The Mail-Order House

There are at least 75,000 Sears Roebuck homes — some tiny, some grand — in every corner of the country. And most owners don't even know their secret.

All the homes in Carlinville, Ill. came in the mail, ordered from the famous Sears Roebuck catalogue and delivered to your door, CBS News correspondent Russ Mitchell reports. Well, actually, delivered to the place where your door would be, after it arrived along with all the other packages.

In 1919, the Standard Oil Company, needing homes for the miners in its new Carlinville mine, ordered the entire town from Sears. It was a Carlinville neighborhood that first got Rosemary Thornton hooked on Sears home history.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/05/14/sunday/main553963.shtml

Not to take away from the original and beautiful hand craftsmenship our Union workers do, I think housing is ripe for new techniques to build a house. If you think of the possibly 2 million times a hand moved foward/back in a task to build a home. From nailing, painting, installing wiring, flooring, trim... It makes me wonder why someone hasn't figured out a blow mold home which would cost about $4000.

http://darkerxdarker.tripod.com/

in Pacific Heights (lower PH) in San Francisco that was built from a kit bought from Sears. It is beautiful and still in great shape.+

things together. Something county inspectors couldn't refuse. Using our own labor would drop the price by 70%, wouldn't it? Isn't a home about 90% labor?