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Plumbing, electrical, and heating equipment could be purchased separately, also from Sears. Sears foursquare models like the Garfield often had pairs of windows on the second floor above the porch and several models had triple windows on the porch. Pay special attention to the locations of the chimneys in your house if they are original to the home. Don’t forget that they may be located on the opposite side of the house if the floorplan was flipped. One thing that is usually not changed when a home is remodeled is the location of the chimney.
Move a wall or change the size, work with our team to make your home design unique to you. We can also work with a plan that you might have seen elsewhere. Choose between full log, hybrid, clapboard or timber home. Ltd. – a branch plant, of the Michigan-based Aladdin Homes, the largest kit home seller in Canada, its Canadian headquarters were located in the Canadian Pacific Building, in Toronto. They operated across the whole of Canada, from 1905 to 1952. They were truly pre-cut, and need very little skill to assemble.
Delivery and construction
That porch post arrangement was used for half a dozen or so Sears Home models. The Harris J-6 foursquare was a popular model and a number of those homes can be found in central Ohio. The catalog stated, “We have everything you need – including the money” so Sears would finance the home for you. During the height of the Sears home era, Sears became the world’s largest mortgage holder. The company subcontracted manufacturing, and eventually design, to the Gordon-Van Tine Company.
As much as the public obsesses over Sears kit houses, there are thousands of Montgomery Ward houses all over the country that are overlooked. Montgomery Ward sold high-quality homes that are still as welcoming today as they were 88 years ago. The popularity of kit houses was attested in a roundabout way in the 1920 silent comedy One Week starring Buster Keaton, which shows Keaton constructing a build-it-yourself house that turns out all wrong. In addition, with some companies, homebuyers could choose the quality of materials. Gordon-Van Tine offered discounts for customers who chose lesser-quality siding, roofing, doors, windows, and trim.
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You would have to arrange to transport the house kit from the nearest rail yard to the your property. You were also responsible for preparing the foundation and assembling the house. Sears would estimate the price to hire local carpenters to assemble the house and would include that cost in the financing. This model is similar to the Argenta in that the exterior contains siding on the first floor and shingles on the second floor.
They also featured high-quality lumber, and the company offered a refund of $1 for each knot found in a kit. From the outside, our home does not resemble the original Sears Starlight. A previous homeowner had enclosed the back porch to create a pantry. When we bought the house, the roof structure was bad, so we completely removed the roof including the rafters. We replaced the rafters with trusses thereby changing the entire design. While we were replacing the roof, we also enclosed the front porch to create another bedroom and an entryway.
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This American Foursquare’s has a central entrance and a bedroom on the first floor . In 2015, Rose Thornton found an example of the Orlando model in Beckley, West VA. This model could be argued that its not a American Foursquare since it doesn’t have the hip roof. The Bellevue seems to be on the larger side considering the description notes that this model “gives more living space than any other design”.
Most of the finished woodwork items came from the 17-acre Sears Sash and Door Plant at Norwood, Ohio near Cincinnati. To keep pace with its competitors, Montgomery Ward began to offer mortgages in 1926. This plan proved successful at first, with the company claiming its highest ever kit house sales data in 1929.
Montgomery Ward Homes
I’m curious how that impacted what was shipped by Wardway, and the difference in price from the other models. Note that Wardway also provided their default color scheme for the exterior if a customer didn’t indicate a preference. So I’m including it, even if just for discussion and fun comparison with the other traditional American Foursquare models. This site features entire houses ordered from Sears Roebuck, Montgomery Ward, Harris Homes, and others.
At Ward Cedar Log Homes you should expect nothing less than a quality home and the best possible service. We are with you through the entire process, even after your home is delivered, making sure no small detail goes unnoticed. ✔ In-house Engineering Team - Providing you with design services, complete set of blueprints, and materials list. We run all the design calculations and do the drawings, saving you money, so you don't have to have them done elsewhere. Although Sears and Montgomery Ward sold lots of smaller homes, they also sold some very elaborate houses. Recently, a Sears Magnolia in Illinois sold for $480,000.00.
The porch is unique from most of the other models in that it doesn’t span the entire front of the house. Instead of being long and rectangular, it is more of a square front porch. On the other hand, “ready-cut” meant that each piece of lumber was cut exactly to the architect’s drawing by the sawmill before shipment. Each piece was then “clearly marked with a printed stencil to correspond with the same piece shown on the plan”. The homeowner had no cutting on their end – simply nail it in its place.
Use your favorite search engine to research Sears or Montgomery Ward houses from the year that your house was built and the two years prior to that. By the time the house kit was ordered, delivered, and constructed, the year of record for when the house was built would most likely differ from the year that it was ordered. Since Sears sold the most by far, I will mostly focus on them. Researchers do not agree on how many homes Sears actually sold, with estimates ranging from 50,000 to more than 100,000.
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If your house was constructed within the corporate limits of a city, a building permit may have been required. A few lucky homeowners have been able to find the original building permits which listed Sears as the architect or as the builder. The numbers “2 – 8” were stenciled on the drip cap above one window. In addition, it was marked “Drip Cap #3” using a dark blue grease pencil. This drip cap is a great example of marked lumber that you might be able to find in your Sears house.
The introduction of drywall in 1917 removed the need for the amateur home builder to hire a plasterer to finish the walls thereby making the erection of a Sears kit house even cheaper and easier. Sears even provided its own brand of drywall with house kits after that. From 1909 through 1932, Montgomery Ward sold more than 32,000 houses this way as did smaller companies including Harris Brothers Homes in Chicago.
Other smaller providers of mail-order kits included The B.C. Mills Timber and Trading Co., United Grain Growers, the University of Saskatchewan, and the Manitoba Agricultural College. Advertisement for knocked down kits for summer cottages, in Popular Mechanics, May 1908. These were lightly constructed dwellings, not meant to be lived in year-round. Advertisement for a “cut to fit” Craftsman bungalow from Sears, 1916. Sears Garfield home is very similar to the catalog picture from 1932.
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