Aladdin Homes archive shows a house with a foundation like ours, even down to the textured blocks. Here is another house with textured blocks on the foundation.
I found out something else today that is really interesting for a number of reasons. It was not until the 1896 with the Rural Free Delivery Act that mail was widely available. This act changed the face of rural America by providing mail order to parts of the country that had relied on cross-roads store to provide all of their "store-bought" items. Sears and other mail order catalogs changed this. No longer did a rural customer have to depend on what was available in their local area, accessible only by horseback. Now they could have items shipped in via US Mail from all over the country.
At least one forum exists where people discuss issues related to kit homes.
At some point, I am going to walk around Conway and take pictures of the houses I suspect of being kit homes and see if I can id them. Maybe I should write an article... (at least for the Historical Society).
While this is, indeed, ugly, it has other problems. Like none of the appliances work. And the area underneath the sink is rotted. And the cracks running between the walls and the ceiling? Those are because the wall is pulling away. We have to shore up the foundation.
This closed-in porch is supposed to be a walkin closet. Except it is not done. There is bare chip board everywhere.
The back bedroom is a mess. There is no door, the woodwork is painted dark green, the light fixture is dangling from the ceiling, there is a big patch in the corner and a hole underneath the baseboard. Oh, and that carpet? Totally hiding a dissolving particle board floor. That had to come out and be replaced.
We are really closing on the house tomorrow. We were supposed to close on Wednesday, but the termite inspection did not get done. None of the termite companies could inspect until all the garbage was pulled out from underneath the house. The seller wanted us to take $500 and ignore the garbage and sign off on the house without knowing whether or not the house had termites! Sometimes I wonder just how stupid people think I am?
Todd is hopeful that we can get the house ready to move into by the first of August. That would be really lovely. We really need to be moved by the 14th of August, as that is when Todd reports for school. On the 21st, I have to be available for meetings, and whatever else comes up. We really need to have almost all of our stuff out of here by then. Possibly just some stuff here to prop the place and possibly not.
Anyway, by then, we need to have the floor joists fixed, the foundation repaired, the sub-floor in the laundry room replaced, and the roof joists replaced. And the inside needs to be painted and the floors refinished. No pressure, right?
We are wondering if the house we are buying might have been a kit home of the type sold by Sears and others. So I wasted the afternoon looking at online pictures of kit houses. Well, that and looking for my 2004 W-2 forms for the bank...
Clarke Historical Library hosts a huge online exhibit on Aladdin Homes. Aladdin, along with Sears, were two of the largest kit home manufacturers.
Several sites, including Old House Web and River Valley Home and Garden offer information on existing kit houses.
