this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
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My grandparents ordered their house from Sears and grandpa and my great uncles built it over a summer weekend.
Damn thing still standing and is now I think on a historical register.
But today… we can do the same thing. You want a single or double wide?
Ooh until you check the prices of a manufactured home (trailer / caravan) and find out how unaffordable they are. Bonus you can't get a traditional mortgage for one.
Also only a few companies will insure them. I think Foremost and State Farm were my only two choices. It wasn't something I considered when I bought my run down double wide manufactured home.
I always wondered how they made the chimneys. Wood construction is fairly straightforward. But masonry seems like another beast.
The house I grew up in was a Sears house. Chimneys were stacked stones from where they dug the basement, put together with simple mortar. Concrete was used inside to create the fireplace beds (basement and main floor). Not very complicated to do really.
There is some science and math to ensuring a good draw so the smoke goes up and out and doesn't get stuck inside. I imagine the instructions from Sears provided some relatively safe rules of thumb to achieve this
It's hard to overstate how different the standards were back then. Much of the housing that was built pre-1940 has been demolished, but if you find an average neighborhood still around from that era, you'll find tiny 2 bedroom houses in which parents raised often 3 or more kids, and this was the middle class norm. In the US, the average person has way more living space today than back then
I'm 37, say that to my 1 BR apartment me and my fiance live with. I don't m kw the square footage but maybe 800-900?
I was about 10 when my mom was this age, my middle class parents owned a veritable mansion by today's standards in a suburban CO town. I think it was 4 bedrooms - one for mom and dad, one for me, one for my brother, and an office/den.
I can't afford a small 2 bedroom in my city. Hell I can barely afford 1. I wish two bedrooms now were the price they were back then (inflation adjusted of course).
Check out some small towns if you want to see pre war homes. I almost bought a craftsman but ended up with a house built sometime around 1900 (the documents I've seen list varying dates) it got an expansion in the 40s and a detached garage in the early 50s, and at some point someone enclosed the porches creating some nice mud rooms and the main floor bathroom appears to have been redone around the 80s or 90s.
My in-laws lived in a 19th century log cabin which had seen several expansions and renovations over the many decades it stood. Ultimately that was it's downfall though as some old electrical wire caught fire and as it burned the fire just got stuck deep in the layers of wall and ultimately had to be knocked down in order to put out the fire
Most prewar homes that are still standing have seen many expansions and updates and as such are just teaming with character and charm