I know what you mean.
If you enter into a 'parlor' with a switchback staircase on the right, fancy newel post, maybe a gabled landing then it's a good chance. To the left, a double doorway to a sitting room. Right from there, pillared fancy doorway (possibly sliding doors) to a dining room with bay window. Behind that a pantry and then a screened summer kitchen, often closed in in later years.
Straight from the entryway you get a sort of closet with the basement stairs on the right (and maybe another exterior door) and a shelving unit on the left. Through that to a play room or downstairs bedroom. If there's a bathroom it's behind that.
All lathe-and-plaster walls, wainscoting of various designs depending on the money they had to spend.
Upstairs a short hallway with four doors to four bedrooms. Maybe a sleeping porch behind the first bedroom on the right.
Anyway seen this design around here (midwest) many times, sometimes a little larger or smaller but always the same layout!
One of the anecdotes they shared is that the kits did not come with fireplaces, so his father learned to mod kit based comes with a brick fireplace and made a side gig of doing it for others.
Edit: looks like the National Archives has a virtual tour of the home here: Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum - Birthplace, United States https://artsandculture.google.com/streetview/richard-nixon-p...
There's not a lot of money to be made buying land for top dollar and trying to build something affordable on it - especially with any quality to it, too.
There's actually maximal profit to be made by building affordable housing (i.e. dense condos that make efficient use of expensive land). The only problem is that it's illegal in most places.
I understand the reasons but it’s still just a dump
Generally speaking you want at least one window per room as a means of escape in the event of a fire in case the door is blocked, but the natural light might also be important to people.
Even in the big cities inspections are often cursory if it seems obvious to the inspector that the people involved know what they’re doing.
And this is why you should hire a good home inspection service that knows how to inspect construction and when; they will be more thorough.
It would be great if people would understand why Chesterton's fence was put up, before knocking it down.
Here's one for $66k (steel frame only): https://www.homedepot.com/p/Bungalow-Raised-Deck-loft-2-Bedr...
Other companies out there bundle additional components (more than just the frame). A quick google search turns up DIY kits that includes insulation, floors, walls, etc.
Edit: This was actually on HN a couple weeks ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36209328
As far as I know they include everything.
Also for barely more than that, you can just get a manufactured home, that comes with walls, power, carpets, insulation, plumbing, cabinets and bathrooms.
These tiny home things are all a joke, they're not cheap, and never have been. It's kinda like these people building container homes. Sure they're cheap to start, then you start putting in all stuff that makes it a house, and lo-and-behold it becomes as expensive as a house.
We couldn't get any of the modern prefab builders to call us back, so we ended up going full custom. I'm sure we would have gotten more bang for our buck with some sort of middle-ground kit.
According to [1], the median cost of 1/4 acre in Akron in 2020 was around $25,000. To be fair, Akron does not have the economic advantages of the industrial 1950’s any longer, but the price is still close to the expected value from inflation.
What has changed are people’s expectations. Today, a Sears home on a 1/4 acre lot is not what people dream about owning. Nevertheless, it is indeed still an option throughout the middle of the US, and once the people on the coast get hungry enough for their own home, they will move inland, do remote work and live very comfortably.
[1] Zillow—via Sage AI
House pricing in the popular areas is perverted by speculative investment and shitty zoning, which are issues that still need solving. It could be much cheaper, then people don't have to move out to the middle of nowhere. We just need to get better at accommodating affordable city living.
Sears was based in Chicago. Lumber came down from Wisconsin via Lake Michigan and got shipped out on the new railroad network as DIY houses. The Silicon Valley of its day.
Or so I've read.
The model 115 would be ~$33k.
You can hardly get a plastic shed for that price.
I'd be interested to see what like for like cost would be. I suspect that it would be less adjusted for inflation.
All the money to be made is selling to the top end of the market, especially since land is priced at developing the land as much as you can (to then sell to the top end).
Now, if I could just find kit homes online with prices listed. I hate "Contact us for pricing and availability". https://downersgrovehistory.org/Sears-Catalog-Homes.html
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-house-that-came-i...
I lived in a San Jose house framed in old Redwood. A century of drying and hardening made in virtually impossible to drive a nail. The 'dimensional' lumber (sawn to no particular standard) made it hard to fit any modern fixture.
Having been modified several time over the century it was a warren of misshapen rooms and awkward hallways & stairs. Had a single 15 amp circuit for the downstairs and nothing upstairs. Wire run in conduit instead of inside the walls - and not stylish office conduit, galvanized pipes hung from the walls with nailed-in hangars!
My neighbors had it worse - no foundation! Just built on the dirt. He jacked it up and used a skid loader to build a basement and foundation, get the wood away from the termites. Lived in it the whole time! An amazing couple.
I wonder what the actual average construction time was for owner-occupants? Three months sounds unrealistically short for a single person, but maybe it's not actually quite as hard as I'm imagining it.
Having helpers on hand is probably not counted; literally one person is significantly harder than having three.
Here’s a crew of three that threw up three walls of a garage in a day: https://youtu.be/D5U753R3N_A (tons of other delays have happened, but framing is pretty darn fast - find a development near you can drive by everyday and watch, a whole house can go from nothing but a foundation to a thing with a roof in a week).
Then all the little specialty catalogs.
Then personal computers came out with the HeathKit and RadioShack/Tandy catalogs.
Yeah I know we've saved so many trees but wow there was something to that physicality.
Has anyone reverse engineered any of these to the point that modern blueprints and building plans exist for any of them?
But hey, rebate!
Ah, yes, the popular urban myth that houses in cities are made of gold and platinum (or similarly expensive materials) while the houses built on the periphery are doomed by planned obsolescence. Thank you for telling us that isn't the case.
You've got the permits, the foundation, driveway, utilities, and the whole issue of paying someone to put the parts together, to name a few.
But not in San Francisco.
See https://www.antiquehomestyle.com/plans/sears/1923sears/23sea...
The interesting part was the prefabricated components were being built onsite, in a large metal building. I guess you can get an assembly line concept going, work at nights, in poor weather, etc, to really crank out a bunch of homes in a short period of time...
Edit: Fun fact - The Sears catalog was used as improvised or actual toilet paper since before WW I.
I've never been able to find this movie.
Or, an attic system with high velocity air, but that’s big $$$
Sears was started in the 1890's as a mail order business to compete against local general stores (think of all those westerns with "General Store" on one of the buildings - they were Sears competition). The guys Sears worked on railroads, and he saw all the middlemen tacking on markup as products moved west in the distribution chain until they go to the stores.
So he started a catalog, the famous Sears catalog in 1893. It was 300 pages, and had everything. Now think about this for a second. In 1893, you had a mail order catalog that sold pretty much everything that was for sale in 1893 - machinery, bikes, toys, dry goods, etc. Does this sound like another business you know?
So every year the catalog comes out, and after a few decades it becomes an American institution. For much of the population, the Sears catalog includes a decent quality, low cost version of every mass market nonperishable consumer product in the United States that wasn't a car (they did sell those at one point very early on. They also sold mobile homes too, up to the 1940's).
You could pick anything from the catalog, mail in your order with a check, and in a few days/weeks you'd get it. If you didn't like it, for any reason, Sears had a "satisfaction guaranteed" policy that you could return it at anytime for a full refund.
Now pay attention, because here's where it gets good.
In 1931, Sears starts an insurance company - Allstate. It buys financial investment firm Dean Witter and real estate broker Coldwell Banker in 1981. In 1984 it starts a joint venture with IBM called Prodigy, an online computer service, sort of a prototype AOL. In 1985, Sears launches a new major credit card, the Discover card. For the next eight years, the only credit card you can use at Sears is Discover.
At this time, the early 80's Sears is the largest retailer in the U.S.
By 1993, the 100th anniversary of the Sears Catalog, Sears had built up considerable goodwill in the mind of consumers. They weren't the lowest price, but they had what you needed at good prices and the service was second to none. They had real estate, insurance, financial planning, and all at good prices with top customer service.
This is 1993. In quite possibly the greatest example of corporate shortsightedness, Sears shut down it's mail-order business in a cost cutting measure. It spins off Allstate that same year, and soon dumps Dean Witter and Coldwell Banker.
In 1993, Sears had the most extensive and sophisticated mail-order retail operation on the planet and they closed it.
Two years later, Amazon.com launched, and was soon selling everything that sears sold through it's catalog. By the late-90's Walmart's push of low-cost China imports killed Sears retailing. Online banking takes off. Credit card use surges as mail order and retail purchases are shifted online.
Sears had its own computer network in 1993. They had access to IBM, they should have understood the power of the internet. All they had to do was shift the catalog online instead of killing it off, promising in store returns and the same Sears satisfaction guaranteed. Discover could have been the credit card of choice for security and protection online. Dean Witter could have been what Schwab, E-Trade and Ameritrade became. Back in the mid-late 90s when many people were hesitant to use credit cards online, Sears could have been a familiar face online.
Sears could have used the Catalog to create searscatalog.com or wishbook.com and owned online retailing, owned amazon's business, owned online brokerage and banking, but they blew their chances to save a few bucks in 1993. They could have made huge profits in the early 2000s real estate boom by leveraging that success with their real estate arm (imagine if Amazon sold houses).
By my estimates, Sears could have spent about $200 million in 1994-1996 to develop and promote retailing and financial services online, and they'd be reaping billions.
Sears could still be a huge American company today, instead of a historical footnote.
"Help me build a Sears catalogue house from 1920. I own the property X and i have $87k. Be concise."
X-GPT: "You do not have enough funds to build at this time. According to survey X your property contains X mineral. Go to this location X and buy shovel X, rock cracker X. Or I can order it for you and it will arrive tommorow"